Read this month’s Headline Release, Market Watch, Breakout App, and Soft-Launch App
Toon Blast’s Progress Pack is part of an early trend of IAPs that require players to complete missions in order to earn rewards. This type of IAP originally appeared in Coin Master in October 2023 and increased revenue 10.5% WoW. Progress Pack continues this early success by helping to increase revenue 19% 5Do5D.
Progress Pack offers several key benefits:
- It drives engagement as well as spend.
- It drives additional spend as players work to complete engagement requirements.
- It gets players invested in the IAP prior to purchase.
Progress Pack’s combination of engagement, spend, and rewards makes it a highly versatile IAP that can be fine tuned based on players’ levels or spending behaviors.
During the release period, Toon Blast has been testing several versions of Progress Pack with different rewards, engagement requirements, and prices. We expect Toon Blast to continue to offer a variety of Progress Packs even after the testing period ends.
Release Trends
Progress Pack’s 19% 5Do5D revenue impact is especially noteworthy in light of purchase events’ mediocre performance in the casual market. Purchase events perform best in the puzzle genre (which includes Toon Blast) compared to other casual genres, with a median revenue impact of 2.9% WoW and a relatively low standard deviation of 12.8%.
Read this month’s Headline Release for our complete analysis of why Progress Pack could signal a new trend in casual IAPs.
|
Genre |
Median Revenue WoW |
Average Revenue MoM |
Standard Deviation |
Release Count |
|
Puzzle |
2.9% |
5.1% |
12.8% |
28 |
|
Simulation |
0.6% |
2.5% |
27.8% |
8 |
|
Tabletop |
-2.6% |
-2.6% |
0.9% |
2 |
|
Lifestyle |
-5.3% |
-1.4% |
22.4% |
10 |
|
Casino |
-5.6% |
-6.4% |
1.1% |
3 |
Market Watch
Breakout and Soft-Launch Apps
Alice’s Dream: Merge Island has broken into the top 20 puzzle apps a year after its release. Alice’s Dream distinguishes itself from other merge apps with the Alice in Wonderland IP, a novel mini-game that appears frequently in ad creatives, and aggressive spend requirements. The app also focuses on quests and challenges more than other apps in the genre.
Monster Hunter Puzzles offers unusually deep RPG-inspired elements for a casual match-3 app, including frequent cutscenes and NPC interactions, robust town-building mechanics, and the Monster Hunter IP. Despite these RPG-inspired systems, the app avoids hero-based match-3 mechanics like those found in puzzle RPGs such as Empires & Puzzles, which allows Monster Hunter Puzzles to target casual audiences.
Read our full analysis of each app in this month’s Breakout App sections.
Innovative Feature and Event Releases
In this month’s market watch, we’ve got two events and a feature that offer lite leveling mechanics:
Candy Crush Saga’s Hungry Hatchling and Candy Crush Soda Saga’s Grow-A-Bear take two different approaches to leveling a simple pet. In Hungry Hatchling, players have 24 hours to reach a gem on the app’s main map to feed a dragon and earn a chest. Successfully reaching multiple gems in a row upgrades future chests.
In Grow-A-Bear, players complete base game levels to earn currency, which they use to buy food for a gummy bear. Feeding the bear fills a meter that awards a chest.
Meanwhile, Clockmaker’s Snow Fair is a team-based event in which players complete base game levels to upgrade buildings in a town. Interestingly, Players earn some progress on their individual towns based on their team members’ progress. In a unique twist, the event uses a prize wheel mini-game to determine how much progress players receive each time they upgrade a building.
Read our full teardowns of all notable releases in this month’s Market Watch.
