Design Deep Dive #02- Royal Match!
A game design analysis to comprehend the immediate success of Royal Match.
I’ve been playing match-3 games since 2013 and have a couple of titles under my belt as a designer. I’ve witnessed the evolution of this genre in terms of gameplay, mechanics, and recurring live events as both a player and a designer. Some of the games inspired and motivated me to continue working in the genre after all these years.
One such game is Royal Match!
Why it is important to talk about this game?
01. Royal Match has passed $600m in lifetime revenue and 70m all-time downloads, now regularly breaking $40m in monthly earnings.
Royal Match is now averaging $1.49m in revenue per day, and just over 200k daily downloads. [Link]
02. Royal Match holds 17.32% of revenue share in this genre standing next to Candy Crush Saga. Jul 22- Dec 22 (All Platforms)
03. Royal Match delivers better player agency and has the strongest match 3 mechanics than competitors. Resulting in the best performing match 3 game in the market and steadily growing MoM.
Royal Match! — Overview
A traditional match 3 game in which player collects stars for completing levels and then use them to complete rooms.
Coins — A hard currency. Player collects coins from levels, rewards or IAP and use them for extra moves, refill lives and consumables.
Meta — Decoration and Collection
What was different in Royal Match?
- Optimized traditional match-3 gameplay
- Reoccurring live events
1. Optimized traditional match-3 gameplay
Royal Match’s tremendous success is achieved through optimization while solving player difficulties and challenges in this genre.
- Look and feel- Along with best-in-class art, Royal Match uses bold, bigger and distinctive puzzle pieces than most of the switcher in the market. Players can quickly analyze and access the board every move, delivering the strong match 3 core experience.
2. Fastest Switcher with quick and controlled animations. Power-ups and combos’ animations are short, fluidic just enough to satisfy players. Even Level objective screen is removed during retries thus players spend absolutely no time outside level during retires. This reduces the total time spent per attempt and increases the no. of attempts.
3. Improved Board mechanics- Royal match addressed two major players frustrations with the board. Concurrent matching: while cascading, players can make matches to control the outcome chain matches rather than waiting for the animation to complete, providing better player agency.
Shuffle- Royal Match doesn’t force players to use a booster on the board when there is no match, but it rather shuffles instantly rewarding players effort.
4. Generous Powerups- Unlike rival games, players can invoke numerous powerups in a level.
Rarity is rather linked directly to potency of the powerups. Ex-Bombs- Extremely hard to invoke but have great blast radius. Smart — Ex. Propellers- hits the most beneficial objective and even change course during cascading.
5. Level design and obstacles execution- As we progress, the game introduces new mechanics and challenges to beat. Royal Match does nothing new, but execution delivers whole new experience for players. This diversity of levels and combination of different mechanics keeps Royal Match fresh in the later game.
Bonus levels are fun
Royal Match introduced new type of levels. Bonus and Story mode levels. These levels occurs periodically in the game which acts as a breather for players especially after hard levels.
Bonus Levels- Occurs every 10 levels and rewards players with the coins they collected. No goal for the level. Payout ranges between 300–450 coins per bonus level.
King’s Nightmare- A mini game in which players need to save King Robert. Represents the acquisition ad. Skippable levels with fixed reward.
2. Great Retention hook through concurrent Live Events
Royal match has many concurrent events but in Two types-
01. Competitive events- Typically Leaderboard events like King’s cup, Sky race, Team battles. Improves player engagement through social competence. In King’s Cup, King’s Cup is a time-limited tournament where 50 players compete against each other. Beating a level grants a cup and based on number of cups they collect players will rank. Typically runs for a week.
02. Challenge events- Typically solo objectives like book of treasure, Propeller challenges, Lightning Rush etc. In Book Of Treasure-Players can progress by destroying Books (Red Puzzle pieces) in levels they won.
Live Events improves Player Engagement
Players churn in a regular match-3 game after their lives runs out. In Royal Match players are provided with infinite lives and resources so they can play the game for a set amount of time every day.
OK! Royal Match is fantastic, but how does it monetize ? Royal Match follows a typical match 3 monetization model-which is Refill Lives and Pay to continue a failing level.
Ex-In a challenge event called — Lightning Rush
Reoccurring Live events — A Retention hook
With Live events, players get additional reasons and motivations to play levels, like Additional rewards (x times), better progression rate, event completion, team activities etc.
Monetization
Royal Match follows a typical match 3 monetization model which is Refill Lives and Pay to continue a failing level
Offers packs to Mimic event experience
Through events, Royal Match teases players with the unlimited fun before presenting a similar experience for purchase. Hence RPD is around a staggering $9.25
Store Visibility and event specific offers
Multiple shop offers and promotions improves shop visibility for the players and increase the chance of IAP.
Key Takeaways
In conclusion, Dream has established a new standard for a switcher. They created a polished puzzle product that seems like it is on the player side and wants you to win.
Optimized traditional match 3 game and better player agency delivered a whole new match 3 experience.
Reoccurring events provides more reasons for the players to stay in the game that leads to increased session length and attempts.
Multiple shop offers and promotions improves shop visibility for the players and increases the chance of IAP.
As a next step, developers can create meaningful building meta for even bigger success in the market.
