Early this year the Turkish mobile startup Dream Games has raised $50 million in new funding ($57.5M total funding), despite having only soft-launched its first game, Royal Match. Dream Games was founded by two of Peak’s former Product Directors. The latest funding round was led by Index Ventures, a high-profile VC firm known for investing in some of the biggest companies in the games industry: King, Roblox, and Supercell. The round also saw contributions from two top tier funds; Balderton Capital and Makers Fund

Dream Games (who are hiring…) is now responsible for setting a record for the single largest Series A round ever raised by a Turkish company. Thus a full breakdown of the newly released game is warranted. Especially since the game seeks to dominate the puzzle genre, which is the largest and arguably the most competitive genre in mobile games.

This article was written by Laura Taranto, an experienced product management leader. Special thanks to Katijah Wellings Thomas, Max McCall, Jay Foreman, and Michail Katkoff. 

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Royal Match

Royal Match is a perfect example of finding success through improvements  -  not step-change innovation - cherry-picking the strongest mechanics from the best games to create a new top game. Start with the speed, fluidity, and palette of Toon Blast, mix with the level diversity, power-ups and tap-to-activate from Homescapes, sift out some minor frustration, and voila!  You have Royal Match. 

This new switcher star feels fast and fair while also giving players more agency. Power-ups lean generous and clear more of the board compared to rival switchers from Playrix and King. Quick animations and concurrent matching result in fast gameplay; it is one of the fastest switchers live. Well-designed levels ending in ‘almost win’ increase the value of the out-of-moves purchase. Gone are the forced use of special pieces if no other moves are available. Nothing that Royal Match does is new - most switchers build upon each other - but the execution creates a better player experience than that of rivals’.

The meta is a combination of social and decorative-lite, which, like its switcher, is formed from a combination inspired by Toon Blast and Coin Master. Its live operations are still in their infancy, but I expect to see more events appear soon. Royal Match soft-launched in July 2020 in Canada, Turkey, and the UK. Early revenue per download data shows that it outperforms other Classic Match-3 titles and is as strong as full Puzzle & Decorate games, suggesting that players like the direction. The right improvements, as seen here, can yield a beautifully executed and promising new game. 

But before we dive deep into the deconstruction of the game, let us take a moment to look at the market and the history of puzzle games on mobile. This will give you, our dear reader, a better understanding of the potential of the game.

Match-3 Games on Mobile

Puzzle, out of all of the genres and mobile, is the largest one when looking at IAPs only. It made $5.1 billion in 2020, growing 29% compared to 2019. In casual games overall, puzzle games account for just over 50% of all revenue for 2020.

The majority of growth in 2020 in Match-3 games came from Tile Blast, Puzzle & Decorate, and classic match-3 games. Playrix is the strongest developer by revenue in the puzzle space, taking roughly 35% of the revenue share, followed by King’s just under 29% and Zynga at around 15%. 

Despite numerous red ocean/blue ocean presentations, the more revenue puzzle makes, the more developers seem to want to make puzzle games, increasing the competition for playing time and, in the case of switchers.

For more thorough market analysis, please read 2021 Predictions #1 Puzzle Games Becomes the Top Grossing Genre on Mobile)

While King, Playrix, and Zynga (after the Peak acquisition) have the largest share of the revenue, it is split many ways among many games.  While the top games for Puzzle & Decorate have been fixed over 2020 (Homescapes, Gardenscapes and Fishdom are the top 3), Classic Match-3 has had more movement with Harry Potter: Puzzle & Spells breaking into position 3 just as 2020 ended. This is no easy feat and suggests that there is more opportunity to disrupt the top in Classic Match-3 as opposed to Puzzle & Decorate. It also could be a reason why Dream went with a strong switcher and traded the full-decorate meta with a lite version. 

Even though Candy Crush Saga had roaring success with the match-3 switcher, King was not the first company to create the mechanic. In order to show the evolution of the Switcher, I took a walk down memory lane and created a timeline of various popular mechanics used in today’s switchers. The switcher architect is actually considered Eugene Alemzhin, who created a game called Shariki in 1988. PopCap, inspired by Shariki, released Bejeweled (née Diamond Mine) in 2001. There are 5 games from that series that contributed to what we consider the foundation of a “good” switcher today:

Bejeweled (2001)

• Claim to Fame: Power Gems 3x3 Square Blast 

• Bejeweled was fairly straightforward. In classic mode, the goal is to match or more, earning points per match and bonuses for cascades until you reach a certain threshold. Interestingly, a shuffle would result in a Game Over.

Bejeweled 2 (2004)

• Claim to Fame: Hypercubes, aka the Color Collector and Rocks (obstacles)

• Bejeweled 2 took a bit more risk and added more modes of play, the Hypercube (a Color Collector), and introduced an obstacle: a rock that had to be removed with a power-up. 

Bejeweled Twist (2008)

• Claim to Fame: Rotational and matchless piece swapping

• Bejeweled Twist, a spin-off of Bejeweled 2, went in a different direction allowing players to spin a wheel of 4 pieces, making matchless moves. The biggest addition was Lightning, which replaced the Color Collector as the result of a match-5. It behaves similarly to today’s line blast. 

Bejeweled Blitz (2008)

• Claim to Fame: 2 Color Collector matches clearing the board

• Bejeweled Blitz finally allowed a fruitful combination of 2 Color Collectors - a full board clear. 

Bejeweled 3 (2010)

• Claim to Fame: 3x3 and 1x1 Vertical and Horizontal Line Blasts

• Bejeweled 3’s Quest mode experimented with obstacles and modes of play, one of which, Stratamax, became the main level mode of Candy Crush Saga. 

For a more in-depth look, you can refer to a table here. 

Bejeweled 2, Twist, and 3 had puzzle/challenge/quest modes that manipulated the goals and rules into the shape of the switcher with which we are more familiar. Bejeweled 3’s Quest mode is of particular interest as they introduced modes that influence the obstacles we know and love today:

Mode: Butterflies

• Description: Butterflies were moving color pieces that you had to match before they reached the top of the board.

• Similar to Today’s: Drop-items (Candy Crush Soda’s bubble bears), minus the color

Mode: Gold Rush

• Description: Match-next-to to clear or collect. 

• Ice (Candy Soda, Farm Heroes), Marmalade (Candy Crush), Boxes (Homescapes), Vase (Royal Match), widely used in match-3 games

Mode: Alchemy

• Description: Matching would spread gold across the row and column. 

• Similar to Today’s: Jam/Jelly (Candy Franchise), Grass (Homescapes)

Mode: Stratamax

• Description: Clear X gems in Y moves. This is similar to the main function of current switcher games (complete X objective in Y moves).

• Similar to Today’s: Current level setup (clear objectives in X moves or less)

Mode: Balance

• Description: Collect 2 colors of gems roughly at the same pace.

• No similar exists today

Mode: Avalanche

• Description: Gems fall randomly to fill the board. Collect X gems before the board fills up completely.

• No similar exists today

Mode: Buried Treasure

• Description: Present day match-over mechanic. Items are hidden on the board and the player must match over tiles to unearth them.

• Similar to Today’s: Bears, Fish Packets (Candy Soda), Gnomes (Gardenscapes), Sunglasses (Project Makeover)

Mode: Time Bombs

• Bombs that count down until they reach zero and cause a level to fail. 

• Similar to Today’s: Candy Bombs (Candy Crush), Cropsie Bombs (Farm Heroes)

Mode: Poker

• Description: Collect gems to form Poker hands. For a detailed explanation, see here.

• No similar exists today

Mode: Ice Storm

• Description: Ice creeps up over time (not moves) and the player needs to match over it before it covers the board. 

• Similar to Today’s: Honey/Chocolate (Candy Franchise), Foam (Homescapes)

Mode: Wall Blast

• Description: Only special gems destroy the wall. Used in most puzzle games.

• Similar to Today’s: Fortified licorice (Candy Franchise), Vaults (Royal Match) 

While PopCap and the Bejeweled series’s creators were the trailblazers of the switcher, Candy Crush Saga (King 2012) filled in a few gaps to add design longevity and elevate the overall player experience: power-ups and varied board sizes. Previously, matching 2 power-ups aside from the Color Collector didn’t yield more than the value of the two power-ups. Now, players could clear and collect even greater areas with a strategic mix of special pieces. This increased incentive to create those pieces. While Bejeweled 2’s Puzzle mode experimented with “puzzle sizes”, it was done in a way that kept a full board available but limited the number of pieces in play. Candy Crush Saga fully experimented with board size and connectivity. Boards came in different shapes and sizes and in some cases, were divided into separate portions. These types of changes grant designers flexibility and expand their design-set enabling them to create more interesting (and fun) levels.

(And, of course, they added the Saga map.) 

In addition, what was previously seen as a single game mode now became a standalone obstacle. Each of these “new” obstacles could be used and/or combined in ways to create unique levels - a critical part of making a puzzle game feel fun. Most players do not want to play the same level multiple times in a row. If a game developer has 10 unique obstacles, assuming all obstacles combine well, and each level uses 2 different obstacles, then you immediately have 45 unique experiences. A well-designed obstacle can also play differently depending on where it’s located in the level.  Now, take into consideration board size, spawn rates (of pieces), and the randomness of the switcher. This generates a myriad of different challenges without requiring the same amount of development effort. (Though it does require clever level designers to wield these combinatorics and a well-crafted tool to make levels.) 

Candy Crush Soda Saga launched 2 years after CCS in 2014, devised new obstacles, modes, and boards: square matches to make fish, changing the direction of gravity and multi-boards. While not all of these functions are used in the top switchers today, the game’s success proved that variety and taking risks to pay off. 

King held the top tier for puzzles until 2016, when Playrix’s Gardenscapes introduced tapping, creating a step-change across the genre. Unlike the Candy Franchises, Gardenscapes power-ups were no longer tied to colors and could be activated at any point in the level. This is a change that grants users even more agency in play. The game also experimented with removing indirect triggering of the Color Collector (as was also done in the Bejeweled series) as well as the line blast. Gardenscapes focused predominantly on square blasts, scaling the effects by size cleared. The rarer the power-up, the larger blast radius it has. No sooner had Gardenscapes launched, Playrix released Homescapes, which followed Soda’s switcher recipe more closely while keeping tap-to-activate power-ups.  

Royal Match - It’s in the Core

Regardless of whether or not the Dream founders specifically worked on Lost Jewels during their time at Peak, their flawless execution of the Royal Match switcher makes me inclined to believe they benefited from some learnings.

The strongest match-3 cores have a particular look and feel. The execution of the art directly affects the success of the design. Bright, saturated pieces that are distinct in both color and shape are good, as players can quickly assess the board (see below to compare different switchers). Games that fail to create piece distinction make levels difficult: it is harder and slower to find moves and see shapes that create power-ups. Piece size is also a factor - Royal Match uses bigger pieces than most other switcher games. Friction may seem innocuous, but friction increases over time. Similarly, the contrast of the background, board, and pieces is important; a minor change in grey can make a big difference for the “pop” of the pieces. 

9 Boards Ranked for Clarity

Speed has always been important for puzzle games. Royal Match does this exceptionally well. This is one, if not the, fastest switchers available (Anipop (海滨消消乐), pictured below, is also incredibly fast). The power up, obstacle and piece-drop animations are short and the debris is just enough to feel satisfying yet not overwhelm the board. Other games come close, but usually have one part that is slow - for example, Candy Crush Friends Saga is incredibly quick, except for the in-level character animations.  There is nothing worse than having to watch and wait for a slow sequence of animations to finish moving the board forward. Furthermore, Royal Match also removed loading between level retries and as well as the goal swipe (the banner that appears at the start of the level showing the level objectives), reducing the total time per attempt.

Like Homescapes and Candy Crush Soda, Royal Match allows for concurrent matching. Concurrent matching is permitting matches while the board is advancing, i.e. in Candy Crush, if you make a move that sets off a cascade, you cannot make another move until that cascade and all affected board objects are settled. By comparison, in Royal Match, I can make matches regardless of whether there is a cascade of other movements on the board.  Concurrent matching benefits the game in 2 ways: as a player, I feel I have more control over the outcome of the level (I’m not forced to wait until the board settles) and I feel I can prolong cascades. The Cascades, as I’ve acknowledged before (read: Can Hay Day Pop Solve the Puzzle?), are important to creating a fun level. There is one downside, which I’ve experienced, in that you can “waste” a move if you attempt to match a piece that is part of another cascade sequence. A small price to pay. 

At the bare minimum, games need to feel winnable to feel fun. Developers must find the harmonious balance between ‘too easy’ and ‘pure frustration’. Royal Match, unlike other games in the market, not only does this but takes it a step further by leaning heavily on the side of the player with power ups and edge cases.  This is seen in four ways in Royal Match: 

1) Royal Match is generous with their power ups, specifically the bomb. A power ups’ potency is (usually) directly linked to its rarity. The less likely it is to create on the board, the more powerful it is. Fish/Propellers are a slight exception as they may not be powerful in the sense of board clearing, but they can be immensely useful in affecting the board outside your current match radius. A breakdown of how powerful each square blast is can be seen in the comparison chart below. Royal Match’s power-ups are the most vigorous by the size of tiles cleared.

 2) Unlike earlier switchers, Royal Match does not force you to use a power-up if no other matches are available. This is another nod to player agency.  It will shuffle the board and allow you to save your power-up for later. This is important for levels that have a small starting space to work with and a Win Streak feature.

3) The power-ups are smart, especially the Propellers. If the original target of the Propeller disappears before the Propeller arrives, for whatever reason (cascade, another power-up going off), the Propeller actually changes course and picks another target that is better for the player to complete his or her objectives. This change especially benefits players in combos. I have not seen this in any other switchers and it makes me happy every time it happens!

4) A small mention, but worth pointing out nonetheless, production obstacles such as the Mailbox and the Top Hat (similar to Gardenscapes’s Flower Patches or Farm Heroes Saga’s Water Buckets), shut off when enough of a material is produced. The game actually tells me when I can stop matching next to an obstacle without me having to count. In the gif, the mailbox slot closes once the player has collected enough letters. (This gif is intentionally sped up 2x of normal game speed)

Not only do the levels feel winnable, but the game feels like it's been designed with players in mind, even down to minor power up and obstacle logic details. 

Royal Match has nailed the feeling of “almost there”. The success of the extra moves purchase relies heavily on the ability of the player to see their road to victory in five moves or less.  If a player feels like they cannot win in a few moves or strategize how they will win in a few moves, paying extra is a hard sell. The majority of casual puzzle game players will not spend, so when they do, developers want the experience to be positive. If a level can be designed to be won with just one extra purchase of moves, it demonstrates repeatable incentive to spend and a clear link between end of moves purchase and winning. Designing for this is an important (and not easily obtained) skill required of level designers and every puzzle game should be focusing on how to improve this.  Royal Match, overall and in my play, had a majority of almost wins that only needed one or two more moves to win. 

VIDEO: RoyalMatch_CloseFail.mp4

Bonus Levels - A New Hard Currency Source

An addition that will hopefully be cloned going forward is the rare Bonus Levels. These levels are an absolute treat to play and surprisingly unusual to find in any top casual puzzle games from Western developers. I’ve only seen this in Line games (specifically POKOPANG). Dream decided to add these levels as a coin source (see below for economy map), and it is a generous one compared to the standard post-level coin drop. Coins, for those that have not yet played, are the game’s hard currency and used to purchase lives and moves (if you fail to beat a level). These bonus levels are relatively easy and my payout ranges between 300-700 coins per Bonus Level (a standard end-of-level moves purchase is 900 coins). It is a nice reprieve from the challenging levels and I feel like I’ve earned those coins.

In sum, Dream has created a new baseline for a switcher. They solved many minor player frustrations creating a polished puzzle product that feels like it’s on your side - it wants you to win. It even gives you coins.

About The Meta

In this exploration of Royal Match, I think the main appeal of the game is the puzzle and not the meta. For that reason, I’ll give a high-level summary of how the meta works but not dive into the same level of detail. 

Dream opted for a social/decorative meta, with the simplicity of Coin Master (minus the upgrades) and the social/team focus of Toon Blast. I would classify Royal Match as “puzzle & decorate lite”. The Coin Master decorative meta has pre-set locations for each item and there is no customization. The decision to take inspiration from Coin Master as opposed to Gardenscapes likely has to do with 1) the content pipeline required to maintain a puzzle and decorate game.  If I wanted to keep the team small, investing in the core and finding artful ways to reduce the work to maintain a meta would be a priority. And 2) a desire to capture the Classic Match-3, as opposed to Puzzle & Decorate, market. 

Events, and overall live operations, are critical today to a game’s success. In the early soft launch phase, Royal Match only had a few events, namely weekly tournaments for individuals and teams and win streak. They’ve since expanded to include different collection events (collect red pieces or Propellers). Compared to the rest of the puzzle games, their events selection is light and an area they should focus on increasing. 

Additional event types will increase session length and ideally reduce churn when a player runs out of things to do, given the light meta. Currently, when a player runs out of lives, the game comes to a halt. Saga and ‘Scapes games solved this by adding contemporaneous side progression events, most commonly on weekly cycles; Evermerge with mini-merge events. Given the game only has ~600 levels at the time of writing and therefore a higher than average difficulty curve, there were many times my progress was throttled and there was nothing else I could do in the game. This is ripe for opportunities to expand events and give players a reason to stay. 

As for Teams, it worked well for both Blast games and is now a standard feature in most puzzle games in some variation. It’s simple, relatively easy to make, and aside from scheduling events, has a light content treadmill.

Here’s How Match Royale Can Further Improve

For Royal Match’s switcher to stay successful in particular, I would focus on level variety. While the levels are great already, more variety will add to the longevity of the content. Folks at Dream could add obstacles: portals, power up spawners, and Soda’s ice bears (objects that need to be “dug” up or have matched over them). Or they could add growers (Honey/Chocolate/Foam) and spreaders (Jam). 

The river (or conveyor belt), which I believe originated in Farm Heroes Saga, is also a good board modifier if used appropriately. Rivers shouldn’t make a board too complex or require too much strategy. For example, rivers combined with drop obstacles can make a level a lot more difficult. But when combined with multistage maps, obstacles can act as an extra move and often help.

Multi boards are a divisive topic as they can be a nightmare if you are a player that plans their moves ahead. Personally, as a player, I love them, but some of my fellow designers do not like them at all and, if designed poorly, have a compounding effect (i.e. so if a poor level performs 2x worse than a regular level, a poor multi-board level would be 3-4x worse).  

Lastly, almost all levels require a full board clear to win - in other words, the objectives always include clearing every obstacle on the board.  Some of the fun levels in Candy, Candy Soda, and Homescapes require specific objectives reached while the other obstacles are part of the puzzle. These types of levels can feel like the player is actually solving a puzzle and add to the variety of play. 

New King?

Royal Match is snappy, smooth, and delightful to play. Dream Games should be proud of their game, and every dollar they earn is well-deserved.

It’s hard to improve on the core gameplay of puzzle games, but Royal Match’s approach to UI, animations, obstacles, level design, and economy are all meaningful improvements on what has come before. Their story proves that you don’t need to create an entirely new core or meta concept to reach success. Prioritizing player experience through small improvements your audience wants can delight and succeed even in a red ocean. 

For Royal Match to break into the top 5 of Classic Match-3, I expect them to dive headfirst into expanding their events reserve and ensure they are delivering level varies with each update. I hope they do this quickly. Core gameplay mechanics change quickly over time and what used to be best in class shifts to a major stepping stone for the next best game. Puzzle in particular evolves quickly as every new game provides a live prototype of an idea for another studio or company to improve upon.

Perhaps the next step-change innovation in switchers is not player-facing, but actually the ability to create a flexible engine that can keep up with all of the new and exciting systems and features that studios launch. I fully expect to see this switcher copied in new games going forward and - I hope - some of the quality of life improvements retrofitted to existing top games.

From the marketing perspective, the game does everything right to be a mass-market hit. It has a very broad appeal, which makes it rely less on specific campaigns for specific demographics and/or whales. With the latest funding round, Dream Games has also the needed budget to spend more on user acquisition testing.

IDFA deprecation is the biggest risk for scaling Royal Match. I don’t have a great answer on how they plan to scale. I think I’m a bit optimistic that a game focusing on the right KPIs/ROI will make spending a lot on user acquisition justifiable, as opposed to trying to optimize through audience targeting. But the fact is that despite releasing a killer product, Dream Games doesn’t have an advantage in competing against its behemoth rivals - the Playrix, Zynga, and AppLovins of the World.