While the game in essence still features a visual renovation-driven meta game, it conveys a different message to the player. Something that seems to work well for one of this year's challengers, Merge Mayor, is being able to include a sense of simulation to the game, making the game feel deeper than it actually is. The rest of this article focuses on noteworthy innovations in terms of design, as we've seen executed by the new competitors.
The majority of the new competitors have tried to innovate further on Merge Mansion's formula in bold, original and meaningful ways to differentiate themselves from their predecessor. Merging GamesĮven though Merge Mansion can be crowned to be the initial innovator of the Casual Merge genre by having conceived the first profitable game using this loop, 2021 has shown that innovation never stops. Looking back at 2017's Merge Dragons, it seems merge history repeats itself where being the first to market shows to be the major factor of success, guaranteeing at least a couple of years of growth and a shot at that $100M dollar league. None of the new games this year have seemed to be able to make anything but a dent in initial innovator Merge Mansion's market share. While the segment seems to be a source for lots of potential growth, who (if anyone) will become the 'Evermerge of Casual Merge' has yet to be determined. This suggests that lots of monetisation potential within the latter market is still untapped. Additionally, the Traditional Merge market is fairly saturated while the Casual Merge market just seems to be getting started.
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The sizeable difference in revenue can partially be attributed to a lower Revenue Per Download for its titles, as the Merge Dragons loop attracts a more hardcore audience because of its intrinsically less accessible gameplay with higher cognitive load. The Casual Merge segment is still very much Traditional Merge's little sister with roughly 60% of its downloads and 20% of its revenue. It's important to not misjudge this situation though, as Merge Dragons still leads the race with almost 45% market share on its own. The top dogs have been raking in a whopping $313 million (YTD) about 10% YoY growth in revenue, mainly thanks to EverMerge, Mergical and newcomer Merge Fables saving the day while Gram's isometric kingdoms of Magic and Dragons declined. Surprisingly, total market revenue for games with Merge Dragons' "Traditional Merge-3" loop hasn't declined either (even though the number of downloads for these games did). Its developers are all sticking to their guns as we see conventionally casual-focused companies betting the majority of their monetisation on In-App Purchases, while hypercasual companies Lion and Voodoo include interstitial ads and have Rewarded Videos more deeply wedged inside their game economies.
Over the last 12 months we have seen at least 16 new games with the Merge Mansion "Casual Merge-2" loop start scaling their User Acquisition. Meanwhile I've been keeping a close eye on the Merge market, which means it's about time for a breakdown of what has happened in 2021 in this new and crazy market segment. 2021 will show who will come out victorious."Īt Voodoo Berlin we have been one of those studios having worked harder than ever to lift Plantopia towards the top of the Merge charts, and what a journey it's been. In the same manner, a year ago, while helping out with Deconstructor of Fun's Puzzle Game predictions I wrote about Metacore's Merge Mansion: "While the game is showing to have some challenges to expand its board in the long term, numerous other studios are quickly catching up with their own version of this highly engaging loop. It's the end of the year, which means we're reflecting on the times that have passed to make plans for the times ahead.
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