Collaborating with popular franchises can be a highly effective way for mobile games to drive engagement, and that has never been more clear than it was during September. Over the course of the month we saw a remarkable number of crossover events, encompassing everything from Monopoly GO! and Marvel, to Transformers and Squad Busters, and even Spongebob Squarepants and Brawl Stars.
But September wasn’t just surprising for its focus on collaborations, it was also notable for the return of classic purchase options. While free-to-play normally dominates the mobile scene, the highly-successful launch of Balatro’s mobile port has proved that there’s still room for one-time purchase fees in today’s highly-competitive market.
Elsewhere, we saw Bethesda’s Fallout Shelter-inspired take on The Elder Scrolls finally launch worldwide. Despite a lengthy soft launch period, the title has fallen out of the top-grossing charts almost as quickly as it entered. It was a better month for League of Legends: Wild Rift, which saw the second-biggest spike in daily revenue in its entire lifetime following the launch of a special, double prize pool gacha.
You can find information about all these titles, as well as other significant updates to some of the most popular mobile games, in our latest analyst bulletin below.
September’s casual game updates
The first big collaboration of the month was Monopoly GO!’s Marvel-ous crossover, which kicked off towards the end of September with a flashy cutscene that showcased the arrival of Iron Man, Thor, Spider-Man, and other iconic superheroes. Given that Scopely already has a dedicated comic-book title in Marvel Strike Force, which it acquired as part of FoxNext Games in 2020, it’s likely that this crossover emerged from the company’s existing licensing partnership with Marvel.
The main draw of the crossover is the new Seasonal Collectibles album, where, for this season, players can complete several Marvel-themed sticker sets like “Deadpool Double” and “Spidey’s NYC” to earn Marvel-themed tokens, emojis, and more. Several other regular Monopoly GO! events also got a Marvel makeover, such as the Iron Man Run Tournament and the Dimensional Fortunes Milestone Event.
Match Masters delivered a double punch by debuting both its first-ever minigame and an all-new storytelling mode. Focusing on the minigame first, Matchinko—as the name implies—is an amalgamation of the game’s usual match3 offering and pachinko-inspired gameplay. To play, users had to first acquire a Matchinko Token, which could be found in regular matches, daily task events, and more. Doing well in the minigame awarded event currency, which could be used to obtain various items from a dedicated shop.
The minigame also awarded event tokens known as “Sparks,” which were used to progress the new narrative-focused mode Seasonal Stories. The more Sparks a player obtained, the more of the story was unveiled to them. For example, this first iteration of the event was a pig lost at the airport. At first, the pig has almost nothing on his person, but as players progress, he gets a boarding pass, luggage, and everything else ready for the flight. Players also received actual in-game rewards as they reached certain progression milestones, such as gacha sticker rewards, various boosters, perks, and more.
This event adds a new seasonal progression layer to Match Masters, creating a feature that interconnects with other in-game events. It also complements the existing Seasonal Ranked Ladder and Sticker Albums, enhancing the overall experience for players.
Additional casual gaming highlights and other news
Following its immensely successful run on PC and console, the roguelike-poker hybrid Balatro came to mobile on September 26, launching as a premium title for a one-time fee of $10. Generally, premium titles are a rarity on the mobile market today as they struggle to deliver the same financial performance as their free-to-play counterparts. Despite that, Balatro has been a significant success, peaking at #56 in the US iOS grossing charts on launch day.
Since then, revenue has sharply declined, although that’s to be expected given the game’s one-time purchase nature. Balatro’s card-based gameplay and poker table-esque aesthetic have made it a good fit for mobile, and we suspect many existing fans may have picked up the mobile version so they can also play anytime, anywhere.
Hexa Sort, a hybrid casual puzzle game from Lion Studios that launched in November last year, reached an all-time high in September (peaking at #73 in the US iOS grossing charts) following a steady but sustained growth in its overall performance.
While Hexa Sort’s performance was slow at first, Lion Studios has been gradually improving the core gameplay experience by introducing new block tiles and seasonally aligned content, such as the new Autumn camping-themed battle pass season and a new Autumn-themed buildable island. While Hexa Sort’s rotation of live events is relatively modest, its success has also been bolstered by Treasure Quest, an all-new social win streak event added in August that caused a notable boost in downloads.
But Hexa Sort wasn’t the only long-term success story last month. Matching Story, a puzzle game from JoyCastle that launched in December 2023, also reached a new all-time high in terms of revenue.
Combining elements from two popular casual puzzle subgenres, match3 and merge3, Matching Story offers a thrilling combination of two progression systems. It features an extensive live event calendar with multiple concurrent events, providing players with constant small goals to strive for and competitions to win. Players earn boosters and merge items from these events to progress, making the game surprisingly engaging and dynamic.
September’s midcore game updates
Aside from a few exceptions, Supercell has generally been one of the only mobile studios that shy away from in-game collaboration events, focusing instead on its brands and characters. However, the studio has become more welcoming of external brands in recent months. This started with Norwegian footballer Erling Haaland coming to Clash of Clans and Baby Shark swimming into Brawl Stars, and continued in September with Transformers rolling out into Squad Busters and Spongebob Squarepants soaking up Brawl Stars.
Brawl Stars’ Crusty Krab event introduced several Spongebob-themed variants of existing game modes, such as Jellyfishing, where two teams raced to capture a designated number of jellyfish. The first Spongebob-themed game mode win of the day awarded the player with “Krusty Kash,” which could be used to purchase limited-time Spongebob skins, cosmetics, and other in-game items from the event store. This currency could also be acquired through IAP, which helped fuel a 300%+ spike in daily revenue on the US iOS market on 5 September, when the event launched.
Also fueling the revenue spike was the fact the store allowed players to obtain Power Meals, special power-ups that could only be used in the Spongebob-themed game modes. There were seven different power-ups for each of the game’s seven Brawler Classes. For example, the Tank Class could get a Krabby Patty that orbits around them as a shield. Players could upgrade any abilities up to three times by acquiring repeat Power Meals.
Looking at Squad Busters, this game’s collaboration event was yet another example of blockbuster movies promoting themselves on mobile. The Transformers event coincided with the Transformers One film in theatres, bringing Optimus Prime and Elita-1 to the game.
It also featured an event battle mod called “Unicron Attacks,” where Unicron (a planet-sized Transformer) spawned onto the stage to wreak havoc. By defeating Unicron, players could obtain a massive amount of gems (which would effectively help them win the match) and Energon—a unique event currency used to open Event Chests guaranteed to drop the featured character of the week, who in this case was either Optimus Prime or Elita-1.
Aside from the collaborations, Squad Busters added a new peak character evolution level, Ultra. To celebrate this, Star Chests were handed out to players containing high-level characters. Currency for the Star Chests is obtained exclusively by gaining enough points from evolving characters or through the Battle Pass. To encourage players to open multiple chests, every tenth chest was guaranteed to contain a powerful four-star “Ultra” character.
League of Legends: Wild Rift experienced a colossal revenue surge on September 11 following the launch of the “Legends of Two Realms” special gacha. The event was part of the ongoing “Rift Adventures” event series, the game’s largest “overarching” event to date featuring a wide variety of sub-events tied together by a unifying event currency.
As the name suggests, the unique gacha was split into two separate prize pools, which players selected between before each draw. One prize pool offered players the chance to win one of the four exclusive Fiend Queller skins, while an exclusive Fiend Queller Yone skin headlined the other. It resulted in a spike of more than 1100% day-over-day on the US iOS grossing market, which was the second-highest spike in the game’s entire history—only beaten by the game’s first-ever Top Up event, as reported in our April 2024 bulletin.
Below: The two prize pools for the Legend of Two Realms special gacha
Additional midcore gaming highlights and other new
After a lengthy soft launch period, The Elder Scrolls: Castles finally saw its official global release by Bethesda. Mechanically, the game is similar to Bethesda’s other mobile title Fallout Shelter, but with players managing their medieval fantasy castle instead of a post-apocalyptic bunker. However, it does have one notable difference in that Castles has a “generational reign” feature where players can assign rulers for their castle, with their personalities and choices affecting how the game progresses.
Despite being based on a successful formula and yet another major PC/console role-playing franchise, The Elder Scrolls: Castles has struggled to sustain itself. The game topped the download charts when it was released and reached the top-grossing rank of 97, but has since declined rapidly and dropped off the top-grossing 200 chart.
Tencent TiMi released a new mobile installment in the long-dormant Delta Force franchise, which has been making waves in China. Delta Force is currently ranked #1 in downloads and #50 grossing. It features two primary modes: Havoc Warfare, which is battlefield-like, and Lethal Extract, an extraction shooter mode.
Delta Force as an IP has not been in the spotlight since 2009, but it was once a major title in Chinese internet cafes. That historical significance might help to explain the game’s success in the region. Apparently, TIMI is also working on a single-player and co-op mode based on the 2001 movie Black Hawk Down, suggesting another revival might be on the cards.
Looking at some of the wider in-game collaboration events across the market, there were also a notable number of titles that launched Hello Kitty crossovers to celebrate the franchise’s 50th anniversary. These included Toraberu Shima no Nyanko, Strawberry Prince With!!, LINE Chef, Roblox, and Puzzle & Dragons. The Sanrio event in Puzzle and Dragons featured three gachas featuring various Sanrio characters, including several unique Hello Kitty characters. Puzzle & Dragons has hosted several Sanrio crossovers now, with the last collaboration held in November 2023 around the time of Hello Kitty’s “birthday”.
PUBG Mobile also launched a crossover with the popular fighting game franchise Tekken 8, which included a dedicated Prize Pass and the PUBG Mobile Tekken Challenge, while Top War launched a massive collaboration with Kung Fu Panda.
