Youssef Gasmi, communications supervisor, at Voodoo outlines the corporate’s new give attention to ‘hybrid informal’ video games and the way the writer labored with Tarboosh video games in Dubai to take the unique prototype of Collect Em All and turned it into successful.

It’s been an thrilling 18-month journey for Voodoo and Collect Em All, with the sport reaching #1 within the informal charts within the US a number of instances throughout that interval. The well-received title entails gamers connecting balls of the identical color to destroy them. Creating after which breaking apart longer chains signifies that gamers achieve extra factors, serving to them to climb up the leaderboard.

Collect Em All is an easy-to-control hybrid-casual title that began as an limitless model of the fundamental ball-connecting mechanic in its prototyping stage. In the smooth launch section, a monetisation layer was added together with a leaderboard and finally a development system with degree aims. Further informal monetisation options continued to be added, like a piggy financial institution, degree race and an prolonged in-app buy (IAP) store with supply bundles.

Tarboosh Games

The staff behind Collect Em All is Tarboosh Games, a Dubai-based hypercasual studio that has turned its experience to hybrid-casual. Tarboosh Games took over the preliminary prototype from Madhu. Through its finely-tuned processes and its agile and fast prototyping capabilities, the staff was capable of construct the core informal options of the sport in a fifth of the time it could usually take bigger studios.

Madhu was thrilled to share that: “Voodoo transformed my failed prototype right into a implausible sport via co-production. Collect Em All had good retention and a reasonably excessive price per set up (CPI), and it was clear that it could not be launched as a hypercasual sport. It wants a lot deeper mechanics to attain excessive lifetime worth (LTV); as a solo developer, it wasn’t an possibility. Through co-production with Tarboosh, Voodoo made this potential. I do not suppose this might have been potential with every other writer.

Thanks to Voodoo, particularly Vrinda Batra and Corentin Selz, for making Collect Em All a Hybrid-Casual hit sport with Tarboosh!”

New focus

Collect Em All additionally marked a shift in focus for us at Voodoo in the direction of how we construct and place hybrid-casual in comparison with hypercasual. We’ve discovered that if a sport is hypercasual at its core it ought to be allowed to develop in a sure approach with out the strain of moulding it right into a hybrid-casual sport.

With this in thoughts, we’re making an attempt to not ‘hybridise’ our hypercasual portfolio, however fairly develop hybrid-casual video games from the outset. We’ve seen from the success of Collect Em All! – particularly in retention figures – that this course of is more practical and results in a greater remaining product.

To enhance the CPI for Collect Em All, the staff created over 500 movies and variations to gameplay to find what would greatest drive downloads. We continued by constructing on all of the constructive steps we’ve taken in hypercasual improvement and making use of them in new methods for a hybrid-casual viewers.

Working in a different way

For instance, with the advertising of this sport, we determined to work differently from how we’d often market a hyper-casual title. We took a typical strategy of working a mass market marketing campaign for a broad viewers and likewise ran focused campaigns for high-value customers which are extra prone to interact. This price extra initially, however now we’re seeing elevated ROI additional down the road, supporting our determination and new strategy.

Due to the success of Collect Em All, Tarboosh Games is increasing its staff. In 2023, they may develop to greater than 15 folks, together with sport designers, builders, and artists, all totally devoted to Collect Em All. You can discover out extra concerning the alternatives to work on Collect Em All right here.

At Voodoo, we’re excited to double down on the success of Collect Em All. Hybrid-casual is Voodoo’s future, and Collect Em All is without doubt one of the first of many nice video games we are going to launch with this new mindset.