"The total number of Minetap installations has surpassed the 5 million mark," Vyacheslav Utochkin from Geeky House on the results of 2025

We're continuing to review the achievements of 2025 with gaming teams and experts. Next up is an interview with Vyacheslav Utochkin, co-founder and general producer of the studio Geeky House.

How was 2025 for your team? What were you able to accomplish, what are you proud of, and what didn't you manage to do?

Vyacheslav Utochkin, Geeky House: This year, we decided to move away from experiments and focus on the company's two key projects — Minetap and Magical Merge.

For Minetap, we released a number of updates that made the game better and more user-friendly, and we expanded the number of platforms where the game is available. The total number of installs surpassed the five million mark this year, which makes us very happy. In terms of distribution, besides the App Store and Google Play, we've also launched on HTML5 platforms. For example, our partner Mirra Games took the game and brought it to dozens of HTML platforms, even including the backs of airplane seats.

We're entering the Chinese market through Chinese publishers. We just signed with them recently, thanks to Ilya Gutov, with whom I see you've already covered the year's results in your publication.

Also, thanks to the Creative Industries Agency (CIA) and the Video Game Industry Development Association (VGIDA), where I am one of the founders, I went on a business mission to Saudi Arabia and attended China Joy with a booth in China.

Minetap

As for Magical Merge, we've been working on it for four years. This project is executed in two genres — merge-2 and expedition. Such games are rare in the market and very costly and labor-intensive to develop. We've experienced this firsthand. We've gone through three soft launches, after each of which we've almost completely redesigned the game. We initially changed it from horizontal to vertical orientation, then from a magical setting to realism, and also made complete overhauls of balance and game mechanics. But now we're inexorably close to the game's release this spring. You can currently play it as part of open testing on Google Play.

Magical Merge

This year, my partner Nikita Proskurin and I have also been actively involved in educational projects. Specifically, as the program director of Game Project Management at the Higher School of Business at HSE, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of the program and launched the nineteenth cohort of Game Project Management. Enrollment is open for the twentieth cohort, which will take place in the fall of 2026, and you're invited to join!

In collaboration with the Union of Writers of Russia, where I head the gaming industry section, we held nearly forty free educational events at the intersection of game development and literature. We also released the second edition of the book "I Want to Be in Gamedev" in co-authorship with Konstantin Sakhnov and Dmitry Tabakov, published by "Bombora."

By the way, writing books is a fascinating endeavor. As a hobby, I write science fiction with my father, and several of our books will be released next year on the Author.Today network portal in the genre we're interested in, boyar-anime, as well as a novelization of the game. I write about my books and those of friends on my cozy blog in Telegram.

My co-founder Nikita Proskurin headed the Video Game Factory at CIA this year and conducted several cohorts. Thanks to our close collaboration with CIA and VGIDA, we have become part of a new video game cluster in Skolkovo and are advancing our AI autobot technology in the Skolkovo fast track, which we initially developed for ourselves. It's a nifty tool where, after you adjust the balance in configurations, it plays through the entire game at lightning speed and records everything in your database. Very convenient.

What conclusions did you draw by the end of 2025 as a development studio?

Vyacheslav: The market situation has improved a bit, the investment climate has slightly improved as well. Traffic acquisition works on one platform or another, thanks to the platforms' work and constant improvements to their algorithms. And that's good. But overall, the times are still tough. If in 2019 you could stick a stick in the ground, and it would grow money, now you have to survive not thanks to but despite.

Have your interactions with publishers/investors changed? Has it become easier or harder to work with them?

Vyacheslav: We are our own publishers. If our working practice with ourselves has changed, it's only in terms of actively using modern technologies. We continue our ongoing efforts to optimize processes and improve efficiency, which is gradually bearing fruit.

What was the year like for your niche/genre?

Vyacheslav: The merge-2 genre continues to evolve, new games are being released, leaders in the niche are changing, and new projects are constantly entering. This is great! There's life here.

What trends do you expect to strengthen or emerge in your niche/genre in 2026?

Vyacheslav: Games in the merge genre are very actively breaking into platforms for adult games right now. It's becoming quite a trend. This, of course, is what a friend played and mentioned.

In all seriousness, it's clear that this trend exists and will continue to develop, but our company doesn't plan to participate in it in any way.

Also, merge games are actively being bought and sold. From large deals between market leaders to targeted purchases by platforms that deal with motivated traffic or social casinos.

What are the team’s plans for 2026?

Vyacheslav: To develop and improve Minetap, accomplish the long-awaited release of Magical Merge (fingers crossed), test marketing hypotheses, and deepen our work with new technologies and tools!