AppMagic

Hybridcasual Puzzles: Turning Failure into Revenue

In just one year, the Hybridcasual genre, known for its mix of Hypercasual core loop and Casual-like monetization, has evolved from an emerging concept into one of the most hyped categories. Revenue grew 73% YoY in 2025 and continues to accelerate in 2026.

In 2025, Sort and Screw puzzles doubled their revenue, while Block puzzles surged 10x YoY!

So, we thought, it’s time to take a closer look 👀

In our latest article, we explore:
1️⃣ Why fail offers are central to Hybridcasual monetization
2️⃣ How these mechanics can generate up to 33% of a game’s revenue
3️⃣ The top 5 offers by revenue share in leading titles like Color Block Jam, Screwdom, Pixel Flow, and more

Find all the insights via the link.

We released a new killer feature: IAP Revenue Distribution

The tool helps you quickly answer some of the core monetization questions:

1️⃣ Which offers generate the largest share of revenue, and which are purchased most often?
2️⃣ Which offers convert best to the first purchase?
3️⃣ What price levels consistently perform in this genre?

With this feature, you can instantly spot best practices, discover innovations your competitors are introducing, and identify the patterns that work best for them.

It removes hours of guesswork, reduces the cost of mistakes, and helps make your monetization strategy more effective.

So, it’s time to try it out. What do you say? 😉

Learn more about the feature here!

Puzzle Genre in 2026: Dominance and The Source of Innovation for Casual Games Market 

The Puzzle genre remained the core revenue driver of the Casual Games market in 2025, accounting for 43% of total market revenue. It was also the only genre among the top-grossing trio to show revenue growth, surpassing $9.5B for the period Feb 2025–Feb 2026, up 12% YoY, with downloads increasing 8%.

Among its subgenres, Match-3 remained the largest, accounting for 53% of Puzzle revenue, despite declines in both revenue and downloads overall. However, some publishers bucked the trend: Dream Games grew its revenue with Royal Kingdom, while King also delivered strong performance, increasing Candy Crush Saga’s revenue.

Merge, on the other hand, increased 58% YoY in revenue, while downloads grew only 7%, highlighting stronger user monetization. The subgenre accounted for 20% of total Puzzle revenue in 2025, largely driven by Gossip Harbor: Merge & Story 🚀

The third-largest subgenre, Match-2 Blast, held 5% of the market. Revenue grew slightly, by 2% YoY, while downloads declined 28%. Notably, 65% of the segment’s revenue still comes from the long-time leader Toon Blast.

Learn more about Puzzle subgenre dynamics, market leaders, new entrants, and emerging mechanics in our Casual Games Report 2025 💡

Kingshot Reached $1B in User Spending

Century Games’ Kingshot, a mobile 4X strategy title blending tower defense and idle mechanics, recently surpassed $1B in user spending.

The game has already climbed to the second position among the publisher’s top titles, now accounting for 13% of Century Games’ total portfolio revenue, second only to Whiteout Survival 🚀

As of February 2026, Kingshot is 30% behind Whiteout Survival in monthly revenue. However, after several months of steady growth, the game saw a slight decline in revenue in the latest month.

In terms of monthly downloads, Kingshot quickly overtook Whiteout Survival and has maintained this lead in recent months, surpassing it by 56% in February 2026.

Do you think Kingshot could become Century Games’ new top-grossing title this year?

Learn more about Kingshot’s metrics on its AppMagic public page ✨

Are Tier-2 and Tier-3 APAC Markets Worth Exploring in 2026?

Our Mobile Market Landscape report highlights a mixed revenue trend across Asia in 2025. While China and Japan continued to grow strongly, South Korea and Taiwan saw a slight dip.

When it comes to downloads, growth in top categories was driven by large Asian markets. India, Indonesia, Pakistan, China, and Bangladesh showed steady growth of roughly 2%–12%.

Our partner Alexander Gordeev from AdQuantum also notes that Tier-2 and Tier-3 APAC markets still have relatively low LTV. However, with rising advertising costs and increasing competition in Tier-1 markets, these regions remain highly promising 💪

Look for more insights into the APAC market trends in Mobile Market Landscape 2026.

Friendslop’ Happened: Why Clumsy Co-Op Games Took Over Steam in 2025

Do you have a free evening, a group of friends, and an urgent need for a dopamine spike? High chances that turns into a ‘friendslop’ game night 😉

In 2025, we noticed a wave of these low-priced co-op games flooding Steam. Even more interesting — four of them landed in the Top 10 premium games by copies sold.

Naturally, we had questions. So we did a deep dive 🤿

In the article we explore:
1️⃣ The origins of the ‘friendslop’ games and why they became trendy
2️⃣ Three main types of these games and their best examples to learn from
3️⃣ Why the low pricing strategy ($5–$10) allowed these games to spread across the audience so successfully

Read the full breakdown in our latest article!

Do You Need to Take DTC Revenue More Seriously in 2026?

Readers of our Mobile Market Landscape report already know that D2C revenue in the US increased by 26% in 2025. It continues to be primarily used by top titles.

This trend shows that large apps are gradually shifting toward alternative payment systems and diversifying away from traditional stores.

Our partner Gil Tov-Ly from Appcharge goes one step further. In his opinion, the winners in 2026 will be those who stop treating DTC as a side experiment and start making it a core revenue channel ☝️

Discover more insights on revenue distribution trends in Mobile Market Landscape 2026.

What Is Behind the Decline in Downloads in LATAM?

In our Mobile Market Landscape report, we highlighted a noticeable shift across Latin America. In several countries — including Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru — app downloads declined in 2025 after solid growth in 2024.

Our partner at Tenjin, Roman Garbar, shared his perspective on the slowdown. In his view, it is likely tied to overly optimistic growth expectations from major advertisers. Many failed to reach anticipated eCPMs and IAP performance levels, and budgets were scaled back in 2025, directly impacting downloads 💡

Discover more insights into regional market shifts in Mobile Market Landscape 2026.

How To Read ‘Mobile Market Landscape 2026’ As An Investor with Joakim Achren

Did you know that our Mobile Market Landscape isn’t just a must-read for developers, but a powerful decision-making tool for investors too?

We invited our good friend Joakim Achren — seasoned investor, General Partner at F4 Fund, and creator of the Elite Game Developers website — to share how he uses the report in his investment work 🤩

Elite Game Developers was one of the first platform focused on deconstructing games and analyzing market trends. It influenced many industry resources that came later, such as Deconstructor of Fun — and, honestly, our own team as well!

In this article, Joakim shares:

1️⃣ How he interprets insights from the report when making investment decisions

2️⃣ How the data shapes his approach to investment target analysis

3️⃣ What new questions founders should be ready to answer during pitch sessions

We’ve highlighted some key takeaways in the images above 👆

Learn more practical recommendations in Joakim’s article.

And get ready for 2026 investment season with our Mobile Market Landscape report.

Researching Mobile Games: The Essential Steps With Antti Kananen

Product leader, system designer, angel investor — our good friend Antti Kananen has worn many hats.

This diverse experience allowed him to develop a unique approach to efficient game analysis using AppMagic. He shared this framework with us in our latest article ✨

Here’s what you’ll find inside:
1️⃣ The key steps Antti follows when making investment decisions or evaluating new product opportunities
2️⃣ Real examples of how he used AppMagic to reach actionable conclusions
3️⃣ Why AppMagic stands out as one of the best solutions for end-to-end mobile games analysis

Find all the insights via the link

Casual Games Report 2025: Finding Growth in a Flat Market

Welcome the final one in our end-of-the-year report trilogy: our good old Casual Games Report 2025.

Unlike many others, this one doesn’t require you to download anything. It’s an editorial longread built around some of the most interesting stories the industry delivered in 2025.

What awaits you in the report:

1. A dynamic analysis of the three largest Casual genres: Puzzle, Social Casino, and Simulation.

2. A deconstruction of the leading subgenres: Match-3, Merge-2, Coin Looter, and Farming.

3. The remarkable growth of Hybridcasual Puzzles, including Block, Sort, and Screw puzzles.

All of this to show how flexible and resilient the industry really is, and how growth can still be found even in the most competitive niches.

Trust us, there are many success stories emerging as long-standing monopolies begin to lose momentum!

As always, we’re grateful for your feedback and hope you enjoy the read. 😊

Key Product Trends Every UA Manager Should Know - by Gamelight

Simply increasing budgets no longer guarantees results in 2026. To stay profitable, UA teams need to go deeper: into LiveOps, player motivation, and what’s really happening under the hood of the game.

Our friends at Gamelight paired their marketing expertise with AppMagic data to surface the trends that will define the market this year.

Here’s a quick sneak peek at what stood out:

- LiveOps volume keeps rising, creating more frequent high-intent moments to launch and scale UA campaigns 🎮

- Creative formats are shifting toward AI-assisted production and social-native styles that match actual content consumption📱

- Millennials are gaining share across top genres, while Gen Z continues to favor hybrid-casual and sandbox titles 🛝

But that's not all! You can find many more in the full article on Gamelight

Fallout TV Series: How Game Revenues Grow and Fall Out

After 1.5-year wait, fans of the Fallout TV series finally got their hands (and eyes) on season two 🥳

What about the games? Well, they got into the top charts and increased their revenue multiple times!

But most importantly, did they perform better than during season one?

To answer that, we analyzed:
1️⃣ How the new season impacted Fallout Shelter on mobile
2️⃣ How PC and console titles responded to it, using our new Steam Analytics
3️⃣ Whether it was ultimately worth it

Spoiler alert: it was, but apparently, you have to be Bethesda for that 😉

We left all the details in the article.

Habby Hits $2B in User Spending

Habby has crossed a major milestone, surpassing $2B in lifetime user spending 🔥

This achievement is powered by the publisher’s evergreen hits Survivor!.io and Archero, which account for 40% and 22% of total lifetime revenue, respectively.

In 2024, Habby revitalized the Archero franchise by launching Archero 2. The game quickly became the new ultimate version and successfully renewed player interest. As of January 2026, Archero 2 is the top-earning title in the publisher’s portfolio.

That same year, the publisher added another breakout hit with Capybara Go!. The title sparked a wave of clones and quickly climbed to №4 in Habby’s portfolio, contributing 12% of total revenue 🚀

Habby continued experimenting in mid-2025 with Wittle Defender, inspired by The Tower from Tech Tree Games and reimagined with Habby’s signature style. While it didn’t reach the scale of earlier hits, it still entered the top 10 Habby’s titles, contributing around 2% of total revenue ✨

Congratulations to the Habby team on this milestone — what a journey!

👉 Learn more about Habby’s performance on its AppMagic page.

2 Mega Reports to Power Your 2026 Strategy

This January, we released nearly 160 slides across two mega reports (can you believe the scale!) 🤩

Together, they cover everything from the trends shaping the games and apps markets to the LiveOps strategies driving engagement and growth in 2026.

Find everything you need to strengthen your 2026 strategy:

1️⃣ Mobile Market Landscape 2026
2️⃣ LiveOps Report 2025

Trust us, you won’t want to miss these two 😉