Arcade Idle: Creating the new Hybridcasual genre
Hybridcasual: Emerging genre to improve user retention
During the past few years, Hypercasual games (HC) have revolutionized the gaming market in the number of downloads and the variety of new products. In the last 12 months alone, HC games’ ad-monetization revenue reached $3.4 billion.
The HC genre has established itself as a separate category divided into ultra-casual, idle, mergers, and other subgenres. Some have become mobile classics, but sometimes we see a new genre emerge in the HC scene.
You constantly need to test and iterate to produce successful games in the Hypercasual world. One of the primary metrics publishers are optimizing for is user retention. Developers’ desire to make users play their games longer has helped the Hybridcasual genre to appear.
Hybridcasual is a game category that combines simple HC gameplay with mid-core progression mechanics. One of the main Hybridcasual subgenres is Arcade Idle. It combines adventure-like arcade attributes with power progression and metagame systems from the Idle genre.
Arcade Idle is Hypercasual at the core: satisfying & simple core mechanic, combined with marketable visuals. The most successful Arcade Idle games involve players controlling an avatar using virtual joystick controls. The hybrid nature of Arcade Idle games is shown through the games’ progression system: players progress by unlocking a building, upgrading their character and their environment. That leaves room for deeper metagame systems than is traditionally the case in Hypercasual, increasing playtime, retention, and extending LTV. These factors translate into hybrid games with medium/low CPI but much stronger playtime metrics that can reach 30+ minutes.
What is fun about Arcade Idle?
According to Quantic Foundry’s model, these are the key factors that create motivation among gamers.
The Arcade Idle category integrates three of them. First, the genre caters to players’ need for exploration by incorporating a playable character, virtual joystick controls, and discoverable points of interest. Players’ ability to upgrade their avatar and their environment gives them a feeling of power and progression, reinforced through the game’s economy and the ever-increasing resources they gather. Finally, a relatable theme and meaningful rewards appeal to the fantasy motivation.
The Arcade Idle genre is a hybrid one both in gameplay and metrics. Homa Games estimated the average playtime D0 of 25 minutes, cost per install (CPI) of 40 cents, and the retention rate of 35% on day 1 (RRD1).
How to make a successful Arcade Idle game
The main idea behind Hypercasual games is their simplicity. The Idle genre could get complicated, so the essential idea when creating an Arcade Idle game is to remove the complexity for an audience to accept it — from the economy to the controls, all down to the game’s design.
To create an engaging Arcade Idle game, these are the points to keep in mind:
● Simple gameplay mechanic: The player should understand the gameplay within a few seconds of playing. Simple, satisfying mechanics are at the core of Arcade Idle games. Using only the virtual joystick control scheme, proven mechanics in Arcade Idle include:
- Mining/Digging
- Farming/Cleaning
- Fighting
● Feeling of depth in the game: The player should know that they will enjoy the game for hours, within a few minutes of playing. So in that regard, it is not a typical HC game. Try showing long-term goals to engage the player until the later game. Some examples of long-term goals in Arcade Idle can be:
- Uncovering all the mysteries of the map
- Becoming more powerful (upgrading your character or your base)
In-game features
Let’s dive into the features that make Arcade Idle stand out:
- Camera: Slightly inclined Top View
- Controls: Joystick
- Player avatar
- Objective: To gather resources and sell them to extend your territory
- Map: Can be level-based, in which players reset their territories when going to another level, or an open world based on zones
Player Progression
While Arcade Idle is Hypercasual in its difficulty (no lose condition), its progression systems are drawn from the casual space:
- Progression through the game economy: discovering new resources, and accumulating more of them
- Progression equals exponential inflation: each new zone is more expensive to unlock, with sinks being non-linear to create chokepoints, favorable to monetization
- Ads allow to speed up the progress
In-App Purchases (IAPs)
Given that they bring more depth and content than HC games, a strategic topic for Arcade Idle games is unlocking the IAP monetization. While IAP in Hypercasual is traditionally weak due to lack of content (around 2% of net revenue), some Arcade Idle games have shown substantial IAP monetization, with some games reaching 20% of net revenue in IAP.
One counterintuitive idea around monetization in Arcade Idle is the subscription. It is now proven that a small cohort of paying users in Arcade Idle value accessing the exclusive content through regular, weekly, or monthly payments. In some cases, it is the leading product in terms of IAP revenue generated, above 30% of net IAP revenue.
What’s next for Arcade Idle?
While still a niche genre, Arcade Idle has significant potential as a Hybridcasual genre, combining mass-market reach with a healthy player engagement and monetization. Homa Games’ estimation for this genre is to grow by a 10X factor, even though the world has never seen an Arcade Idle megahit with more than 100M installs.
Arcade Idle is an opportunity for developers to make games with strong profitability (through IAP and subscriptions) and a long-term lifespan as they are not based on social media trends. What studios need is the ability to follow the HC playbook and, at the same time, the capacity to design deeper progression systems and compelling IAP opportunities. Bringing together those complementary skill sets will bring hit Arcade Idle games to life.
