April 2025 Global Mobile Game Rankings: Delta Force, Honkai: Star Rail & More

SocialPeta reviewed the top 20 global mobile games by advertising, revenue, and downloads in April 2025 to help mobile game developers, publishers, and marketers understand changing trends across the global mobile market.

Several titles stood out across advertising, monetization, and user acquisition during the month:

• Honkai: Star Rail celebrated its second anniversary in April, with a surge in revenue propelling it back into the top 10 grossing chart.
• Delta Force ramped up its marketing efforts following its April launch, entering the top rankings on both Android and iOS.
• Habby's new title Wittle Defender ran an aggressive pre-registration campaign and made a surprise entry into the top 20 mobile game advertising ranking.
• Casual games continued to drive both volume and monetization, with Rollic's puzzle game Color Block Jam maintaining steady revenue growth during April.

April's advertising rankings show a mixture of established casual titles, puzzle games, strategy games, and aggressively promoted new releases. Delta Force entered both the iOS and Android advertising charts, while Wittle Defender reached the iOS top 20 before its expected App Store launch.

Level Infinite's FPS Enters the Top Advertising Rankings

As one of April's most prominent new mobile games, Delta Force reflects Level Infinite's substantial investment in creative production and global promotion.

At a time when the FPS market is crowded with similar products, the game drew attention with its "search, engage, and extract" gameplay. Compared with genre pioneer Escape from Tarkov, Delta Force positions itself as a more accessible experience for newcomers while offering a relatively stable online experience.

The title also revives the established Delta Force IP and incorporates elements associated with the classic war film Black Hawk Down. In addition to its extraction-style mode, the game includes a large-scale battlefield mode that broadened its appeal among global FPS players.

25 Million Pre-Registrations Ahead of the Global Launch

Delta Force officially launched globally on April 22. Before release, the game had accumulated more than 25 million global pre-registrations.

Supported by the popularity of its PC version and a large-scale mobile marketing campaign, the title quickly climbed to the top of free-game charts in 169 countries and regions after launch.

Nearly 20,000 Deduplicated Ad Creatives in April

According to SocialPeta, Delta Force and its globally licensed version, Garena Delta Force, collectively released nearly 20,000 deduplicated ad creatives across iOS and Android in April.

SocialPeta's iOS advertising analysis highlighted several characteristics of the campaign:

• Approximately 62.55% of creatives observed during the 30-day period were videos, and more than half of the videos exceeded 30 seconds.
• Vertical 720 × 1280 was the dominant video resolution, accounting for roughly 60% of the total.
• Daily creative volume increased steadily ahead of release and peaked on April 22, the launch date, before maintaining relatively consistent delivery through the end of the month.
• English-language copy represented approximately 43% of ad text. Korean, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, and German were also among the frequently used languages.
• Ad copy mainly emphasized the Delta Force IP, FPS gameplay, and its large-scale battlefield mode.

In terms of creative concepts, Delta Force primarily used gameplay demonstrations, battlefield-detail showcases, weapon customization, and combat kill highlights.

Kill-highlight compilations depicting realistic combat scenarios appeared especially frequently. Combined with rhythmic background music, these fast-moving videos were designed to attract attention while communicating the intensity of the gameplay.

Roguelike Tower Defense Meets Card Strategy

Following titles including Archero 2 and Capybara Go!, Habby returned with a new title entering global testing: Wittle Defender.

The game combines roguelike progression, tower-defense mechanics, and card-based strategy. Its basic structure is relatively simple, but the game focuses heavily on progression and the satisfaction of rapidly increasing combat power.

Heroes function directly as defensive towers while waves of enemies approach from multiple directions, creating a siege-style combat experience.

At the time of the original article, Wittle Defender was expected to launch on the App Store on June 12. Despite still being in its pre-launch phase during April, the title had already entered the iOS Top 20 Mobile Game Advertising ranking as a result of its aggressive marketing campaign.

Around 7,700 Deduplicated Creatives Across iOS and Android

According to SocialPeta, Wittle Defender ran approximately 7,700 deduplicated creatives across iOS and Android during April.

Its iOS creative distribution showed a strong preference for video:

• Image creatives represented only about 10.78% of total creatives, with square 800 × 800 images making up much of the image inventory.
• Video creatives accounted for nearly 90% of total creatives, and approximately 87.8% of those videos were longer than 15 seconds.
• Vertical 720 × 1280 was the most common video resolution, accounting for approximately 38.09% of video creatives.
• The game began advertising on March 7. Creative volume increased gradually after April 15 before a larger user-acquisition push at the end of April.
• English represented around 61.4% of advertising copy, followed by Traditional Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese, and Japanese.

Wittle Defender's videos largely focused on the game's upgrade and evolution loop. Different hero combinations and skill effects were shown at multiple stages of progression, creating a sharp contrast between early-game weakness and the stronger late-game state.

Its image creatives primarily used cartoon-style promotional artwork featuring characters and visual elements from the game.

April's revenue rankings continued to show strong monetization from established strategy, casual, match-3, and live-service games, while Honkai: Star Rail returned to the App Store top 10 following its second-anniversary activity.

App Store Revenue Highlights

• Boosted by its second-anniversary celebration, miHoYo's turn-based anime RPG Honkai: Star Rail generated more than $27 million in App Store revenue during April, representing an approximately 145.5% month-over-month increase.
• Supported by continued seasonal updates, Supercell's long-running strategy title Clash Royale generated more than $13 million on the App Store, up approximately 18.2% month over month.
• Casual games also maintained strong monetization momentum. Rollic's Color Block Jam exceeded $11 million in App Store revenue, with month-over-month growth of roughly 10%.

Google Play Revenue Highlights

• SLG title Last War maintained the top position on Google Play's revenue chart, generating approximately $50 million in April and growing about 6.8% month over month.
• Match-3 titles continued to generate steady revenue. Royal Match and Candy Crush Saga each recorded around $36 million in single-platform revenue, ranking fourth and fifth, respectively.
• The female-oriented anime merge game Gossip Harbor also performed strongly, reaching approximately $16 million in Google Play revenue, up around 6.7% month over month.

The April download rankings highlighted strong performance from block puzzles, casual games, established evergreen titles, and several newly launched products.

App Store Download Highlights

• Block puzzle title Qblock recorded approximately 2 million App Store downloads in April. Players in the United States represented about 17.5% of downloads.
• Newly launched Disney-themed card game Disney Solitaire became a global hit during its launch month, reaching around 2 million App Store downloads. U.S. users accounted for approximately 28% of downloads.
• Royal Match sequel Royal Kingdom also reached roughly 2 million App Store downloads, with players in India contributing approximately 32%.

Google Play Download Highlights

• Capybara-themed cooking game Cookingdom, which launched in March, quickly gained momentum and recorded more than 7 million Google Play downloads in April. Brazilian users contributed approximately 9%.
• Brain-teasing puzzle title Brainy Prankster recorded more than 11 million Google Play downloads during April, with users in the United Kingdom accounting for around 10%.

1. Major launches can rapidly reshape advertising rankings. Delta Force used substantial pre-launch and launch-day creative volume to establish visibility across both iOS and Android.
2. Pre-registration periods can become major UA campaigns. Wittle Defender reached the iOS advertising top 20 before its expected release, demonstrating how publishers can build demand well ahead of launch.
3. Live-service events remain powerful monetization drivers. Honkai: Star Rail's second anniversary coincided with a sharp increase in April App Store revenue.
4. Casual and puzzle games continue to combine scale with durable monetization. Titles including Color Block Jam, Royal Match, Candy Crush Saga, Qblock, Cookingdom, and Brainy Prankster appeared across the revenue and download highlights.

Together, April's advertising, revenue, and download rankings show how creative scale, launch timing, live operations, and accessible gameplay can influence different parts of mobile game performance.

Marketers can also explore SocialPeta's global mobile game rankings and top grossing mobile games pages for additional ranking and market intelligence workflows.