How To Overcome Post-Launch Slump - The Case of Merge Garden
Editors note:
The case of Merge Garden is super interesting. This game, which combines Match-3 core with merge progression originally launched globally in the second half of 2020. Just when the market was becoming overheated with the lockdowns and merge mechanics were the all-new rage among the players.
The game looked promising, scaling quickly towards $2M a month in revenue - a promising number for a smallish Finnish studio. The early traction was a strong signal to acquirers, prompting Israeli Plarium, known for its strategy and RPG games (such as RAID: Shadow Legends), to place the winning bid. Yet as soon as the acquisition became official, the game metrics hit a plateau followed by years of neither plummeting nor going through the roof.
The post-launch decline can happen to any product that finds its niche but struggles to soar any higher. But what makes this deconstruction imperative read for designers, product managers, marketers, and executives is how Futureplay Games with the support from Plarium doubled down on the game resulting in massive growth over two years after the launch of the game!
Futureplay, the developer behind Merge Garden, was acquired by Plarium in August of 2021. Given that the acquisition was announced then, it is probable that they were working on the deal between 6 to three months prior.
As the game’s revenue declined, Futureplay nor Plarium didn’t abandon it but kept making drastic improvements that eventually got the game back on the growth track and above.
To understand the changes that got the game from its post-launch slump to where it is now, we should take a look at two things:
what kind of game is Merge Gardens is
and what it was like before 2023.
Merge Garden before the Second Wind
If you started playing the game in 2020, you would have received a warm welcome to Grandma's cozy but unkempt garden from a cheerful hedgehog named Gatsby. He taught you how to merge flowers and get nectar to unlock new zones for you to explore. Naturally, you helped Grandma along the way. Merge Gardens followed in Merge Dragons’ footsteps quite closely, as it was the pioneer of the genre, but the games veered apart when it came to levels. Merge Dragons never strayed from merge mechanics and exclusively contained puzzles that players could solve by merging various items. Merge Gardens, on the other hand, took an unexpected turn and gave players Match 3 levels.
The core gameplay was true and tested Match-3 puzzle while the meta game was merge inspired.
The game combined two different core loops but didn't make either of them obligatory. It never set up "star" requirements, blocking your progress Playrix-style until you completed a certain number of levels, but it also didn't make you explore the garden just so you could keep playing Match 3. You were free to do whatever you felt like at any given moment. You decided how much time you'd spend swapping tiles or tending to your flowerbeds.
That said, there was a certain connection between the loops after all. You could find and upgrade Match 3 boosters by merging them together in the garden, and you got rewards for your garden at the end of each Match 3 level, just like in Merge Dragons.
To make progress in the garden, you had to increase your wildlife score—the total "power" of the flying creatures at your disposal. To do that, you had to either find or buy new eggs, hatch new flying creatures, and power them up by merging them together.
Grandma's tasks provided an additional incentive to keep going. As a reward for completing these tasks, you got stars (mergeable into bigger and better ones, of course)—something like lootboxes full of resources to help you develop your garden.
The primary pinch point of the game was storage. That's how most merge games work, especially the ones where you have to combine three objects and unlock new zones. To merge a new item, players needed to have 3 lower-tier items in their inventory—or even 5 if they wanted a merging "discount" for efficiency's sake. Over time, those items, as well as little submechanics (like generating new plants, getting wood and gold) ate up more and more storage space. The game offered players a dozen different solutions to that problem, and they had the option to spend Gems on all of them.
Buying extra zones
Skipping wildlife cooldowns to clean up locked cells with more efficiency
Buying new eggs
Buying bundles of flowers and/or nectar
Buying extra level-completion rewards
Every now and then the player would receive a bonus item in a special glass tube. The reward could be quite valuable, but you had to pay Gems to open the tube, and it took up just as much space as a real usable item
and so on
As for the Match 3 levels, the product relied on the classics as well. The pinch points were primarily moves, and to a lesser extent lives. Players could buy more moves if they had messed up, or they could stock up on boosters in advance to head that problem off.
Who played the game?
As of October 2020, the demographics of merge games were quite clear-cut.
For Merge Dragons, the pioneer of the Merge -3 genre—86% of the audience was female, with the primary age groups being 25 to 44 and 45+.
For Evermerge, a game that followed in Merge Dragons' footsteps—83% females with the primary age groups being 25 to 44 and 45+.
However, Merge Garden breaks this pattern, attracting a more equally distributed audience—56% female and 44% male. Nevertheless, the primary age groups remain the same.
This was an uncommon picture for merge games, but if we skip forward and take a look at the demographics in July 2023, it will become evident that the other products have managed to attract a few more male players.
The female part of the audience in Merge Dragons now makes up 73% of players, and a whopping 63% of Evermerge players are female.
Still, Merge Gardens has defended the title of "manliest merge game" among popular products, because women make up only 60% of its audience as of July 2023.
The 2023 Rebound
In the first half of 2023, Merge Gardens released an expertly produced trailer that could rival even the famous Merge Mansions ad campaign. It told the story of a bespectacled redheaded girl and the garden she inherited, typical of renovation games. In the trailer (the word seems fitting because the video really does look like it was made to promote a full-blown movie), future players see a lawyer named Rita escort Daisy, the main character, around the overgrown yard of her newly inherited yet decrepit mansion. Suddenly, right in the middle of the tour, Rita transforms into one of the intricate topiaries decorating the garden. Confused, Daisy reaches out and touches Rita's hand, and that's how she discovers her magical ability to de-bush people. Finally, the camera pans to show us numerous people-shaped bushes striking dramatic poses. It's clear there are many stories to uncover here.
Garden Of Mystery | Merge Gardens | Episode 1
But where's Gatsby? Where's Grandma?
That's the first and the most important part of the new success formula for Merge Gardens, 2023 edition.
The Narrative Twist
The game's previous characters were strictly utilitarian: they introduced players to the world and reacted as players explored the garden. This kind of approach would be fairly outdated in the modern mobile game market.
It's worth mentioning that Merge Mansion faced a similar issue a couple of years ago, so the developers at Supercell portfolio company Metacore, just a stone's throw away, decided to use existing characters to thicken the plot, while also adding some new ones. Merge Gardens, on the other hand, completely reimagined its whole narrative.
Gatsby the hedgehog had to make way for Daisy—a lively, resourceful girl who turns an abstract, cartoony house you don't really care about into a place that you actually want to renovate. Because now the mansion comes with a cute (and perhaps a bit sly) smile and twinkling eyes behind a pair of glasses.
It looks like the new mansion was inspired by Tactile’s Lily's Garden
The player’s exploration now has narrative depth. You're not just cleaning and decorating the grounds—you're saving people from a curse and getting to know the mansion through them, with their stories spanning a whole century. The topiaries have become a gameplay force driving players to clean up the garden, as the figures peeking out of the fog draw your attention and make you want to unlock new zones.
The numerous dialogues spur players on, too, especially at the start of the game. Utilitarian lines have been replaced with lines that help you get to know the game's characters.
To support the new narrative emphasis, the developers introduced several new features and reimagined some old ones:
character cards—short bios with animated character models. You get them when a new character is introduced, e.g., when Daisy de-bushes yet another person. Players can see the locked cards too, which motivates them to advance the story. It also lets them track their progress.
there are now memories—small story beats. You unlock them by completing Match 3 levels. They facilitate player engagement and retention, just like the character cards.
the gardener (you have to free him from the curse first, naturally). He's the daily quest giver who gives you the chance to exchange certain items for new eggs.
Merge Gardens, Enhanced Edition
The game's visuals have undergone numerous changes. The Merge Gardens of 2023 looks like a remake of the 2020 game. The initial Playrix-style fruit on the Match 3 boards have been replaced with tiles that make much more sense in the new mystical mystery setting—items such as books, cameras, and hats. The UI has also undergone a facelift, all the icons becoming smaller, brighter, and more streamlined, which gives them a more modern look.
And it's not just about the game's style becoming more mature—the way it feels has changed, too. Haptic feedback, effects, and UI—all of these elements are crisper and brighter now.
Before
After
Before
After
Narrative Marketing
The third part of the Merge Gardens 2023 formula is the promotion strategy. Aside from connecting the game's introduction to its gameplay, the narrative became a bridge between the game itself and its ads, creating a truly seamless player experience. When you first install Merge Gardens, you find yourself at the exact point where the viral trailer leaves off. The trailer is such an integral part of the game that there is a YouTube link embedded right into the diary's UI.
And speaking of YouTube, right when the product started actively buying traffic, the team created an official @MergeGardens channel. They still use it to post videos.
They also based their site's landing page off the main trailer: https://www.mergegardens.com/
While the game was still being remade, the team posted lots of announcements on their official Facebook page, teasing the upcoming changes and saying a heart-warming goodbye to the old character roster. Futureplay is pretty active on social media in general; their efforts to increase Merge Gardens brand recognition also include official Twitter and Instagram accounts.
The combination of putting additional focus on brand promotion and the new approach to marketing campaigns caused game installations to skyrocket. I find this case interesting enough to keep watching this product's progress in the future. When it comes to performance marketing, you have to be willing to reevaluate your tactics frequently, but for now, Merge Gardens has been successful in promoting itself through gameplay and cinematic trailers instead of the more simple but original ad campaigns.
The Story-Driven Gameplay
Has Merge Gardens' gameplay changed since 2020? Tough question. At first glance, the answer would seem to be no. The garden-clearing merge mechanic still has you harvesting nectar from flowers with the help of various flying creatures so you can clear locked cells. The map layout has stayed the same, too, and even the Match 3 levels with their lives and boosters are still there.
Nevertheless, the evil vines are in the details, and a closer look reveals tremendous change. The team has implemented a tiny new feature—Daisy has a character level (which is really the player’s level, of course). This is now the game feature that keeps players from accessing new zones, rather than the total power of the flying creatures at their disposal. Before, you could play the merging part of the game to earn gold to buy new eggs (or use Gems to speed up the process), increase your wildlife score, and unlock the next zone. You didn't have to deal with Match 3 at all if you didn't want to.
But now, to level up Daisy, you have to complete quests (the kind that Grandma use to give), and those quests include playing Match 3 levels. This way, the two independent core mechanics have been joined by a missing link. You aren’t forced to grind Match 3 levels to accumulate some unique resource, but you won't be able to flat-out ignore them either.
Still, the resource scarcity model is still the same—players have to keep dealing with the lack of free space in the garden and buy extra moves for Match 3.
The Fifth Item
As we all know, merging is more powerful when you merge five items instead of three—you earn a bonus for doing so. The fifth item merged into the new Merge Gardens success formula is wide-reaching LiveOps events and monetization.
The product has been live for several years now, so it has accumulated a big pool of LiveOps events common to both genres. Merge events alternate and are sometimes combined with Match 3 sequences or events where you need to use explosive boosters.
All the events received refreshed visuals and narrative elements. They've been carefully scheduled in a way that prompts players to prolong their game session and check in several times a day. As a reward for joining events, you get to assemble a puzzle, which has been a popular mechanic lately. It fits the overall exploratory vibe of the story, as well.
The same goes for the game's monetization tactics. The bank's appearance and contents haven't changed, but players now enjoy a diverse array of in-game offers they can purchase outside of the bank. Futureplay has implemented the best practices of the industry to monetize the game. Players receive new offers supported by new characters, vibrant icons, and streamlined UI.
There's a Season Pass, Gacha mechanics, personal offers, cascade campaigns with free initial stages, a Gem subscription, and so on.
It's worth noting that Merge Gardens uses quite a bit of ads in its monetization strategy.
The ads in the game are casual:
a bubble floating above the playing board
a random watch-an-ad-to-get-a-booster offer right on the Match 3 board, as well as in certain other places where the offer has an obvious high situational value
a chance to open timed lootboxes on the playing board without spending Gems
extra Match 3 moves when you run out
a chance to skip wildlife cooldowns
a chance to get better rewards when you complete a level
New Lease on Life
The case of Merge Gardens is interesting because the product went through a soft reboot. Just like other mobile games on the market, it is experimenting by combining different core loops rather than fabricating entirely new genres and settings.
Initially, the two popular mechanics used to function as completely separate methods to attract players. This prevented the game from growing. Tweaking Merge Gardens without changing its essence completely has allowed Futureplay to elevate its product to the sixth-best among all other merge games.
Written by Kseniia Chursina, Senior Game Designer at Belka Games
