Attack Hole gains popularity again, black hole games bring surging downloads and ad creatives

With the aid of its App Intelligence and other modules, SocialPeta sorted out the top 20 global mobile games by advertising, revenue, and download in January 2023, hoping to be of assistance to more people in the mobile app industry who try to understand the changing trends of global mobile market.

The overall performance of global mobile games in January:

•  [Attack Hole] saw soaring downloads, making black hole mini-games popular;
• SpringGame targeted the South Korean market again, advertising its [이모탈 소울] mainly with "a back view";
• Newly released cards were extremely ugly, but brought a 40% growth of revenue for FGO;
•  With its first TV ad, [Royal Match] recorded a revenue growth of 200%.

Top 20 by Advertising

Media Buying Keyword: Mini Game

Panoramik Games made a brilliant move with black hole mini-games for advertising [Mighty Party]. The game released a lot of black hole creatives and its video creatives resembled the hit game [Attack Hole]. According to SocialPeta - Advertiser Analysis, [Mighty Party] released 2900 deduplicated creatives in January to remain No.2 on the iOS advertising chart. More information is provided below:

• As for its advertising platforms, casual, casino, and music media platforms were among the top 3;
• Main regions of advertising were Portugal, Romania, France;
• Video accounted for 100% of its creatives released in the last 30 days;
• Popular mini-games including: black hole games, stickman climbing tower, drawing line, policeman & thief.

In addition to more creatives about black holes, [Mighty Party] also released creatives about other modes including "policeman & thief", "stickman climbing tower".

Media Buying Keyword: Back View

After the surprising release of [엑자일: 어벤징 파이어] in South Korea in August, SpringGame made a new move. In January, [이모탈 소울] newly ranked No.3 on the iOS advertising chart with its 2200 deduplicated creatives. According to SocialPeta - Advertiser Analysis, [이모탈 소울] released creatives as the following:

• As for its advertising platforms, arcade, simulation, and puzzle media platforms were among the top 3;
• Most of the creatives were video and image, and image creatives accounted for over 53%;
• [이모탈 소울] preferred to use numbers in its ad copies, such as "5-year R&D, 6 major classes, 48 class changes".

[이모탈 소울]'s recent creatives were characterized by different class quest backgrounds and the corresponding map changes. The rich and exquisite in-game scenes proved the game to be highly expressive, and all the back views stimulated players' desire to download the game.

Except for MMO, card battle, and other mid-core and hard-core games that made strong media buying, casual puzzle game advertisers also spent much in media buying. For example, Rollic's hyper-casual game [Crowd Evolution!] had about 7000 deduplicated creatives in total in January. [Two Dots], [Braindom] and other puzzle games also remained on the advertising chart with stable creatives.

Top 20 by Revenue

Games with surging revenue on the App Store in January:

• Thanks to the Chinese New Year Spring Festival and [Mobile Legends: Bang Bang] M4 World Championship, [MLBB] recorded revenue growth of 187.4% MoM in January.
• [ウマ娘 プリティーダービー] started to expand its product matrix. In January, the game announced a stage drama, a game event, named Racing Carnival, and recorded a revenue increase of 131.5% MoM.
• The well-known match-3 game [Royal Match] released its first TV ad on 23 December, which brought the game an enormous amount of exposure, and helped [Royal Match] get a nearly 200% revenue growth MoM in January.

Games with excellent revenue on Google Play in January:

• Popular for 10 years, [モンスターストライク] had collaborations with Gundam Series, and thanks to the sharing of the related news and live-streaming sales on Twitter, YouTube, and other social media, the game reported revenue growth of 77.9% MoM.
• The new year events and ugly characters were released, catching players' attention with the startling contrast in appearance. However, the lousy card stimulated players' desire to spend money (the ugly card showed how beautiful the other cards were), leading to a 40% MoM growth of [Fate/Grand Order]'s revenue in January.
• In January, the new popular anime-style game [NIKKE] had regular updates and character banner updates to record a stable revenue, with a revenue growth of 6% MoM.

Top 20 by Download

According to the January downloads of global mobile games, games outstanding with downloads on the App Store in January:

• There was a boom of party games. [Stumble Guys]'s and [Among Us!]'s downloads increased by 187% and 190% MoM in January, respectively.
• [Free Fire] launched a few events including the Spring Festival celebration, live-streaming and metaverse streaming, and IP collaboration with [Devil May Cry], increasing its downloads by 227.8% MoM in January.
• Playrix had three games on the chart at the same time. They were [Gardenscapes], [Township], [Homescapes], all their downloads increasing by over 150% MoM in January.

Games outstanding with downloads on Google Play in January:

• ABI's makeup simulation game [Makeover & Makeup ASMR] provides excellent visual and aural effects with its true and delicate makeup methods and extra ASMR elements. Thanks to the acute wound debridement, maggots wriggling and ad creatives, [Makeover & Makeup ASMR] stood out from the crowd of makeup simulation games. According to SocialPeta App Analysis, the Brazilian market contributed 3.10 million downloads.
• Homa's hyper-casual game [Attack Hole] copied and improved the classic mode "black hole games", to remain on the American free game chart for days. It also inspired the mini-game creatives of many mid-core and hard-core games. The game recorded over 10 million downloads in January.
• Supersonic's puzzle casual game [Emoji Puzzle] combined the traditional link game and the enduring emoji culture. It offered the real-time tracing of social media hot news through rapid updates. According to SocialPeta App Analysis, [Emoji Puzzle] updated 3 times in January, and recorded a 145.5% growth MoM in downloads.