Hyper-casual games continue to dominate the gaming top charts, with their popularity showing no signs of slowing down. Characterized by their simple mechanics and intuitive gameplay, these games appeal to a broad audience - providing developers with an opportunity to achieve huge scale with their hyper-casual games.
However, unlocking this success requires a savvy approach - from early marketability testing to validate concepts, to increasing lifetime value (LTV) of users, there are many pieces of the puzzle that need to be cracked. Below, we share our best practices to set you up for success with you hyper-casual games.
To test for a product-market fit, you need to make a prototype of your game concept and run marketability tests. Marketability shows the size of the potential audience for your game. Also, it predicts how well they’ll convert from an ad impression to an install on different UA channels. Remember, the goal for hyper-casual games is to reach a very wide audience at a low cost.
The first thing to know before you start marketability testing is which metrics to measure. The three most important are CPI and retention. Let’s dive into each so you’ll know what they tell you and why it’s important.
CPI, or cost per install, is how much you’re paying for each install. CPI reflects the marketability power of your concept and is the most important KPI when prototype testing.
A low CPI is confirmation that many users understand and enjoy your game - and that your game can scale without breaking the bank. Aim for a CPI under $0.30 - with a CPI in this range, you can start making game improvements that improve in-game metrics like retention and playtime instead of focusing only on lowering CPI.
On an SDK network, you should also monitor the IPM of your prototypes - the higher your game’s IPM, the stronger its marketability power. Analyze both the average IPM from the prototype test and the amount of app sources that generated an IPM above the average.
The third KPI you need to focus on in your prototype testing phase. You always want users to return to your game and spend more time playing - this means more opportunities for ad monetization.
Retention - specifically late retention - plays a big part in increasing your LTV per user. So make sure your prototype shows strong retention - Generally, you should aim for a D1 retention rate of 38% or higher on Android.
Supersonic’s game Draw the Line, for example, earned significant profit and reached the top 5 on iOS in the US. When the game was first tested, it had an impressive D1 retention rate of 51%. Even though the CPI was high at $0.38, the high retention rate told us that users loved playing the game enough to keep coming back.
Now you’re probably thinking about what you should actually be showing in your video ads. Keep reading for 5 best practices to help you do it right.
Create 4 versions of your creative to test in the marketability stage. This way you can try out different ideas, without having an overwhelming amount of variations. Focus on core gameplay in your creatives, with minimal editing and additions.
Some design elements to test in your 4 variations include:
- Frame composition and camera angle.
- A tutorial-like feature to make it easy to understand how to play, like a hand pointing at a button.
- The right color palette for your game, making sure you have a good contrast between the main objects like the characters, enemies, and obstacles.
- Character design and how you illustrate them (e.g. cleaner, simpler, and less realistic).
You can even test elements not in your game yet - if these features go down well, you can design them into the build when you start growing your game in the next stages.
The first 3-5 seconds of a marketability creative are the most important - not only do you need to grab users’ attention but you also need to show what the game is all about. So focus on making your creatives as clear and easy to understand in the beginning.
70-80% of the most successful creatives Supersonic’s launched show a “fail situation”, which is when the player in the video loses the level.
In at least one of your creative variations, show failed gameplay in the first 3-4 seconds and end the video on the message or image that appears when users fail a level.
Supersonic’s Bazooka Boy’s best-performing creative was a video showing a level fail again and again. During their marketability test, the game had an amazing CPI of just 15 cents and later went on to achieve an LTV of over $1.
Be sure to make one of the four creative versions quirky or unusual. Think outside the box on this one - the creative should still connect to your theme and gameplay, but it should be more unique than the rest of the creative set.
Sometimes it takes the wild card to crack the marketability test. When designing the creatives for Chat Master, for example, Supersonic tried a version using a voice-over. They used audio for Air Control, too, putting realistic sound effects over the video creative. Also Supersonic showed a person in real life drawing the game’s concept, which was an unexpected way to design game creatives.
We recommend running your first tests on Facebook, which we’ll go over in more detail shortly. Before that, know that your creatives should be designed so they fit with Facebook’s UI...you want the ad to feel and look native to the platform. A simple way to do this is changing the frame to white in your creatives, to blend in with Facebook’s feed.
Once you’ve validated a concept and progress towards your soft launch, think about ways to improve your game’s monetization mechanics. The goal is to increase your LTV and start earning a profit. Here are some ways to do that:
Improving retention keeps more users in the game for longer, giving you more opportunities to monetize them, which ultimately boosts your LTV. To improve retention, you can start by looking at which levels are leading to a drop-off in users. By identifying this as a problem area and why, you can then either remove or change the level. You can also add unique content to your game - like new designs and features - that can go a long way in improving playtime, which is another factor that impacts LTV.
Since interstitials play such a big part in a hyper-casual game’s monetization, A/B testing an interstitial strategy is one of the best ways to find the ‘sweet spot’ of showing the right number of interstitials at the right time to boost ARPDAU and LTV without greatly affecting retention. There are a few ways to test your interstitials, including by timing, level, and level-end.
Interstitial cooldown timers
Testing the times you choose to serve an interstitial helps determine when users are most likely to engage, which can maximize the overall impressions per user. Since every game has a different level length, the timer is a good feature to A/B test with different durations.
For example, some games can have a better LTV with a 15-second timer, while others will perform better with a 45-second timer. There isn’t one rule of thumb here that proves the best time to show interstitials across all games - that’s why it’s important to test this and look for the ideal setup for your game.
Interstitial levels
Testing which levels to show an interstitial can also yield different engagement rates. You should consider how long an average user plays your game for this test because the more that users play, the deeper into it you can show interstitials and the more revenue you can earn.
Interstitial level-end test
Usually, interstitials are placed after a level ends, like we talked about with the timing test. But more often, hyper-casual games show these ads before the end-level page, which is the page a user reaches when they complete a level - it summarizes their performance, gives them a reward, etc.
The level-end interstitial test involves placing the ad before (if the user didn’t watch any ads for X seconds) vs. after the end-level page (if the user didn’t watch a rewarded video or other ads for X seconds) and comparing performance.
Rewarded video often helps increase LTV because the user experience is opt-in - users enjoy them more, which means advertisers often pay more for them. Testing various rewarded video placements can help determine what’s engaging users best to optimize your monetization strategy and boost LTV.
The four types of rewarded video placements we’ll run through and that are the most common for testing are: economy-related, progression value, try your luck, and unlock special content.
Economy-related rewarded videos
Rewarded videos that are directly related to the game economy (e.g. earning currency) fall into this category. A common example of this type of reward includes watching a video to triple winnings or get additional currency. For games with an in-app economy that centers around a primary currency, this rewarded video placement at the end of a level can be very effective at boosting engagement.
Implementing progression value rewarded video
The progression value placement moves users through the game by rewarding them with features that directly impact gameplay, encouraging them to keep playing and helping them reach deeper levels. Progression value rewarded videos are directly connected to gameplay, like letting a user watch a video and skip a level. For example, in Wheel Scale, users can watch a video and advance 20% to getting a new wheel. They can keep watching rewarded videos to fill the progress bar 100% and get the wheel, which has different benefits and gives them an advantage in the game.
Try your luck rewarded video placement
The try your luck placement is a casino-style or surprise gift rewarded video that involves chance. Common rewarded videos that fall into this category include having users watch a video to spin a wheel, pick a prize, or pick from chest rewards. Adding an element of luck into the rewarded video is a way to engage users and can fit directly into gameplay, as seen below with Join Clash.
Rewarded video that unlocks special content
Letting users unlock special content through a rewarded video can offer them a major boost at a crucial time - like unlocking extra equipment on a boss level - or keep them engaged with additional features, like a bonus level. Another option for this type of placement is letting users watch a video to skip or refresh missions. Unlocking special content with rewarded video can be a major prize, so placing this type at a deeper level or making users watch a few rewarded videos to earn the prize can help increase engagement rates.
Even though it’s expected for hyper-casual games to have short LTV curves, there’s no reason you can’t increase the value of your users and maximize ARPU quickly - and even extend the curve. With these tips on boosting retention and optimizing your interstitials and rewarded video, you can keep users engaged and monetize them more effectively to increase LTV.
The soft launch stage is a chance for you to run a controlled environment for testing and optimizing to help you avoid wasting ad spend - and also shorten the learning curve before the big launch. Here are some tips to make your creatives simpler, clearer, and more appealing, to get users to try your game.
- Make all key elements of your creatives clear and big enough across platforms and devices.
- Create a contrast between the background and characters Using simple color associations - for example, red is danger (enemies, obstacles), green is safe (signs of directions, your team).
- Avoid themes that people immediately associate with certain audiences (like spaceships for the sci-fi fans) - you don’t want to alienate audiences because they quickly decide your game is made for someone else.
- Try out catchy soundbites that will stay with your target audience long after seeing and hearing the video.
- Use bright colors - they evoke happy memories and associations.
Supersonic put some of these tips to practice for the creatives used for the soft launch of Emoji Puzzle, which highlighted the gameplay and characters.
Emojis enhanced the already-broad appeal of their association game, and the simple gameplay, catchy music, and bright colors helped Emoji Puzzle get to the #2 spot on Google Play Store and get awesome KPIs, like a $0.22 CPI, 47% D1 retention, and more than $0.60 LTV.
Create videos that feel shareable
Hyper-casual users see many ads as they play a game, and you want yours to stand out from the crowd. A nice way to do that is to make your creative feel funny and shareable.
Supersonic’s Bazooka Boy is a great example of this - the creatives produced with the Lightneer team showed off the humor in the game through kill scenarios.
Users can’t always predict what happens next in the game - like a ricochet killing off the player - which makes it engaging, surprising, and funny.
With these compelling creatives, an optimized UA campaign, and additional game tweaks, Bazooka Boy went on to achieve less than 20c CPI, an LTV of over $1, 1200s playtime, and $0.40 D1 ARPU.
Show a frustrating gameplay scenario
Players love cognitive closure - the concept that our brain is wired to get answers and solve problems as quickly as possible.
A fail situation that shows people failing at even the simplest tasks in your creatives doesn’t provide that cognitive closure. This can make users think that the people who are playing in the ads aren’t as smart or good at the game, prompting them to do better and solve the problem.
When watching your creatives that show a fail situation, users should want to take charge of the phone and do it by themselves - some might want to try it out, and see why others failed on what seemed like such simple instructions.
With Join Clash, we designed a version of the video creative that showed a fail situation in which the player loses the level and the text at the top clearly shows they’re frustrated. This creative helped Join Clash reach #2 on iOS and Android in the US, attract more than 150M installs so far, and earn a 2x increase in LTV.
So, definitely test out this approach in your creatives!
Give users a video that relaxes and satisfies them
Many players seek a form of relaxation from everyday life. A good creative can tap into that, giving a feeling of gratification and accomplishment.
For example, the feeling of ‘cleaning the scatter’ (e.g. wiping a board clean, sorting beads, combining shapes) is super satisfying, and requires a simple action or mechanic, such as collecting an object, jumping, cutting, or shooting.
In Bead Sort, players sorted beads into the right colors. Supersonic showed this gratifying mechanic in our video creative, which earned incredible engagement and helped the game reach #1 on iOS and Android in the US, achieved an IPM of 45+ and boosted LTV 20%.
Try a variety iterations that interest users
When you target a wide audience, different situations and features are going to resonate with a variety of people - whether that’s a male vs. female character or a city vs. forest environment.
When Supersonic designed variations of our video creative for Hide ‘N Seek across different UA channels, they tried out different color schemes, camera angles, and maze setups.
After a soft launch phase that took less than a week, they found the top performing creatives and used those for global launch.
Using these creatives and making game improvements helped Hide ‘N Seek reach #1 in Google Play Store, increase retention 48%, and boost playtime by 33%.
Growing Hyper Casual Games: From Monetization to User Acquisition Global launch is crunch time - it’s where all of your preparation and hard work hopefully pays off. Your objective from this point on is scaling installs for your game and maximizing LTV - if you achieve both of these things, you’ll have a successful games business on your hands.
So how do you make sure your UA campaign at global launch is a success? Arguably the most important aspect of this is your ad creatives. We’ve found that using playable ads is the most effective way to see high performance at launch - keep reading to learn key tips and best practices about using playables.
Playable ads are usually used during global launch to drive downloads at scale and give important insights into your creative strategy, with in-ad metrics like engagement rate and conversion rate. Keep reading for the design best practices we’ve seen work wonders for playable ads at global launch.
Hook users with the tutorial
The tutorial is the first part of your playable that users interact with, and it needs to strike the balance between informing users how to play and showing them how to.
Hyper-casual games usually have a single mechanic - it’s very important that users understand the mechanic in your playable and what will happen once they start interacting. At Supersonic, tutorials are tested to find this balance between telling and showing, and to determine what’s engaging users most so they keep playing.
For example, one of the most common tests is removing visual noise in the creative, like obstacles and background elements. This keeps the attention entirely on the gameplay and mechanic in the creative - the goal is for users to know how to play in under three seconds. This was tested in a playable for the game Mad Dogs, by simplifying the background and changing the environment to be more bare. Then the text was edited so it related directly to the mechanic and made it more clear what happens when users tapped the screen.
The Supersonic team also changed the camera angle to a full side view, which improved visibility and clarified gameplay even further. As a result, the new version improved performance across KPIs, achieving an engagement rate of 87%, conversion rate over 27%, IPM over 64, and click-through rate over 36%.
There’s another balance to strike when it comes to your playables, and it has to do with the gameplay: keeping users engaged vs. leaving them wanting more so they’re tempted to download and play.
We suggest keeping your playable’s gameplay at 15 seconds or less, which is usually enough time to give users a sense of the gameplay experience while leaving them wanting to play more. If your playable highlights actual gameplay from your game, try testing different elements to show.
For example, you could test different levels with different difficulties and see which performs best in a playable. The playable gameplay that’s likely to resonate with users varies for each genre - for example playables for decision-making games often highlight the visuals and storyline more than other genres.
For Stacky Dash, Supersonic tested two versions of a playable featuring similar gameplay, but with distinctly different visual experiences. One version featured a track with coins and a circular formation.
The other version had hearts instead of coins and the track was in a heart shape - the heart is a very familiar shape to users and they immediately understood and related more to the game. In the end, the version with the heart tiles achieved better results, bringing CTR up to nearly 63%, CVR over 7%, and IPM over 45.
Close the deal with the end card or CTA
The last piece of the puzzle is getting users to go to the app store and download your hyper-casual game. The balancing act here is avoiding irritating or startling users in how you send them to the store. The key is to get them there as quickly and with as little friction as possible, so test different ways you send users to the store from your playable. Some variations include using a simple end card that they can tap to go to the store or offering them an incentive, like getting an extra life when they install and start playing.
In this eBook you've learned how to run marketability tests to validate hyper-casual game concepts, how to improve your game's monetization mechanics using ad units like rewarded videos and interstitials, what goes into a successful soft launch, and best practices for using playable ads in your global launch.
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