The first quarter of the year 2022 is over, and traditionally it is time to look at the changes in the most dynamic segment of mobile games: the hyper-casual. AppMagic provided us with its report about the genre’s Q1.
Keeping in mind the numbers from their earlier article on the fourth quarter of 2021, we should note that the market reached 4.58В of cumulative downloads and grew by 13.5% compared to the previous period. The market has shrunk a notch in the new year, gaining 4.2B of total downloads over the winter months and, thus, losing 8.3% of its size.
Let’s analyze the market in more detail and look at the new titles that found their spots in top 10 games by downloads chart.
Half of these top 10 games are titles that have already been seen in the previous period of review, such as Going Balls, Tiles Hop: EDM Rush! and Hair Challenge. Some also continue undergoing active development by their studios—for example, Count Master, which was recently enhanced by an ASMR voiceover.
The report examines five new titles. Starting from the chart leader, Merge Master – Dinosaur Fusion, which acquired 51M downloads in the first quarter of 2022, with the most significant shares of new players coming from India (35%), Brazil (11%), and Indonesia (10%). The game seems to be inspired by Merge Battle 3D: Dragon Fight, which ended up way less popular among users than its successor Merge Master – Dinosaur Fusion (3M versus 53.6M downloads over a lifetime, respectively).
We cannot assess the exact reason for such a profound difference, but it is an excellent example of how reusing successful mechanics can clinch millions of downloads for a new game if it is done right.
The next newcomer sits at the fourth spot: Find the Alien has already gained almost 40M of downloads —16% from India and 14% from Indonesia—. The game does not present significant challenges, but it offers rich visuals, diverse settings, and an eclectic narrative.
The third title that catches our attention is Paper Fold. It sits inline five on our list with 32M downloads, the USA accountable for 11% and Indonesia for 10%. Paper Fold is a classic puzzle game that successfully captured many users’ interests.
The next title from the list is Color Match. It has 29M downloads, and for the first quarter of 2022, it was the largest among the other games with the US user base in terms of downloads (28%). Color Match appears to go back to the Colour Merge 3D, another game of the same studio. The color match trend on TikTok and Reddit pushed the development process of Color Match. Supersonic, the company behind this game, added the ASMR element recently featured in many hit titles and was rewarded with their insight about trends.
Money Rush concludes the top 10 best hyper-casuals list with 26M downloads— %32 coming from the United States. Money Rush is the only scroller-runner among the newcomers that made the top 10. While some tasks are simple in the game, others are pretty challenging. Kindly Keyin, who boasts 4.36M subscribers on YouTube, is responsible for many of this game’s “let’s play” videos and undoubtedly responsible for a part of its fame.
All of the new titles making up the top are already facing a downtrend, being released in the fall months of 2021 and gaining their most significant shares of downloads from the USA, Indonesia, and India. And arcade—probably one of the all-time pillars of hyper-casual games—triumphs as the genre.
