On the midcore side, webstores are becoming increasingly central to monetization strategies, with several titles now shifting new currencies to become the default transaction option over real money. Meanwhile, Invincible: Guarding the Globe rode the wave of its TV show’s new season to a significant player and revenue spike, raising the question of how long the momentum will last.

We also saw notable launches such as Neverness to Everness and Dragon Quest Smash, plus a growing trend of arrow-based puzzle games evolving beyond pure hyper-casual models. You can find more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends from across the mobile market, by checking out our full Analyst Bulletin below.

April’s casual game updates

Monopoly GO! – The Monopoly Ever After season introduced a fairytale-inspired theme, refreshing the game’s visuals and adding new twists to the core gameplay and progression systems. For the first time, the season goes beyond reskins by introducing mechanics that directly affect how core features play out.

A key addition was the Enchanted Storybook, a Sticker Album feature that helps players progress through later sets. Each Storybook grants one missing sticker from a random late-game collection, with a one-time option to “turn the page” and switch to a different set before claiming the reward. Fairies were an additional mechanic that an enchanted storybook may reveal, and a fairy would then grant the player with extra rewards.

The season also introduced a set of temporary gameplay modifiers that added extra reward layers to some of the core mechanics:

• Ever After Chance Cards added a new outcome to the Chance tile. This could randomly send players into special boosted versions of Heist or Shut Down events.
• In Fairytale Heist, players could participate in an event where they uncovered hidden Gems to boost their rewards.
• If players attacked successfully in Fairytale Shut Down, they could’ve revealed 1–3 hidden Piggies, granting additional rewards like rolls or event points during the event.

Gossip Harbor introduced Norman’s Monster Hunt, a new hybrid PvE gameplay format that blends Match3-style puzzle interactions with merge-based progression. Players earned moves (the event’s currency) from the core gameplay, and then used them to combine items on a board, triggering cascades and dealing damage to enemies across multiple stages.

Progression was driven by earning medals from defeating enemies, which merged into higher tiers to increase players’ rank. Rewards that were gathered as loot drops could be merged and upgraded before being claimed. What makes this particularly interesting is how it combined merge and match3 gameplay, with multiple layers of merging across gameplay, progression, and rewards.

Hay Day’s April Fools’ Day celebration lasted for a week and focused on mischievous chicks taking over players’ farms. Similar to previous events that featured seasonal creatures, players completed event objectives by catching various types of chicks introduced each day, such as the explosive TNTillys.

The week’s main new feature was the Takeover event, where rewards were tied to milestones for catching the day’s featured chicks. Additionally, this event introduced the same interface used for the game’s first progressive reward offer.

Recent events show how Hay Day increasingly links new mechanics and rewarding progression systems, moving away from loosely connected events toward cohesive, engaging event collections. This approach, combined with new reward types, contributed to Hay Day’s record-high monthly revenue in April.

Additional casual gaming highlights and news

Dicero is a casual roguelite from HABBY, the studio behind the Archero series and Capybara Go. It’s built around a dice-rolling combat system where each battle plays out similarly to a Yahtzee-style roll. Players roll up to five dice, are able to reroll up to three times, and then try to score the best combination possible to maximize their damage output. Rolled values unlock and trigger skills, with synergies between dice outcomes, gear, and a weapon-specific build, which encourages light strategic thinking within an accessible format. Outside of runs, the game features an extensive meta progression suite spanning gear upgrades, a talent draw system, and permanent bonuses tied to specific dice outcomes.

Dicero is often compared to the indie hit Balatro due to their shared roguelite/card combo-building. However, similarities are mostly surface-level: the two differ in outside-run progression, monetization, and social features.

The game had a decent launch and is now in the top 150 grossing games.

Arrow-based puzzle games are currently a popular gameplay trend in the hyper- and hybrid-casual space. Arrows by Lessmore has been topping download charts for months now, and this new genre has attracted a wave of fast followers seeking similar success. Most of these entries lean heavily into a pure hyper-casual model, relying primarily on ad monetization (IAA) and offering highly similar gameplay experiences.

However, Arrow Out by Lion Studios stands out for its hybrid approach. In addition to IAA, it incorporates in-app purchases (IAP) and borrows elements from casual games, such as boosters and light live operations, signaling a shift toward deeper engagement and monetization within the category. The game ranked among the top 200 IAP-grossing games in April.

Block Out is a Grand Games’ casual puzzle game where players slide coloured blocks toward their matching-coloured gates to clear them from the board. The game monetizes primarily through IAP-driven convenience and session-length restriction bypasses, such as extra lives, purchasable Coins, boosters, and continues. Block Out also features a light Journey progression layer and a solid live event framework to support the core puzzle loop.

Its strongest competitor is Color Block Jam from Rollic Games. However, Block Out keeps scaling in both downloads and revenue, entering the top-grossing 50 in April. We’ll see if it can keep rivaling Color Block Jam in the coming months.

April’s midcore game updates

Webstores have become a must-have in midcore games, with many titles now adding additional in-app currencies that are primarily acquired through web stores. Some titles have even begun shifting this currency to become the “default” option for transactions, replacing “real money” purchases. This month, games such as Last Z (4X strategy) and MLB Perfect Inning (Sports) added these type of currencies into the in-app store. It’s a notable evolution in monetization strategy, steering players toward web storefronts while reframing how in-game spending feels at the point of purchase.

Invincible: Guarding the Globe scaled in both downloads and revenue in late March and into April due to new characters and event content. This coincided with the Invincible Season 4 release, which gave them a boost in numbers and pushed it into the top-grossing rank 50, peaking at 25.

Just like last year, a new season of the animated show on Prime brought in many players to try out the game – this year, even more so (see the graph below). Invincible: Guarding the Globe has taken full advantage of the new season by adding a lot of IAP offers to celebrate the show and the new characters we see on the show. Players could obtain some of these characters for free from limited-time events, including Thragg, the main villain of the season. In other events, players could re-live the fights from the show in the game.

Invincible VS, a new fighting game launched on PC, was also released at the end of April, which brought more eyes to the franchise from the community. Promotional activities in the US have also gone viral on social media, with people buying pizzas that they don’t want to eat just so they can get the code for exclusive skins on a promotional deal.

Invincible: Guarding the Globe is thriving in this uplift of players from the buzz of the show’s new season and the virality of the marketing campaigns of Invincible VS. This all correlates with the spike of players the game has been receiving, but looking at the bigger picture, how long will it be until the player count cools off again?

Additional midcore gaming highlights and news

Neverness to Everness (NtE) is a supernatural, urban open-world action RPG developed by Hotta Studio, a subsidiary of Perfect World Games.​ NtE is among the year’s most-awaited gacha RPGs within the community and one of several “anime GTA” titles launching in 2026, alongside Ananta.

What sets NtE apart from other gacha RPGs is the level of freedom players have in interacting with its world. Similar to GTA-style systems, players can engage in activities like stealing cars or attacking NPCs, which can trigger a “Wanted” level and result in consequences such as being arrested and sent to prison. Beyond that, players can purchase and own vehicles, manage their condition by visiting repair shops, and explore an open world filled with interactive elements and side activities that make the environment feel dynamic and alive.

Recent Gacha games have been experimenting with new ways of doing Gachas, and NtE is doing so by making their Gacha a board game, where players roll dice and are guaranteed to get the limited-time character after a certain number of pulls, meaning there is no common 50/50 system.

The game reached the top-grossing 100 during the launch days, but it will remain to be seen if it can keep it up. The RPG genre has been struggling to get any of the new games to stay in the top-grossing ranks, even if the game (like NtE) has miHoYo levels of production.

Fans of the Japanese RPG brand Dragon Quest were treated to a new light action RPG at the end of April. Dragon Quest Smash/Grow evolves the Archero-style roguelite gameplay with a 3-character party system, 4-player sync co-op possibility, and requiring players to stand still in order to attack. The game’s name comes from smashing the monsters with ultimate attacks as finishing blows, resulting in satisfying animations and lots of experience for players’ roguelite skills.

Replay value is added by having players revisit old stages, where they collect and merge memories of defeated enemies. These memories act as equipment items, which give both stat boosts and skills.

The characters in the game can be customized to players’ liking in terms of facial features and clothing. Each of the main pieces of equipment (weapon, shield, helmet, body armor, and leg armor) changes the stats of the character, but they also double up as cosmetic overrides, meaning players customize their look while also keeping their optimal stats.

The game also features a storyline to follow, both in the main progression and in the limited-time event featuring the story of the original Dragon Quest game.

While the game has flown under the radar in the West, in Japan, the game rose to the top spot in both downloads and grossing at launch. It’s maintained a top-10 grossing for the last 10 days of April, with no signs of slowing down for now.

Honor of Kings: World is an open-world ARPG/MMO released in the CN market in April. It’s a cross-platform game that’s available on both mobile (iOS/Android) and PC, and has shared progression across platforms. A global multi-platform release is also planned for the future.

Set in the Honor of Kings universe, the game combines PvE and PvP elements. Players take on the role of the “Flowborn (Yuan Liu Zhi Zi)” and explore a large, interconnected world while engaging in combat, progression, and competitive gameplay. The game is structured around three main components:

• Open-world exploration, including map traversal, resource gathering, and building and constructing systems.
• PvP modes, which take place in separate instances. These can be 1v1 duels, 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 matches.
• Casual and social content, which encompasses fishing, card games, co-op dungeons, and AI-assisted gameplay.

The Flowborn is central to both the narrative and combat systems, with the ability to switch between three distinctive roles before battle: Tank, Mage, and Marksman. Each role is tied to its own unique weapon system and skill set.

Combat features a dual-character switching mechanic, where players control the Flowborn while resonating with a companion hero in battle (such as Kai, Garo, etc.). This allows for real-time switching between the different combat styles: melee, ranged, and support. The Flowborn’s progression and level is shared across all three roles, while heroes and weapons are mainly earned through gameplay. There are additional unlocks via direct/indirect IAP, and cosmetics are obtained through gachas.

The game maintained a stable top-10 rank in the free charts, while its top grossing rank declined from approximately top-30 to top-100 before showing a slight recovery in early May.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile game market review April 2026 appeared first on GameRefinery.

Drawing on GameRefinery’s and Liftoff’s expertise in game design, monetization, and UA trends, the conversation explores how Township has developed across multiple eras. The episode highlights how the game combines a tycoon-style front end with a match3 system, reflecting a shift in how different gameplay layers contribute to user acquisition and monetization.

The discussion also looks at Township’s UA strategy over the years, including how Playrix has adapted its creative approach, from hyper-casual-inspired concepts to more recent iterations, and how these shifts connect to the game’s broader development.

If you’re thinking about long-term game evolution, creative strategy, or the relationship between UA and monetization, this episode offers plenty to explore.

Listen to the full episode:

Looking for more insights like these? Get in touch with the GameRefinery team to learn how we can support your game strategy.

The post How Playrix turned Township into a $45M/month engine: A Two & a Half Gamers episode with GameRefinery appeared first on GameRefinery.

This issue also shows the still-growing strength of several Chinese publishers in the Western mobile games market. With Chinese publishers dominating the mid-core and 4X genres, we are now seeing games like Gossip Harbor capturing audience share in the Merge genre. 

Speaking of competition, Moon Active’s Coin Master – Board Adventure appears to be a strong new challenger to the juggernaut that is Scopely’s Monopoly Go!, with the game climbing the top-grossing charts in March from outside the top 200 to now being within the top 50. Will it climb even higher next month?

You can find more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends from across the mobile market, by checking out our latest Analyst Bulletin below.

March’s casual game updates

Merge Mansion’s latest update brings the game in line with the rest of the genre in terms of UI. The game, one of the original big hitters in the merge2 genre, once tucked its tasks behind a separate menu. However, nearly every title launched since has displayed tasks directly at the top of the merge board, and it looks like Merge Mansion has joined this trend, creating a UI that reflects the increasing competition coming from games like Gossip Harbor. We’ll see if this has any effect on the game’s performance over the coming months.

In light of the number of games we’ve seen adding multiple event layer expansions (i.e., games which have added additional progression layers directly on top of core loops – think a mini-game within a mini-game), we’ve highlighted several this month:

Gossip Harbor is the hugely popular game from publisher Micro Fun, where you help Quinn Castillo rebuild her restaurant on Brimwave Island after it was destroyed by saboteurs. This month, the game has incorporated an expanded progression loop that follows a fairly new minigame blueprint, called Reward Path: Jungle Journey. In this, players follow a task-based reward track that’s fully linked to the minigame’s core loop.

Players earn tokens by clearing (minigame) obstacles, progressing through milestone rewards that feed back into the minigame via additional energy, creating a closed-loop progression system.

Coin Master, from publisher Moon Active, this month expanded its well-established Wildland Adventure minigame by introducing two dedicated instances of existing event blueprints.

The first of these is Flash Pass: Wildland Adventure. This introduced a short-duration, event-targeted battle pass, aligning most rewards with the concurrent minigame. Players perform core gameplay tasks to earn tiered rewards. This was the first Flash Pass iteration targeted toward a concurrent event.​

The second is Wildland Race, which embeds a competitive race system directly into the minigame, with progression driven by collecting the core currency (Potions). Players compete in race rounds by accumulating Potions, with a limited number of qualification spots & additional rewards granted to the top 3 fastest qualifiers in each stage. Each successful qualification advances players along a level-based progression map, unlocking stage rewards.

This layer adds urgency to the minigame, encouraging players to actively return and engage, rather than passively accumulating Potions through core gameplay without immediate time pressure.

In Travel Town, from publisher Moon Active, two different blueprints were expanded:

The first is Card Crush 2.0, which has introduced Ice Missions, a task-based layer that adds structured objectives and milestone rewards on top of the merge loop, increasing progression clarity and reward density.

The task system consists of 3 stages, each with 4 event-specific tasks. Each task completed grants event points & progresses a milestone bar tied to stage-based rewards: colored hammers used to unlock additional Grand Prizes.

The second is Fantasy Island, the game’s decoration event blueprint. This has introduced a Bonus Stage reward shop, allowing players to spend overflow event points after completing the main progression. The game has previously tried different approaches for the use of overflow event points to add value (example), but this was the first installment directly embedded inside the event itself (not a separate live event)

We like the way this mechanic helps to extend the post-completion engagement and raises the overall reward value for participation.

​In Match Villains from Good Job Games, the event-within-an-event trend is especially visible through multiple monetized layer expansions across 3 different event types:

• The addition of a second (monetized) progression path to the Safe Crackers: St. Patrick’s event through Golden Safes. This is a parallel progression path with its own resources (Golden Tools), where players must both collect materials and make a purchase to unlock premium rewards. Each safe is progressively more demanding & more expensive to unlock, effectively layering monetization directly onto an existing event loop.​

• The Team Duel guild event was expanded with Team Boost, a dual-bundle offer that provides both individual and team-wide rewards.

• Lastly, the Bank Rob race event introduced Coin Exchange, a Piggy Bank-style system where core gameplay progression (Moneyball collection) simultaneously increases the value of a purchasable reward pool. This ties monetization directly to event participation, allowing players to use ongoing progress to earn additional rewards.

Royal Match from Dream Games is making its second attempt at introducing a trendy merge-style minigame with its new event, Merge Smith. Dream Games previously experimented with the merge minigame concept with the Wonder Festival event in November 2025, but that version followed a different design and ultimately remained a one-off. In contrast, Merge Smith has already reappeared multiple times, suggesting a more sustained rollout. It remains to be seen whether this iteration will prove more successful in the long run, as the title sees growing competition from newer games like Gossip Harbor.

Additional casual gaming highlights and news

Another game worth highlighting this month is Coin Master – Board Adventure, a competitor to Monopoly Go! From publisher Moon Active that moved from outside the top 200 grossing apps to one of the 50 top-grossing games in mid-March as its downloads surged. One differentiating factor against Monopoly GO is in the game’s social systems. The game features some more traditional “guild system” features, such as Teams / Team Chests.

March’s midcore game updates

A growing trend we’ve seen amongst midcore games is the introduction of Seasonal collectibles albums. This is a gameplay element that seems to have crossed over from Casual games,  but now we are seeing it used in an increasing number of major midcore titles – suggesting it’s here to stay.

Clash Royale introduced its first-ever seasonal collectibles album event: Album Event. Players had to complete nine different pictures with Snippets, which could be gained from daily wins, shop offers, events, and the webstore. If the player completed all nine pictures, they would get the grand prize: an Emote, a Tower Skin, and the Hero Magic Archer.

The globally popular battle royale game, PUBG Mobile, added its own version of Collectible Season Albums called the Card Collection. Players collect various themed cards through missions, draws, and exchanges. Completing card series grants players rewards, including cosmetic items and emotes. Duplicate cards can also be exchanged with others, but only for cards of the same rarity.

One of the more unusual additions in Dark War: Survival this month is the introduction of the Museum, a seasonal collectibles album system tied directly to the Origin Lands season.

This is the first time the game has introduced a seasonal collectibles album event and, unlike more typical collection features, this one is tied to a limited-time season where collected artifacts grant season-long buffs and milestone rewards. For example, a player who collects a particular artifact and takes it to the Museum will be rewarded with a buff that increases damage against enemy troops – and the buff stays active until the end of the season.

The feature stands out by turning the collection into a limited-time progression system, rather than a permanent feature, making it a more unique part of the season’s overall event structure.

Hero Wars has introduced a new mode, Realm, where players build and develop a base by constructing and upgrading buildings such as houses and barracks, researching technologies in the Research Center, training units (infantry, spearmen, and marksmen), and generating resources that can be used across all the other progression systems. Research provides additional perks that benefit both the Realm and the player’s heroes.

The mode effectively brings a 4X strategy layer into the game, representing a notable shift for a long-running top-grossing RPG. This move aligns with broader market trends, where 4X games have been outperforming traditional RPGs, while increasingly incorporating RPG mechanics into the 4X games themselves.

Realm also features a world map where players can engage in PvE activities using their standard five-hero teams, deploy troops to fight enemies, and gather resources. The update also introduced a new hero, Lionel, tied to the Realm.

In March, no live events were introduced specifically for the mode. However, new monetization options, such as the Progress Pack (offering Realm resources), were added, alongside updates to existing events through progressive tasks, e.g., Runic Millstone.

Additional midcore gaming highlights and news

The Division Resurgence, a mobile third-person shooter RPG/MMO-like spin-off of The Division series, finally got its long-awaited global launch on March 31. The game plays similarly to the original Division titles and is built around a cover-based third-person shooting mechanic, with the story based in an open-world take on New York. There’s a brand new storyline that follows the canon of the first two console/PC games, plus solo/co-op play, PvE, PvP, and Dark Zone extraction-style gameplay.

Compared to the top-grossing mobile shooters, it stands out clearly, as many of its core systems are closer to RPG/MMO-style games such as Diablo Immortal (and, of course, the other Division games). The Division series’ RPG-like power progression is fully present here, with Agent leveling, build tuning, and gear looting and upgrade loops at the center of the meta.

Both MMORPGs and power-progression shooters have historically struggled to break out on mobile in the West, so it remains to be seen whether this long-developed, content-rich, and true to the original title has what it takes to scale further and succeed over the long term. Most other shooter-based games on mobile (for example, Call of Duty) lean heavily on cosmetics as the main form of monetization, whereas RPG games tend to monetize more around character collection, so it will be interesting to see how the game develops.

Roco Kingdom: The World (洛克王国：世界) is a new Tencent game studio fantasy MMORPG based on a popular nostalgia IP for the Chinese audience. The game has a very similar setting to Pokémon, with the player’s avatar roaming the world, either alone or with a team, capturing creatures they encounter in battle.

Visually, it also shares a similar, cute, super colorful art style. It advertises that 400+ creatures are free to catch without gachas, so the player doesn’t need to use any money to collect the creatures! The game has quickly become a hit, hitting the top spot in the Download charts and the third highest in the top-grossing.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile game market review March 2026 appeared first on GameRefinery.

Elsewhere, Brawl Stars had its own unique take on Valentine’s, with its #Brawlentines event, a dating-sim where players got to have virtual dates with different Brawlers, with the community voting on the preferred outcome. Whatever happened to a simple bunch of roses?

Finally, for fans of first-person shooters, Ubisoft’s launch of Rainbow Six Mobile was a big event, and the game quickly hit the top spot on the US iOS store. As with the console and PC games based on this IP, the game is more demanding to play than similar titles, so it will be interesting to see how it holds up against its well-established mobile competitors.

February’s casual game updates

Solitaire Grand Harvest, from publisher Supertreat, added a new twist to the Pick One type IAP Bundle. (This is where players are presented with several different IAP Bundles for purchase, but can only pick one.) In the Solitaire Grand Harvest version of the event, players need to successfully complete a level of base gameplay before unlocking their chosen bundle for purchase, meaning the player needs to engage with the game more before getting the option to progress through an IAP.

Royal Kingdom introduced a fresh twist on the classic race format, called Gem Hunt, where players compete against each other to be the fastest to complete a set number of levels.

In this update, instead of racing toward a fixed finish line, players compete over a shared pool of resources. The more they contribute to completing the levels, the larger their share of the resource pool, and therefore the more event currency they earn to spend in a dedicated reward store.

This combination of competitive currency accumulation and a separate event store makes it a relatively unique approach within the casual puzzle market.

Additional casual gaming highlights and news

Sunday City: Life Simulator is one of the most unique genre hybrids we’ve seen in quite some time. The game combines a typical casino-style slots core with a tycoon-and-customization meta, all styled to resemble a more casual, GTA-inspired open-world experience.

The game originally launched in November 2025 and has steadily scaled in revenue since then, with revenue growth outpacing downloads and driving an upward trend in Rev/DLs even as new installs have cooled post-launch. In February, it entered the top 200 grossing games on the US iOS App Store, peaking at #176, and has so far remained within that range.

Yarn Loop: Knit Puzzle is a hybrid-casual puzzler from Combo Games that has gameplay which is similar to Pixel Flow and Color Blaze Shooter. The game combines Pixel Flow mechanics with the very on-trend yarn theme, creating a combination of two of the most popular hybrid casual puzzle types.

The title has been steadily scaling in both downloads and revenue since January, breaking into the 200 Top Grossing charts in early February, and continuing its upward trajectory, peaking at Download rank 48 and Top Grossing at 106 later that month.

February’s midcore game updates

In February, Clash of Clans saw a major Season Pass rework, centred around the addition of a brand new hero, Dragon Duke. This new aerial character was introduced during a pre-release community event, along with various other hero-related events running throughout the month.

Beyond the new hero, the game has undergone a full Season Pass overhaul. The old challenge-based system has been replaced by a daily Stamp Card format featuring always-available tasks that award stamps and Season Points, with bonus points for completing full cards. Cards stack daily, reducing FOMO and allowing players to catch up. The reward tracks introduce Choice Nodes (letting players pick between rewards), hero skin selection for Gold Pass users, Gacha Chests on the free track, and a new premium perk, the Prospector, who converts ores daily. The Season Bank is replaced by the Hoggy Bank, which scales with Town Hall level and grants a 5× payout bonus for Gold Pass players at season end.

The new character, Dragon Duke, is an aerial melee-range Hero unlocked at Town Hall 15 (Hero Hall level 9). He launched alongside a pre-release community event (Unleash the Duke) and various hero-related events, such as a PvE Hero Campaign (Dragon Escape), a boost event, a themed Dragon Escape Season Pass featuring his new skin, and limited-time IAP offers.

Unleash the Duke was a global event where players with Town Hall 7 or higher could participate by collecting Dark Elixir to meet daily goals and earn rewards. The rewards were hidden behind three doors: players could choose one to claim if the daily goal was met, then progress to the next one with a new set of doors, ultimately reaching the final door with the grand reward.

The month’s new Brawl Stars community event, #Brawlentines, doubled down on the dialogue mechanic introduced earlier in the game (December’s “Who peed the pool” event), and this time framed as a dating-sim style progression event.

The entire player base was able to participate in five sequential ‘dates’ with different Brawlers, with each ‘date’ structured into two phases:

1. A 24-hour community-wide gameplay goal, which, if and when it was completed, unlocked the second phase
2. In the second phase, players go through a short text chat with the featured Brawler and ultimately vote on the final response. The community’s choice determines the Brawler’s Love Meter, which decides the reward tier earned at the end of the date.

Summoners War began its two-month-long collaboration with The Lord Of The Rings. As we’ve seen before with this game, the collaboration consists of a huge variety of events, including periodical mission events, exclusive offers, and a special collaboration character summon boost. The main highlight of the collaboration is the uniquely tailored Gandalf’s Riddle -minigames and a weekly refreshed PvE mode with themed opponents and special rewards.

Dark War: Survival featured a co-op event called Fairytale Night: Romance Ride, where players form four-person teams and progress along a shared milestone track by adding to the points they earned from the main event. As squads accumulate points, they unlock shared rewards, which all count towards the squad’s progression.

From a LiveOps perspective, the event is interesting because it introduces the partner-event format (in this case, in the form of the four-person squads), currently one of the most popular social mechanics we are seeing in casual games. For example, it was recently used by Lily’s Garden with its Pet Day Care event, and the format is now spreading into midcore games and even into the 4X strategy genre, which traditionally relies on large guild or alliance systems for its social gameplay.

Additional midcore gaming highlights and news

Last Asylum: Plague is a new 4X strategy game that was released on Feb 11. The gameplay is typical of the genre, layering a base-building and territory-expansion loop with a strong RPG hero-collection meta. What makes it slightly different is the use of an interactive, idle arcade-style game mode as the onboarding gameplay, where players directly control a character inside a sanctuary to treat patients, gather materials, and complete task-driven objectives. This hands-on layer sits on top of the traditional 4X loop, smoothing early progression and engagement before the game fully opens into standard world map gameplay.

Post-launch, revenues and downloads both ramped up quickly in week one, pushing the game into the top-grossing 200 charts after ten days. After that, downloads flattened, while revenues kept climbing, peaking at number 123 in the top-grossing chart on March 1, indicating a stronger relative monetization performance.

Rainbow Six Mobile is a major mobile IP launch for Ubisoft, and the game has generated significant early traction, amassing strong download volumes and holding the #1 position in the US iOS free rankings, while also quickly settling outside of the 200 Top Grossing chart.

From a product perspective, the game stays very close to the console and PC Rainbow Six Siege experience, with high production values, detailed environments and familiar operators and gadgets. Its slower, highly tactical gameplay stands out in the mobile FPS space, where faster, more arcade-driven experiences dominate.

That differentiation can be a strength, though the relatively complex UI and layered mechanics (gadgets, grenades, operator abilities) may make onboarding more demanding for a broader mobile audience. We’ll see in the coming months how the game performs in a very competitive genre against several well-established games.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile game market review February 2026 appeared first on GameRefinery.

We did see the addition of some interesting minigames to existing titles, including a couple of fishing-themed ones, plus a rhythm-action minigame added to the popular Marvel Contest of Champions.

​Following on from its December narrative-driven event, the memorably named ‘Who peed in the pool?’, Brawl Stars saw plenty of updates as its Steampunk-themed season 46 kicked off, and included a substantive reworking of its Brawl Pass framework and rewards. Meanwhile, titles like Zen Match and Gossip Harbor experimented with structural meta changes, reshaping how players progress and engage over the long term.

With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at how these updates played out across casual and midcore titles this month.

January’s casual game updates

Zen Match updated its meta by replacing the room-decoration system with a task-based island exploration layer. This update introduced stamina, a new currency, and gated progression, aligning the game with the adventure meta framework used in the publisher’s broader portfolio.

The new meta raises questions about its long-term fit with the game’s “zen” theme, but it didn’t seem to significantly affect downloads or revenue in January.

NYT Games launched Crossplay, a standalone Scrabble-style multiplayer word game promoted within the main NYT Games app and integrated with the existing account system. The game features asynchronous, turn-based competitive play and currently offers very limited features, with no direct monetization.

By separating Crossplay from its core daily puzzle app, NYT can experiment with social, competitive gameplay without risking disrupting the established solo experience, while still leveraging its existing audience for low-friction acquisition. The app is experiencing strong user acquisition momentum, currently ranking 3rd in the US Free charts.

Popular merge-2-puzzle game Gossip Harbor from Microfun introduced Medal Challenges, a new long-format (i.e., longer than the one month that we typically see in games) meta task event layer that reframes how players engage with Gossip Harbor’s events.

Medal Challenges offers players a grid of parallel challenges linked to both permanent gameplay objectives and rotating live events, letting players progress multiple objectives at once and choose their focus. Completing individual challenges earns medals toward overall progression, turning separate activities into a unified, long-term goal.

Challenges tied to concurrent events serve as a player-facing schedule, highlighting upcoming content and encouraging repeat logins. Medal accumulation drives all activity toward a shared Grand Prize. This shift from short task sessions to a season-style loop reinforces player anticipation and participation.

Supercell’s Hay Day launched its first guild task event, Neighborhood Nurture, where players collaborate within their neighborhood to earn collective rewards. Players complete personal tasks to contribute points, unlocking rewards as the neighborhood reaches milestones. The event introduced two new reward types: an upgradable decorative tree with multiple growth stages and the Double Product Perk, which offers a chance to produce two items instead of one.

Additional casual gaming highlights and news

Heartopia from XD Inc. is a new multiplayer life simulation/adventure game with open-world exploration, available also on PC. Players can freely explore the map, customize their characters and homes, and engage in simulation activities such as fishing, cooking, farming, bug-catching, and hugging pets. It is also a very social game, with the opportunity to co-op build with friends and engage in multiple activities together (such as taking selfies, drinking coffee, and more). 

The monetization focus lies on the cosmetic gacha economy. It had a strong start, hitting the top spot in the Download charts and 173 in the Top Grossing chart right after launch (peaking at #68 in Grossing on Feb 1st). Revenues have remained strong throughout the month, even as download volume has slightly cooled. 

January’s midcore game updates

If you ever felt that there were not enough fishing minigames included in 4X games, January was the month for you, as two popular games got a fishy addition.

• Dark War: Survival introduced its first standalone fishing tournament as part of a themed overarching event called Wilderness Fishing. The event is built around a dedicated fishing mini-game that channels directly into a battle pass progression track, a collectable album system, a competitive leaderboard, and a dedicated event shop that allows players to exchange their earned shop currency for rewards.
  • Fishing points earned from each catch let players advance through fixed battle pass tiers with both free and premium track rewards, while newly discovered fish types are permanently recorded in an aquarium-style collectables album that rewards higher-star catches and long-term completion. At the same time, total points feed into a server-wide leaderboard that tiered ranking rewards to the top fishermen. Players can upgrade their fishing rods and use different bait types to improve efficiency, depth range, and catch value, adding a light progression meta to the core loop. 

• High Seas Hero introduced the Fishing Fun event, featuring a fishing minigame, an event shop for purchasing items with event currency, customizable backgrounds, a high-score leaderboard, an event battle pass, and special offers. The event includes a pet mechanic, where a cat accompanies the player and requests specific fish. Fulfilling the cat’s requests grants additional rewards, known as Fish Tokens, which can be used in the event shop.

Marvel Contest of Champions added a rhythm game event mode, Concert of Champions, as part of the Dimensional Arcade minigames, which are designed to evoke the feel of a retro video games arcade – hence the name.

Concert of Champions is a beat-em-up rhythm game where enemies approach from the sides of the screen. Players must perform the correct actions in sequence as prompts reach the target area, similar to traditional rhythm games.

In this minigame, players can tap, long-press, or swipe up and down to defeat enemies. The challenge comes from managing the number of enemies and identifying the correct input. Failing to defeat an enemy results in damage to the player’s hit points.

In this minigame, players control Dazzler, challenging you to progress through four stages with unique enemies and aesthetics. Similar games include One Finger Death Punch, which is more visually intense but uses comparable mechanics.

Brawl Stars: Season 46: Steampunk introduced a full Brawl Pass rework. The recurring pass framework now includes a Keys + Vault system on top of the usual linear layers, shifting progression from solely fixed rewards to a more player’s choice aspect across Buffies, Seasonal Skins, Brawlers & Resources.

Keys earned from the linear track are divided into four categories, which players use in the Vault to select preferred rewards. Seasonal skin sets have doubled and are now Vault-exclusive, with no skins available from the linear track. Pass progression has expanded to 60 tiers, and additional Mega Quests have been introduced.

The rework also introduced new type of drops called Chaos Drops, which can split into multiple drops of the same rarity when opened. Following these changes, Premium pricing increased to $8.99 for BP and $12.99 for BP Plus.

Additional midcore gaming highlights and news

Arknights: Endfield is an open-world ARPG with factory-building mechanics and serves as a spinoff to the original Arknights. The game experienced a strong launch across major markets, with mobile performance tapering post-launch but maintaining high player interest on PC.

The factory building is the game’s main selling point and connects to almost every gameplay element. Players use factory building to create gear, solve open-world puzzles, build zip lines for faster travel, and construct turrets to assist in combat. Players directly alter the game world by building transmission towers, zip lines, and mining facilities, although factories can only be constructed in designated areas.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review January 2026 appeared first on GameRefinery.

Party games tend to get a boost over Christmas, as people get together and reach for games the whole group can play, sending some games up the download charts – for a week or two, at least. Examples we’ve looked at are Imposter Game – Fakeit and Charades – Family & Party Game. But what about a mobile game that requires a real-life bow and arrow set in order to work? That’s exactly what you get with AccuBow, a game that’s not new, but which gets a big Christmas boost every year.

Another trend we saw in December involved a certain bespectacled wand-waverer; yes, we’re talking about Harry Potter. Such an incredibly successful IP is a surefire winner when used for tie-ins and seasonal content, and Monopoly GO!, Fortnite, and Rocket League all saw comprehensive collaborations over the holiday season.

Finally, as a post-Christmas treat, the GameRefinery team reached deep into their Christmas wishlists and has shared some of the key gaming trends they think will be big in 2026. We’re talking UGC, Hybrid Casual, and more China-based publishers launching successful games beyond the puzzle and 4X categories they have traditionally been strong in.

December’s Casual Game Updates

Match Masters’ December update added a new twist to the puzzle playbook: Booster Power-Ups. This new mechanic lets players increase the power of a single booster for one match or level by using a new currency called Energy. Beyond the gameplay impact, Energy effectively creates an additional monetization layer, giving players a new way to pay for incremental power.

Not every booster is eligible. The roster of power-ups is limited and rotates monthly, which helps keep the system fresh and engaging. Players can acquire Energy via in-app purchases, event rewards, and the webstore. The update introduced two new events: Booster Run PvE mode, offering free use of boosters, and Stamp It!, a monetization event.

Umbrella events that connect together the different permanent gameplay systems (for example, meta progression) with concurrent live events are nothing new. Seasonal collectible albums have leveraged this kind of player motivation for years, and typically over longer ‘season’ cycles that can last 2-3 months.

More recently, the same motivation has been applied to short-term formats, most notably multi-phased umbrella task events (i.e., a player needs to complete a task that has multiple steps in order to get the reward or achievement). These kinds of events are becoming more widespread across the casual market, appearing in titles such as Royal Match, Coin Master, Gossip Harbor, and Match Factory, and this month, we saw Toon Blast and Royal Kingdom also include them.

Additional Casual Gaming Highlights and News

Fans of the interactive story genre were given a treat in December, with the most exciting launch in quite a while, thanks to Episode Interactive, which released its first new interactive story title in years: Episode: Reality Stars.

The game quickly gained momentum, climbing as high as #35 in Downloads and #79 in Grossing, and it’s currently holding steady at #90 Grossing in the US. That’s a standout performance; these metrics mean it’s significantly outperforming the original Episode game and is now competing for the top-grossing interactive story position in the US, going head-to-head with Love and Deepspace.

A big driver of this improved performance is how modern the new game feels. Reality Stars isn’t just a library of stories—it has real meta progression and engagement/gamification systems layered on top, making it feel closer to a full-fledged game than a story app. That matters more than ever, as traditional interactive story titles face growing pressure from mini-drama apps like ReelShort.

Because the holidays are a time for friends and family to gather together, party games see a spike in performance during December. Sometimes there will also be a surge in downloads for certain games that are linked to Christmas presents, and this year this was definitely the case. Some of this year’s highlights were:

• Imposter Game – Fakeit: This is an asymmetric party game played on a single device. All players except one get to see a word that everyone then tries to talk about. After the discussion comes a voting period during which people try to guess who the imposter is. The game was launched in August 2025 and experienced significant growth during December, likely due to social media virality and the holiday season. The game peaked at #9 in the Download charts and #174 in Grossing.

• Charades – Family & Party Game: In this game, one player places the phone on their forehead with a word, and others then give hints for it. The player with the phone tries to guess the word. The game briefly entered the top #200 Grossing at the end of December.

• AccuBow: This is an archery game that is designed to only work with a dedicated peripheral, the AccuBow. The user mounts the mobile on their AccuBow, and can aim at virtual targets and animals with the app acting as a virtual viewfinder (there is also a dedicated VR version of the bow for the Meta Quest). The game was originally released back in January 2019 and since then has seen a big download spike every December 26th as people are given the AccuBow as a Christmas present, unwrap it, and download the app. This year, the game peaked at #73 in Downloads and #138 in Grossing. This year was also the first time the game reached the top-grossing #200.

December’s Midcore Game Updates

The annual Harry Potter movie marathon graced the screens of many people this Holiday season. As well as giving us plenty of hours of movie entertainment, the Wizarding World seemed to be a popular source of collaboration in live service games on different platforms and genres. Here are a few that caught our attention:

Monopoly GO!

• At the seasonal reset, Monopoly GO! launched Harry Potter GO!, a full-fat IP collaboration that functioned as an overarching theme across the month’s live-ops rotation (e.g., the Seasonal Collectibles Album, Partner Race events such as Quidditch and Hogwarts, themed minigames including Treasures and Drop iterations, alongside milestone events and offers)
  • There was also the notable addition of Chocolate Frogs! These were a collaboration-exclusive bonus drop mechanic tied to the Seasonal Collectibles system. Chocolate Frogs could randomly drop from any Sticker Pack, guaranteeing a sticker from the Famous Witches & Wizards set (the highest level set consisting only of 5-Star stickers) and adding an extra reward chase layer on top of the standard album collection.

Fortnite

• Fortnite held its annual Christmas and holiday season event, “Winterfest,” which brought a variety of seasonal events, including themed Battle Royale map alterations, additional XP quests, Winterfest-themed cosmetic offers, and the annual Winterfest Presents -login event, which this year included a special collaboration with the Harry Potter franchise. On top of the revamped Winterfest Presents event cabin, the collaboration also offered players a chance to purchase themed outfits and other Wizarding cosmetics.

Rocket League

• In December, Rocket League introduced a new live event called Wizarding World (Harry Potter) x Rocket League. Part of this was the Hogwarts House Rivalry, a ‘’faction-based’’ competition where players chose from one of the four Hogwarts Houses by equipping themed player titles (e.g., Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin). By playing matches during the seasonal event, players contributed their scores towards the total score of their chosen House.

For PC gamers with time on their hands over Christmas, the Harry Potter: Hogwarts Legacy was also claimable for FREE in the Epic Games Store in the run up to Christmas Day.

The popular mobile FPS Call of Duty: Mobile introduced the game’s first-ever extraction shooter mode, DMZ: Recon, inspired by the DMZ mode from the console/PC game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II. It’s a Player vs. Player vs. Environment mode where players face both hostile AI forces and other players. During each deployment, players explore the map, engage in combat against enemies, complete objectives, and gather loot. Any items collected are only kept if the player successfully extracts before the match ends.

DMZ: Recon operates in a seasonal format, offering ranked progression, seasonal collectibles, and various missions to work toward. Permanent progression systems include Talents and Trust Level, which allow players to shape their playstyle and unlock additional services and higher-tier equipment in the Black Market.

Supercell’s hugely popular title Brawl Stars introduced an interesting narrative-driven task event: Who Peed in the Pool? In a creative and quirky addition to the popular mobile game, players were prompted to interrogate different Brawler ‘suspects’ through dialogue choices. Having spoken to their suspects, the player votes for who they think is the real culprit, and on the final day of the event, everyone who had voted earned a free Pierce Box

A set of 3 Brawler suspects ready for questioning was unlocked daily. Some could be re-interrogated, and some even offered players additional rewards as bribes based on dialogue choices made. At the end of the event, players were not actually revealed the right choice, but instead left to speculate – perhaps setting the story up for subsequent installments? Additionally, the event managed to spark community speculation around the true culprit on sites like Reddit, with fans discussing clues hidden in the dialogue choices and supporting videos released on Brawl Stars’ social channels.

Even though Supercell has looked to develop an ongoing narrative around the game through video clips and themed seasons, this appears to be a rare example of a dialogue narrative being included directly as an interactive gameplay mechanic. Even for Brawl Stars (the studio’s most narrative-driven title), this represents a completely new kind of event. ​​Running concurrently with the New Brawler Unlock Event for Pierce, it also functioned as an extra narrative layer around his introduction, providing background context, motivations, and story framing through the in-game dialogue and supporting videos.

Additional Midcore Gaming Highlights and News

Where Winds Meet is NetEase’s newest high-production-value Wuxia ARPG/MMORPG to reach Western gamers, featuring a vast open world and a cosmetics-driven economy. The game has already launched in China, where it delivered solid performance.

The game expanded to PC as a cross-platform global release in November, including a launch on Steam. On PC, it achieved impressive traction, peaking at around 250K concurrent users. While the number of active players has gradually declined, the game continues to retain a strong baseline of approximately 80K daily concurrent users.

On mobile, the game launched globally on December 10, quickly climbing the download charts and peaking at #61 in Grossing. However, mobile performance appears more “shark-fin” shaped: the game declined rapidly down the Download rankings and has already fallen outside the top #200 in Grossing.

Foundation: Galactic Frontier is FunPlus’s new sci-fi 4X Strategy title set within Isaac Asimov’s Foundation universe as presented in the ongoing big-budget Apple TV series. The game blends traditional base building with an interstellar world map, an RPG character collection meta, and interactive adventure-style PvE levels. Notably, the game also features a sci-fi theme and art style, which have not seen a lot of previous success within the 4X mobile space.

The game demonstrated immediate market traction, hitting Download Rank 1 shortly after its October 20 launch. While download numbers have since cooled, revenue has trended upward, establishing the title as a steady #200 top-grossing performer with a brief peak in the top 100 during early December. This success stands in contrast to the declines in FunPlus’s legacy portfolio, such as State of Survival and Sea of Conquest. Alongside the scaling of Tiles Survive, Foundation represents FunPlus’s latest effort to recapture market share by embracing the hybrid-casualization trend in 4X titles.

2026 Trend Predictions

As the dust settles on 2025, we’ve also taken a step back to consider what might shape the mobile games market in the year ahead. Below, our analysts highlight a few key trends and shifts they expect to define 2026.

1. UGC continues to accelerate across major platforms

2025 was a breakout year for user-generated content (UGC) platforms, with multiple ecosystem players demonstrating that UGC is no longer a niche layer, but a core growth engine.

Roblox continued its strong momentum, growing its player base throughout the year and surpassing 100M+ DAU by year-end. Notably, some of the largest “games” of the year by player count were not standalone titles, but Roblox experiences such as Grow a Garden and Steal a Brainrot—underscoring how creator-led content can now rival traditional game launches in scale.

Fortnite’s UGC ecosystem (UEFN) also had a defining year: UEFN versions of Steal a Brainrot at times exceeded the concurrent player counts of Epic’s official modes, including Battle Royale.

Epic Games announced plans to let creators implement direct IAP monetization, moving beyond purely engagement-based payouts. This marks a major shift toward better incentives and greater creative and commercial flexibility for developers building within UEFN.

Meta expanded its UGC platform, Horizon, from a VR-only environment to mobile. This move strongly signals Meta’s intent to compete for share in the rapidly growing UGC market, a push that is likely to intensify going forward.

Looking ahead, GTA 6 is widely expected to launch next year, with heavy speculation around the direction of the next-generation GTA Online.

Player-driven servers and emergent content have been among the strongest long-term engagement drivers in GTA 5 Online, giving Rockstar clear incentives to more directly and formally support UGC in the next installment.

Taken together, these developments suggest that UGC will remain one of the fastest-growing and most strategically important trends in games for 2026.

2. Hybrid-casual puzzles are driving the next wave of growth

The puzzle genre remains the largest category in the Western mobile market. However, established subgenres, most notably Match3, have become intensely saturated, making meaningful break-in increasingly difficult.

Innovation is instead shifting toward hybrid-casual puzzle games: titles built around simple, hyper-casual–style puzzle cores, layered with IAP-driven systems and live ops, while still leveraging ad monetization.

In 2025, we’ve already seen multiple breakout hits across different puzzle core types using this same hybrid-casual playbook, successfully bringing new blood into the category. 

Notably, all of the following titles have scaled into the top 50 grossing games this year:

• Color Block Jam
• Pixel Flow
• Screwdom
• Magic Sort
• All in Hole

What stands out is that each game listed above is built on a distinct puzzle core, yet all follow the same underlying hybrid-casual strategy.

Looking ahead, 2026 is very likely to continue this trajectory, with even more novel puzzle mechanics scaling to the top of the market by applying the same hybrid-casual puzzle playbook.

3. China-based companies continue to expand beyond traditional strongholds in the Western market

For years, Chinese mobile game companies have dominated genres such as 4X strategy and shooters. However, many casual subgenres have historically proven harder for them to penetrate, particularly in Western markets.

That dynamic shifted noticeably in 2025. We saw a growing number of China-originated games breaking out in casual categories, signalling a broader expansion of Chinese developers’ genre mastery.

One of the clearest examples is Merge-2, a subgenre originally popularized globally by Finland’s Metacore with Merge Mansion. In 2025, the category became increasingly led by Chinese studios:

• Microfun (Gossip Harbor, Seaside Escape)
• Century Games (Tasty Travels)
• Happibits (Merge Cooking)

Beyond Merge-2, Century Games also made meaningful inroads into e.g. the fiercely competitive Match3 space with Truck Star, notably targeting a more male-skewing audience.

Toward the end of the year, new Chinese entrants also began scaling in the casual casino segment, a space long dominated by Monopoly GO! and Coin Master. Titles such as Top Tycoon and Carnival Tycoon combined idle/tycoon mechanics with the deep monetization systems typical of casual casino games, allowing them to reach the top 100 grossing apps in the US.

Looking ahead, 2026 is likely to see even more China-originated titles scaling to the top of the charts, including in casual subgenres that have not traditionally been considered “China-dominated” beyond staples like 4X.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review December 2025 appeared first on GameRefinery.

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– If you enjoy the episode, remember to hit subscribe!

This episode tackles the major challenges facing developers today, including the rise of web stores and the strategic use of live events, as well as how player motivations and audience understanding can lead to mobile success.

You can also watch the episode on YouTube:

If the YouTube video isn’t displaying, you can watch it by clicking here.

Topics we will cover in this episode:

1. Introduction
2. Why do all games look the same? Hybridization explained
3. Audience understanding and market timing
4. Direct-to-Consumer, web stores, and the future of monetization
5. Knowing your players: motivation, CRM, and evolving audiences
6. AI’s expanding role in creatives, UA, and LiveOps
7. Social currency, sharing, and cross-platform player behavior
8. LiveOps, regulation, and the complexity of modern game development
9. The power of audience insights, regional nuance, and IP activation
10. Closing thoughts and where to learn more

The post Episode 67: Relearning the Rules – Player Motivations and Understanding Audiences with Carlos Salvado appeared first on GameRefinery.

In casual gaming, new gameplay modes and hybrid mechanics took center stage. Design Home added a recurring Match-3 minigame for the first time, creating a fresh loop in the title. Pixel Flow and Solitaire Associations Journey offered novel spins on familiar genres, while Top Tycoon showcased how idle titles are now evolving monetization through deeper casual casino-style progression systems. Merge-2 mechanics also continued to expand outside their traditional genre boundaries, appearing as secondary modes in games like Coin Master and Royal Match.

Midcore titles saw impactful updates, too. Clash of Clans introduced Town Hall level 18 with a new Guardian mechanic and narrative-driven events, generating notable revenue gains. Meanwhile, MapleStory: Idle RPG maintained a strong top 50 grossing position thanks to its hybrid of idle automation and social MMORPG elements. In China, Abandoned Land offered a standout tower defense–RPG blend with a unique folk-horror aesthetic, while X-Clash: Survival Challenge continued to climb the charts by combining 4X systems with casual-friendly visuals and minigames.

From large-scale collaborations to meaningful tweaks in monetization and mechanics, November demonstrated how mobile game developers are using familiar systems in new ways to expand reach and retain player interest.

Read on for the full breakdown of this month’s market activity.

November’s Casual Game Updates

There was a big IP collaboration in November, in the form of June’s Journey: Wicked Mystery, timed to coincide with the global cinema release of Wicked: For Good, the second and final instalment of the hit Disney IP.

The collaboration is built around the storyline and characters from Wicked, and is running across multiple months with a whole host of timed in-game events and time-limited collectables, all with a link to the brand and the events in the movie.

In-game events that will be familiar to loyal June’s Journey players (Daily Mission Track, Club Mysteries, Sweep the Board, Secrets Event, Minigames) have been reworked with Wicked-themed decorations and Grand Prizes. There is also a Seasonal Collectables Album (Memoir event: Welcome to Oz) with famous Wicked scenes as collections, collectable stories with a Wicked theme, and  an Emerald City Beautification reward – this is one of several themed decoration awards dedicated players can achieve.

The whole look of the game has been given a Wicked theme, with reskins of UI elements including loading screens, island frames, and event windows. There’s even a Wicked makeover for the game soundtrack, with passages from the movie music added to the game, including the big theme song ‘Defying Gravity’ (a song with 38 million YouTube views and counting.

To bring the whole collaboration together, the social media channels for the game have been engaging the community with a whole host of promotions, information about all the events, and the special in-game decoration rewards.

It’s clear that Wooga, the developer and publisher of June’s Journey, has put considerable effort into the collaboration, which was always going to be one of the last big movie IPs of 2026. However, for a seasonal campaign of this scale, we feel that the LiveOps execution feels underwhelming. Although the whole Wicked theme has been supported with strong marketing support and visual treatment, the in-game experience has relied almost entirely on cosmetic reskins and themed decorations, without introducing new mechanics or meaningful system-level changes.

On a positive note, the Wicked collaboration felt like a strong thematic fit for June’s Journey, since both lean heavily on narrative, mystery, and character-driven storytelling. It will be interesting to see how successful the tie-in ends up being for Wooga and whether it will lead to similar big-IP collaborations for the game in the future.

Another game that caught our eye in November was EA’s Design Home, which introduced its first minigame, Match Event, a recurring match-3 mode with a dedicated reward track.

Adding a minigame offers something new to players, as historically the game has been dominated by IAP bundles, and new gameplay modes are rarely added.

The new Match Event is a weekly recurring two-day-long Match-3 game mode that carries progress over from iteration to iteration. The Reward Track is updated every week, giving players the incentive to return to each new iteration. To get the rewards, players need to collect green board pieces, obtained by playing matches. Gameplay-wise, it uses familiar match-3 mechanics, without anything new or innovative.

Rewards contain items both for the core game (furniture items and currency) and for this specific event (boosters and event currency). The mode also features its own energy and currency system, and both can be acquired through IAP or ads, as well as event currency through successfully clearing stages in the minigame. The energy recharges surprisingly slowly, giving players one life per two hours, capped at 3 lives. This pushes players to watch ads or spend money to keep playing once they have exhausted the initial lives they are given.

Additional Casual Gaming Highlights and News

Solitaire Associations Journey from Hitapps Games combines the classic mechanics of solitaire with word puzzles. The game launched in September 2025 and quickly found success, maintaining the #1 rank in the download charts for that month. By late November, it had achieved a high point on the revenue charts, peaking at #93 in the top-grossing chart.

The game design feels heavily focused around the core gameplay, and doesn’t show any signs of complex meta-layers that might keep players more engaged over the long term. Monetization is a combination of ads and basic IAPs. It seems that by combining the intuitive physics of solitaire with the mental satisfaction of word puzzles, the game has successfully created a “novelty within familiarity” hook.

Pixel Flow is a hybrid casual puzzle game that introduces a twist on existing gameplay ideas. Its revenues have been rising in tandem with downloads throughout October, and have continued this growth in November, peaking at #51 in the top-grossing games chart.

In the game, you place guns that are shaped as pigs onto a conveyor belt, in order for them to shoot at the central image. They can only shoot at the same colour of puzzle pieces that match the colour of the pig, and once the number (the amount of ammunition the gun has) on top of the pig gun goes to zero, the gun disappears. After circling the image, the pig gun goes into a reserve spot if there are shots left.  Players aim to clear the whole picture without running out of reserve spots.

Top Tycoon: Coin Theme Empire is an idle game from publisher BeHeFun that has similar gameplay to Carnival Tycoon. Since launch, the game has continued to grow, finally breaking into the top 100 grossing games, peaking at #88.

Previously, we’ve seen a pattern of success with games that combine low-CPI casual gameplay (to drive installs) with the depth and monetization frameworks of 4X games.

A similar design philosophy now appears to be emerging in the casual casino space: pairing low-CPI casual gameplay with the monetization and progression depth of casual casino titles. Carnival Tycoon is an early proof point—scaling into the top 60 by blending idler mechanics with casual casino monetization. Now, Top Tycoon is following the same principles and is rapidly climbing toward the top charts as well.

Merge-2 remains one of the hottest subgenres in the casual market, fueled by the massive growth of titles like Gossip Harbor and Seaside Escape from Microfun, as well as Century Games’ ongoing success with Tasty Travels.

Recently, merge-2 mechanics have begun to appear outside its traditional genre boundaries—showing up as a side minigame in casual titles with completely different core gameplay loops. This suggests developers are increasingly using Merge-2 as an auxiliary system to deepen retention and diversify progression.

In the past few months alone, we’ve seen Merge-2 modes appear in top casual titles such as:

• Coin Master (November)
• Royal Match (November)
• Project Makeover (October)
• Phase 10 (October)

November’s Midcore Game Updates

Clash of Clans has added a new Town Hall level 18, which introduced a unique new defence mechanic that has delivered a big revenue spike and its own co-op event.

​Clash of Clans closed out 2025 with the launch of Town Hall level 18, which brought an array of new content to the game. Highlights included Guardians, a switchable Town Hall 18 defence that can be set to Smasher or Longshot, along with new defences, a new troop, a new spell, and higher upgrade levels across the base. As with past Town Hall updates, the launch of level 18 drove a noticeable uptick in Clash of Clans’ daily revenue.

Before Town Hall level 18 went live, Clash of Clans also ran a community-driven The End of Clash event, and a unique narrative-focused Meteor Observer event presented through comic-style panels that unlocked over time. This LiveOps approach focused on building hype, momentum, storytelling, and community anticipation rather than maximizing the value of any single player’s task completion.

Mobile Legends Bang Bang, from SkyStone Games, introduced a new Undersea Restaurant, thanks to a collaboration with SpongeBob Squarepants. It is a restaurant-management minigame where players cook dishes, serve customers, and upgrade their restaurant.

What makes this event unique is its blend of restaurant management gameplay with the existing Mobile Legends branding, bringing familiar SpongeBob characters, dishes, and visuals into a casual, progression-based mini-event. Players aim to upgrade their restaurant, achieve milestones, and collect special collaboration cosmetics and bonuses.

Additional Midcore Gaming Highlights and News

MapleStory: Idle RPG is the latest RPG success story in the US. This Idle RPG x MMORPG hybrid game was released on November 5th, and after reaching #50 in the top-grossing chart on November 9th, it has remained in the top 50 since.

The theme of the game closely mirrors the original MapleStory IP, carrying over the nostalgic appeal of the original online game to mobile. The idle gameplay is automated by default, but players can take manual control during key gameplay moments such as progression stages, boss battles, and co-op Party Quests. With the core grinding automated, players are able to spend more time engaging in activities like world chat or browsing the in-game shop.

Early in-app purchase (IAP) offers provide high value at lower price points, which may encourage early payer conversion. One notable offer is the ability to remove all in-game ads for a full year for $5. A significant portion of the game’s upgrade systems are randomized, requiring players to rely on chance to obtain desired builds. Cosmetic monetization also includes a random element—such as hairstyles being drawn from a pool of six—meaning premium items aren’t simply acquired through direct purchase, which may appeal to players seeking a more balanced experience.

​For a more detailed breakdown of the game’s mechanics and performance, refer to the full analysis available through the GameRefinery service.

Abandoned Land (遗弃之地) is a new Tower Defense RPG game from Hortor, a publisher that has already had a couple of successful titles in Fat Goose Gym (肥鹅健身房), a merge-2 game,  and Idle Fish Kingdoms (咸鱼之王), an idle RPG.

As the company has already proven itself successful at creating casual RPG games, launching a Tower Defense RPG makes a lot of sense. The game has a distinctive art style and an unusual Chinese folk horror theme. The player fights against various enemies with the regular tower defense mechanic combined with skill cards. During gameplay, these skill cards need a cooling-off time before they are available for the player to attack enemies with. This kind of gameplay combination and the interesting theme make the game a unique entry for the Chinese market. The game has hit sustained download rank 3 and sustained grossing rank 99.  

X-Clash: Survival Challenge is a casual-style 4X game with minigames for UA and onboarding. It continues to scale its revenues despite a drop in downloads in November, when the game managed to break into the top 50 grossing chart for the first time.

This hybrid strategy game layers RPG-style hero collection and minigame modes on top of base building and 4X mechanics. It simplifies some traditional 4X systems whilst using cartoony visuals that can appeal to more casual audiences.

The post Analyst Bulletin: Mobile Game Market Review November 2025 appeared first on GameRefinery.