One of my favorite games is Gardenscapes. Players solve puzzles, earn stars, and use them to repair and decorate gardens. It’s a simple game that has captured my attention for more than 2 years. While you might not have heard of Gardenscapes, you might have heard of Candy Crush or Bejeweled. These games, along with thousands of similar matching games, make up the match-3 genre.
In this blog, I want to talk about the evolution of the match-3 genre, the current state of play, and what excites me the most going forward.
Evolution of Match-3
The Original: The first match-3 game was Shariki, developed by a Russian programmer Eugene Alemzhin in 1988. The goal of the game was to switch the position of adjacent balls so that the post-action configuration results in an alignment of 3 or more balls of the same color in a horizontal or vertical line. Shariki inspired many successors but it was another game that put this the match-3 genre on the map.
Bejeweled: In early 2000s, a studio called PopCap Games (acquired by EA in 2011 for $1.3 billion) popularized the match-3 genre with Bejeweled. One of the most recognized games in the world, Bejeweled has been played by more than 500 million people, who in aggregate consumed ~10 billion hours of playtime since 2000. Bejeweled is an important milestone of the match-3 genre and was inducted into the World Video Game Hall of Fame in 2020.
RPG and Quests: Since Bejeweled, several games have pushed the genre into the “mid-core” space. In 2007, Infinite Interactive combined role playing with match-3 gameplay into Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords. This mashup was further refined by GungHo Online Entertainment into a new game, Puzzles & Dragons, where players match orbs that create spells to attack enemies. Puzzles & Dragons was the first mobile game in history to generate more than $1 billion in sales and inspired future RPG match-3 games such as Empires & Puzzles.
Saga: In 2012, Candy Crush Saga was launched and it became an instant success. It elevated the simple match-3 gameplay with a saga-like progression. At its height, the developer of Candy Crush, King Digital, had 550 million monthly active users across a portfolio of match-3 games. Around this time, competitors such as Peak Games and Jam City also developed games using the same playbook. Cartoony characters, saga progression and strong events are defining characteristics of this generation. These games remain very popular (still among the top 25 match-3 games in terms of grossing) despite being launched nearly a decade ago.
Genre Mashup: By mid 2015s, the market was saturated with the simple match-3 game and players were, frankly, getting bored. Developers began experimenting with new features to re-energize the genre. These developers took inspirations from successful mashup precedents such as Puzzles & Dragons as well as other genres such as “Build + Decorate”. For example, Playrix combined match-3 with the repair + build progression, creating the beloved Gardenscapes (2016) and Homescapes (2017). Small Giants reincorporated RPG into match-3, making Empires & Puzzles (2018). Today, Playrix is the second largest match-3 studio and is on track to dethrone King as the largest casual mobile developer.
Story Driven: As the new generation of match-3 games such as Gardenscapes and Empire & Puzzles became matured, innovation again started to heat up in the space – hooray for the players! In 2019, we saw more story-driven games. No longer were players satisfied with repairing and building houses, they wanted conflicts, romances, the unexpected, like those from Lily’s Garden and Project Makeover. As I have discussed in my last post, relatedness, or the need for psychological and emotional support and understanding by others, is one of our basic needs as human. Story-driven games allow players to better connect with the characters and develop a sense of shared purpose. While these two games are far from the single-player narrative we see in AAA games such as Last of Us, they herald the story-driven gameplay in the match-3 genre.
As the genre evolves, current mechanics and features become tablestakes while innovations help differentiate newcomers.
Current State of Play
The match-3 genre is the largest subgenre in the Western casual mobile industry. In 2020, match-3 games represent ~$4B of market size and grew ~25% year-over-year. Below is a list of top grossing match-3 on iOS (as of Jan 2021).
Four studios dominate the top 20 grossing match-3 games: King, Playrix, Zynga and AppLovin. How did these studios or games break into top 20? Let’s quickly review them.
King:
Founded in the 2000s as a web game development studio
Popularized the saga progression; Candy Crush became a global phenomenon in the early 2010s
Playrix:
Founded in Russia in 2004; also started as a web game development studio
Fishdom and Gardenscapes became popular in mid 2015s as “Build + Decorate” mashup match-3 games
Zynga: adopted acquisition as the core strategy to grow casual puzzle game portfolio; key targets include Peak Games, Gram Games and Small Giant
Peak: Founded in Turkey in 2010; launched Toy Blast in 2015 – known for its strong live-ops and viral marketing (featuring Ryan Reynolds)
Gram Games: merge mechanic + match-3
Small Giant: RPG + match-3
AppLovin
Originally a mobile game ad network, AppLovin launched its own publisher arm, Lion Studios, in 2018, to invest in up & coming studios such as Magic Tavern (Project Makeover) and Belka (Clockmaker)
TLDR: All these companies had differentiated offerings, whether in gameplay or marketing, as they vied for players’ attention. While these studios are certainly not the most original in their offerings, they are the most successful at differentiating from other copycats, which are rampant in the match-3 genre (i.e., King with saga progression, Playrix with genre mashup, etc.). Their respective competitive advantages also help them maintain market share considering a shocking 94% of users churn within 28 days. It is incredibly difficult to retain users and even harder to remain in the top 20 grossing chart. In fact, only 4 games of the top 20 were launched in the past year, and 3 of the 4 games were backed by large publishers.
Matching Mechanic: Looking at the top 20 grossing match-3 games, the most popular gameplay mechanic is the swiping mechanic (60%), followed by tapping (20%). The “merging” mechanic (2048 mechanic) has grown in popularity (as with Merge Magic, EverMerge, etc.), but it has not dethroned the “OG” swiping mechanic.
Looking forward, more games will adopt the merge mechanic, as it has proven to be a successful alternative to the traditional swiping and tapping mechanic
Meta Features: Since Candy Crush and Toon Blast, most games have dug deeper in terms of progression and features. These features include saga, repair, build/design, fashion, RPG, collection, and narrative. For the top 20 games, the most popular features are saga, build/design and narrative – more than half the games have at least one of these features. On the other hand, 7 of the top 20 games have only 1 feature, and 6 of them were developed by King or Peak before 2017 (the other one is Disney Emoji Blitz by Jam City).
Looking forward, players want games that have more depth and relatedness. New games will need 2 or more meta features to hook users. Specifically, I see an increase demand for narrative as games begin to replace other forms of entertainment.
Art Style: The art style is split across top 20 games with animated characters / objects slightly ahead of real life and fantasy. Early match-3 games such as Candy Crush and Toon Blast used cartoony objects or animals. Since 2015, the art style became more real-life (Project Makeover) and “fantasy” (Empires & Puzzles) to accommodate better and more diverse story-telling.
Looking forward, the art style of match-3, as is with other casual genres, has been mostly animated or cartoony. The success of Match 3D (realistic) and Clockmaker (Dark) indicates player’s openness to more diversified and “core” art style.
Closing Thoughts
The match-3 genre is the largest of all puzzle genres. It has been dominated by King, Playrix and Peak for a long time. They have each carved a pie of the market by offering sustained and differentiated products, whether that be new genre mashup, progression or mechanic. New games and studios can still break into the genre, but only through innovating and maintaining that innovation edge. As players demand deeper progression and more story-driven gameplay, I am excited to see what new studios have to offer. Below are some match-3 ideas that could be worth exploring:
Choose your own adventure (Episode/Choice) + match-3
Realistic Cooking or Fashion Makeover + match-3
Team RPG + Match 3 (essentially a more advanced version of Penny & Flo)
Additional Reading:
The N3TWORK: A Brief history of Match-3 Games
Deconstructor of Fun: 2021 Predictions #1 Puzzle Games Becomes the Top Grossing Genre on Mobile
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