Royal Kingdom — The Next Puzzle Hit From Dream Games?
Check out the follow up here — https://medium.com/@chrisjameswallace/a-second-swing-at-a-royal-match-sequel-will-this-one-work-4b386eed2580
Executive Summary
- Royal Kingdom is the newly soft-launched casual mobile game from Dream Games, the creators of Royal Match.
- Similar to it’s predecessor, the game is a level-based swap match 3 game with light meta progression elements. Using the same puzzle engine and a familiar “royalty” visual theme, Royal Kingdom feels largely like a minor repaint of their original successful title.
- Key differences are in the meta progression. Players no longer spend their stars on completing a one-screen room before moving to the next; they now rebuild areas of a large scrollable map. Dream has taken mechanics from social casino games like Coin Master, resulting in “Attack Levels”. Players can assault other player’s maps while defending their own map.
- Dream runs the risk of cannibalizing their own original hit with a new product that is so similar. Additionally, the new progression mechanics are too light to make a super meaningful impact on player retention. However, their new social casino mechanics will unlock new UA strategies. Plus, their best-in-class puzzle engine and high quality graphics make for a strong first build and may be all Dream needs for a second hit.
Introduction
In early 2021, Istanbul-based mobile gaming company Dream released its debut title, Royal Match. The company was formed by former Peak Games alumni who had worked on Toy Blast and Toon Blast, and their new title was strikingly similar to those titles, especially in the UI/UX design. But a switch from the tap-match-2 genre to swap-match-3, a new royalty-themed art style, and a simple Gardenscapes-inspired meta progression combined to make a new game that felt both refreshing and familiar. Plus, their match-3 puzzle engine was faster and snappier than any competitor’s, truly a best-in-class puzzle game. The result: a top grossing mobile game, second only to the grandaddy of puzzle games, Candy Crush Saga.
Dream recently announced the opening of a second office, this time in London. With a smash hit and a new location, many in the casual gaming industry are asking: what’s next? The answer: Royal Kingdom.
Typical of a soft-launch, Dream quietly released their new title on iOS and Android at the very end of March 2023, limited to only players in Turkey, Canada, and the UK. As the game is only a few days old as of this writing, no monetization or retention data exists, but early player reviews are already glowing (4.8 stars on iOS).
How does the new game stack up against their first title? What does it do differently and why does Dream think this is a game design worthy of a test? Let’s explore.
The Familiar
The core puzzle gameplay of Royal Kingdom (RK) is identical to Royal Match (RM). In each level, players make matches of 3 of the same colored gems to clear obstacles from the board. They have a limited number of turns to clear all obstacles. They can also form breakers like Bombs or Rockets by making bigger matches, and these blockers form and trigger in the exact same way in both games. Additionally, the obstacle types are just reskins of RM’s obstacles, they all operate exactly the same (a single exception, the colored orb box, which now requires an additional hit of damage to open up). RK is clearly using the exact same puzzle engine as RM, and I don’t blame them; it’s the best engine on the market. No other game comes close to matching the smoothness, snappiness, and responsiveness of Dream’s engine.
Paid boosters that players can use in level are also similar. In RM, the 4 boosters are a single block booster, a row booster, a column booster, and a shuffle booster. In RK, they use the same first 3 boosters, but replace the shuffle booster with a booster that turns all gems the same color (resulting in a cascade of breakers), and adds a fifth new booster: an airplane that drops several exploding bombs on the board. Paid boosters are typically not a huge monetizer in match-3 games, but are more useful as live ops rewards, so the addition of a new booster will help the developer bolster their reward offerings.
Since the game is brand new, level tuning seems fairly loose (their designers are most likely poring over win rates and planning upcoming retunes right now). The game currently has only 100 levels available, and in my playthrough, I only experienced 3 losses. RM’s early funnel is also easy, but I expect the difficulty in RK to tighten up in future releases. A standard match 3 feature is the Hard/Super Hard level UI treatments, which are introduced in RK at levels 24 and 28 respectively (a bit earlier than RM, which introduces them at levels 45 and 59). Difficulty cadence matches RM too, a Hard and Super Hard level every 10 levels. Level design style is also similar, with an easy “blasty” level always occurring after a Super Hard level.
A big surprise is that RK offers no new monetization vectors. In match 3 games, ~80% of monetization comes from buying more moves when losing a level, and I expect the same for RK. The valuable “Buy More Moves” UI/UX is identical to RM’s, so Dream can expect similar player spend. Players can spend their coins on boosters, lives, and moves, just like RM and really any match 3 game. But beyond these, players have no where else to spend coins.
In terms of live ops, RK is pretty light, but that is to be expected of a soft launch where the developer is looking to validate their core loop. The fan-favorite win streak feature from RM returns, but now with 5 tiers instead of 3. Also, when the streak is maxed, players get their level rewards doubled. These changes certainly increase the pressure on loss aversion; players definitely don’t want to lose their valuable streak. The side effect of a win streak with more rewards is that levels are far easier; with the help of additional bombs, I was clearing levels with 10+ moves remaining. Their other liveops feature in this build is a standard End of Content leaderboard event, allowing players to play random levels until the next content drop. Its execution is identical to the feature in RM, which makes sense: why not use the expansive library of events from RM in their new game?
A significant difference in RK from RM (and other puzzle games) is their initial FTUE (first time user experience, or tutorial). In a typical match 3 game, the initial ~5 puzzle levels are slowly paced to introduce the basics of gameplay. For instance, the first level may show how to make a basic match, the second level shows how to make a rocket breaker, the third level shows how to make a bomb breaker, the next level finally bringing an obstacle into the mix. RK accelerates the FTUE: the first level teaches both basic matches and the first obstacle (the wooden box). After this, RK completely skips the other basic tutorials, like making and using breakers. New obstacles and boosters get basic popup-style info panels, but the extremely simplified and fast FTUE of RK is unusual for this genre. Possibilities for this strategy:
- They simply didn’t have time to put more informative FTUE’s in the build before soft-launch. I discount this, because the rest of the game is so polished and anything that can leave early players confused will skew early retention data negatively, which Dream will not want.
- The developer is planning to migrate their RM audience to this game, and since the gameplay is so similar, these players don’t need a long FTUE.
- Dream is taking a gamble that overly hand-holding FTUE’s are negative for early players, who prefer to get into the meat of the game faster. It’s also possible that my build is a test group for an A/B test that is testing this very hypothesis.
- The developer is targeting a more advanced match 3 player with this game. In 2023, almost every mobile gamer has played a match 3 game and can infer the basic gameplay nuances on their own. I think this is the most likely reason, and the more advanced mechanics introduced in the meta supports this.
New: Meta Progression
With no major changes to the puzzle gameplay or monetization scheme, Dream is relying on a new meta progression style to drive RK. In RM, the meta is simple: players beat a level and earn a star, they spend that star to place pieces of furniture in an empty room. When the room is completed, players are rewarded with coins and boosters before moving to the next room.
RK instead has a single continuous map, similar to Gardenscape’s garden or Matchington’s mansion. Most of the map is locked, and players are still filling in a single empty area at a time before moving onto the next piece of the map. Players can scroll around to see what they have to look forward to in the future, and the map is quite large, leaving Dream plenty of room for future content drops to unlock. This could help with retention: it’s more satisfying to see all you have completed in a large map instead of RM’s one-screen-at-a-time rooms.
Players are no longer earning single stars from levels but varying amounts of potions. Hard and Super Hard marked levels multiply this amount, as does the maxed out win streak feature. Earning hundreds of potions per level does feel more satisfying than a lone star. In RM, players could see their tasks and do quick math: if a task is 4 stars, then they need to beat 4 levels. In RK, the higher potion count obfuscates that math: a task could be 1200 potions, which could be earned in a single level or multiple levels. This allows Dream to increase the levels-per-task requirement in a way that’s not super obvious to the player.
This design does have a flaw: not all users will progress through the meta content at a consistant rate. Players who beat all levels first try to take advantage of potion multipliers will fill in the map faster. Players who aren’t so skilled will find that it takes them many more levels to complete the same task. In RM, room task cost and level content matched 1 to 1, beating all levels completed all rooms. In RK, I reached end of level content with an incomplete area and several unfinished tasks. With no way to earn potions until the next content drop, it felt very unsatisfying to be “behind”. Take this gap problem and stretch it over years of liveops, Dream may have a very unbalanced meta progression economy on their hands.
As players complete tasks, they also earn XP. This fills a meter around their profile pic, and when complete, increases their rank. Each new rank gives players coins and boosters and parts of the map unlocks at new ranks. The XP earning rate does not appear to be constant for all players based on task count; I reached end of content at rank 12 but I can see on the leaderboard that other players hit the end at ranks 11 and 13. This may be representative of A/B test groups who have alternative XP rates because I can find no way to multiply XP beyond the set task rewards.
New: Social
Dream has added a new social layer to RK in the form of Attack Levels. Starting at level 10 and every 10 levels after that, players enter into the new feature.
The screen is split into 2. At the bottom is the puzzle board, but the gravity is flipped, pieces fall upwards instead of down. The top of the screen is the rival’s kingdom, with several small towers surrounding the main castle. The layout of the castle changes in each level, but players never choose what their layout is, so it must be randomly chosen from a set. As players make matches on the puzzle board, the broken gems shoot straight up, damaging any towers or castles it hits. When the towers are out of health, they are destroyed. Players win the level when every part of the castle is destroyed. If players run out of moves before winning, they can buy more moves, just like a normal match 3 puzzle. This gameplay is taken straight from more midcore games like Empires and Puzzles. However, there is no damage difference between colors like in those games (where red will overpower green, which overpowers blue). Breakers and boosters can also attack castles directly, which was a very fun discovery.
Later Attack Levels introduced new mechanics like the Chain, which requires players to destroy the towers before attacking the main castle, adding a interesting twist to how you play with the puzzle board’s geometry.
The first few Attack Levels are clearly against bots, but later opponents did appear to be legitimate players. Over time, you will be notified that other players have attacked your castle and you have to spend 10 potions to fix up your kingdom before playing the next level. When you reach the next Attack Level in the meta progression, you can choose to get revenge and attack the player who attacked you, or Attack one of your Facebook friends (if connected), or attack a random player. If you win an Attack Level, you also earn a Shield that adds an extra defense layer to the board to make it harder to destroy when next attacked.
This social layer design should be familiar to anyone who follows the top grossing mobile games charts; this exact attack-and-defend format comes from social casino games like Coin Master and Board Kings. In those games, the core gameplay is a slot machine spin or a dice roll, which can randomly give players the chance to visit another player’s base and attack, bringing home any spoils. Players also have to defend their own base from attackers and spend currency to fix up any destroyed buildings. RK is using this same design, but adding in the puzzle element so it doesn’t feel too far from the core gameplay.
Just like those games, the attack-and-defend mechanics in RK are very simple. A more midcore game may allow players to choose their defense layout (like Clash of Clans) or let the player’s ranks affect their damage or defend stats. RK keeps the game firmly grounded in the casual space with a proven design from other games that feels novel in the puzzle space.
RM players will be familiar with their Teams feature, and RK has space in their UI for it, although marked with “Coming Soon”. That space seems like the logical expansion point for the Attack Levels; players may soon find them attacking their teammates or maybe grouping up to defend a larger castle.
Conclusion
Overall, the art and gameplay of Royal Kingdom looks and feels amazing, easily matching the quality bar set in Royal Match. While the core puzzle gameplay is largely unchanged, the new meta progression and social layers do offer a bit of novelty, but are not majorly compelling changes to the core loop. So why does Dream think this is the game for this moment?
It’s gotta be user acquisition. Since Apple’s IDFA privacy changes in 2021, digital advertising has been upended and its harder than ever to grow old and new games cost effectively. Royal Match seems like the rare exception: a new game that managed to grow into a hit during this time of expensive UA. Many companies have taken big swings at all types of UA creative, many of which are not particularly representative of the product and have poor results. Royal Match succeeded because their UA creative matched their core gameplay, and when they found new successful creative trends that didn’t match, they put that new gameplay in the actual game.
With Royal Match being the master of the “save the person in peril” UA creative, Dream is looking for their next UA strategy. And they’ve found it in the competitive “attack and defend” UA of social casino games like Coin Master. Most Coin Master ad creatives have something to do with the player’s village being attacked, so clearly this developer has found an ad style that connects with users and lets them grow their game. Now Dream is coming for a slice of that pie.
So ultimately, the main aim of Royal Kingdoms seems to be a UA play. The game’s similarity to Royal Match and Dream’s unparalleled quality level means the new game’s retention and monetization are safely locked in. User acquisition is an ever-changing market and costs are a moving target, but Dream appears to have a solid dart to throw at it. I look forward to keeping an eye on this product to see how the company reacts to their incoming KPI’s.
A video of Royal Kingdom’s first 10 levels can be found here.
Chris Wallace is a game designer with over 10 years of experience with mobile free-to-play games. He currently offers design consulting services, please contact if you’re looking to improve your games!
