MarketWire | Is World of Water the next Waterworld?
RPG Match-3 + 4X + City-building + a bunch of other stuff all rolled into a single game
Hello!
This week, we quickly look at the new #1 worldwide downloaded game from last week: StarUnion’s World of Water.
This game has:
✅ RPG Match-3
✅ 4X/March battle systems
✅ City building
✅ Hero collection + gacha
✅ PVE Saga progression
What the heck is going on?
Last year, 4X made a huge comeback, and that trend continues this year with one of the most meta/merged games I’ve seen.
The big question is whether this approach will lead to success or whether it will be the next Waterworld. Lol.
Oh, a quick announcement: this newsletter has a new schedule and series starting next week. Let’s see how it goes, but starting next week, our newsletter cadence will look something like:
🚀 Monday: 1-2-3 Kickoff (new series)
💸 Wednesday: Marketwire
🤓 Friday: Podcast summary or special series, e.g., Pixels & Profits (when available)
Some adjustments may occur based on what we do with GameOver, which has not yet seen much traction.
Top 10 Charts
Love and Deepspace is dropping in top downloads but at least barely hanging on in the top 10
菇勇者傳說 (aka Legend of Mushroom) by Joy Net Games is an anime-style idle RPG. There may be a mistake above, as I believe Joy Net is a Chinese rather than a Korean company.
Atelier Resieriana, at #2 downloads in the US, is a beautiful-looking game in the Atelier franchise but adapting to an F2P model. Gameplay is a 3D team battle genre game.
Percentage of revenue from US:
Monopoly Go: ~71%
Royal Match: ~59%
Jackpot Party Casino: ~89%
Maple Story R by Rastar at #6 downloads is an idle RPG game, not to be confused with Maple Story M by Nexon.
琉生传, at #10 downloads, is an iOS-only idle RPG game.
世界之外 (aka Beyond the World), which made a huge jump to #9 revenue, is an anime-style sci-fi, very dramatic dating simulation game.
Top 10 Mobile Publishers
Top 10 Steam Games
Congrats again to Palworld, which continues to dominate and is also now on Xbox:
🔦 World of Water jumps on the 4X gameplay merge model of 2023!
Water World is a match-3 RPG 4X city-building saga progression game.
Lol. If you had asked me before actually seeing it, I would’ve thought the integration of so many game elements and features wouldn’t work. However, there seems to be good traction for this game so far.
Ever since Frozen City + Whiteout Survival, the trend of 2023 has been front-end loading actual gameplay - rather than fake gameplay and creatives from ads - behind the holy grail of deep monetization of 4X/March battle games. Hence mixing two typically distinct gameplay models.
The biggest success so far has been Whiteout Survival. They took the art style and theme of Frozen City, including the initial gameplay, and then transitioned to 4X. The initial gameplay model, I believe, was originally a mafia-based 4X… I could be wrong on that, but that was what I remember.
At some point, maybe I can tell the whole story if I can get permission from various insiders, but for now, you can hear from industry folks like Matej Lancaric and the 2.5 Gamers podcast guys who have discussed this model even before I spoke to insiders.
The latest incarnation of this gameplay mash-up (mixing two games: 1. high top-of-funnel conversion + 2. high ARPU, e.g., 4X) is World of Water.
But these dudes have really tried to see how far you can take this. Lol.
Let’s check out how the game is doing:
According to data.ai estimates, downloads are high, especially on Google Play (not a good sign for 4X), and unusually high relative to iOS. I’ve previously discussed fishy boost campaigns on the Android side in this newsletter.
Further, you can easily see that revenue to downloads implies a very low RPD (revenue per download) of less than half a cent. So, let’s see how things go. But #1 downloads seem more like a boost campaign, and we won’t know whether this game works until we see the data, especially monetization, over time.
As always, good luck to anyone trying to launch a successful game. Based on what I’m seeing, though, while I found it pretty fun, the game doesn’t seem like it has early indications for success.