Written by Laura Taranto and Ahmetcan Demirel, both senior product leaders with vast experience in casual games.

When we covered Royal Kingdom almost a year ago, we asked the question: “When you’ve reached the top echelons of success, where is there to go next?”. Dream Games, the developer of the massive Match-3 success, Royal Match, is still attempting to answer this (difficult) question. 

King, when they ruled the casual puzzle space, chose to expand the breadth of their casual portfolio: Bubble Witch Saga (bubble shooter), Pet Rescue Saga (collapse/blast), Diamond Digger Saga (digging/water flow mechanic), Blossom Blast Saga (linker), Pyramid Solitaire, etc. Even today, they are more or less sticking to this plan through Candy Crush 3D and Candy Crush Blast; the highlighted difference is instead of creating a new IP, they are leveraging Candy Crush Saga’s brand popularity and applying the Tiffi we know and love to both new-ish and established game mechanics. 

Playrix, on the other hand, fell into Match-3 after stumbling with hidden object, and committed to the engine. While presently, with Township, and retroactively Homescapes, we see the first explorations into non-Match-3 engines, this pivot only occurred after focusing almost entirely on one game mechanic. 

Dream, based on only two live games, makes it more difficult to determine what strategy they intend to employ to stay number one. Expanding further back makes it a bit easier to see the tea leaves. The studio, formerly from Peak (Toy and Toon Blast), made bank on blast. But despite the success of those two hit blast games, when working with a studio of their own, they moved to Match-3. Our current hypothesis is that they are sticking with what they know and attempting a familiar but refreshed take: Stick within the bounds of Match-3 while micro-experimenting within the levels and metagame to capture a wider audience. The similarities and differences between Royal Match and Royal Kingdom, including the changes within their latest update, fail to suggest otherwise. To properly measure the outcomes of their experiments, the player’s first introduction to Version 2 of the game begins with a hard reset, one year into its soft launch.

How has Royal Kingdom done so far?

It wouldn’t be a Deconstructor of Fun article without some Sensor Tower love. Looking at the numbers, the first soft launch had three phases:

1. April 2023 - Aug 2023: New content and new features (events)

2. Aug 2023 - Dec 2023: Only content updates

3. Dec 2023 - April 2024: No updates

This suggests that the game lacked the same uptake and momentum that Royal Match saw. At its peak in December, the game earned an estimated $1,035,000 in IAP revenue or about $35,000 a day, which is very modest for a Match-3 game, especially for what looks like a UA campaign burst the month prior. 

It’s a rough cycle - The early bleak download performance could be explained mostly by User Acquisition issues, likely due to the game not returning a reasonable return on ad spend. Match-3 games attract some of the most costly players, and acquiring users isn't as affordable as it was 4-5 years ago (expect CPIs upwards of $25+ for high value players, even higher during surge pricing). Their estimated ARPDAU in the UK was low and slow compared to other games ($0.14 vs $0.25+) over a similar timeframe. Which brings us to…

The Kingdom Turnaround Project

We discussed how each new top-grossing game raises the bar for player expectations. Dream was the last to do this successfully for Match-3. Modern Community (AppLovin) and Township (Playrix) attempt to meet and exceed that bar, but have yet to do so purely on an execution level. Every upcoming Match-3 pitch deck still uses Royal Match as their puzzle engine comp, for good reason. When you’re Dream making Royal Kingdom, you’re already starting with the best engine in the market, as well as some of the best, if not the best, level design. So why did this not go to plan?

Let’s do a recap of Royal Kingdom v1 and what changed in v2. 

1. Engine and Puzzle Design

The campaign engine and level design are identical. The levels remain unchanged between the two versions. In fact, the core gameplay experience remained so intact that the first 13 levels were exactly preserved down to the last item on the board.  

2. Meta Game / UX / UI

Here’s where the interesting changes begin. Starting with the 10,000 foot view (or 3048 meters), a new “World” expansion makes its debut.  Instead of fixing one large outdoor kingdom, you are on a quest to restore many themed kingdoms (Ice, Jungle, etc). Variety is the spice of life as well as the incentive to keep engagement flying high through mid to end game. 

Players still progress through the metagame in the same way: restoring their kingdom by spending potions earned from beating levels. However, this new version of the game changes the appearance of the kingdom. Previously, the game provided a close-up view of each restoration. Now, it offers a more distant bird’s-eye view, concentrating on completing entire districts rather than focusing on every individual restoration within a district.

Zooming into the details, another smaller but noticeable change minimizes the visualization of inputs/outputs from the player. While v1 had the economy in the forefront, v2 brings it back to where most other puzzle games keep it - on the sidelines. Likely to reduce confusion and keep the UI “clean” or easy to parse.

3. Economy

The core loop is the same, however, the progression balancing (potion outputs) has changed. Most notably, potions were removed from the final win streak tier, nerfing ‘skill’ based progression. This ultimately reduces the number of progression outliers and aligns players to a more linear (matching) progression rate. Players that were miles ahead in the meta in v1 will match the progression rate more closely with the rest of the player population in v2. This makes it easier to balance the campaign and matchmake players for Live Events (Lava Quest, Episode/Level Race, etc).

4. Special Levels

Royal Kingdom v1 introduced boss levels, occurring every 10 levels. Players were presented with a pseudo-PvP scenario challenging other players and/or friends. They could either challenge another player or seek revenge against those who had previously attacked them successfully (which in turn destroyed the main castle in the metagame requiring potions to fix). That design took a page from puzzle RPGs such as Empires & Puzzles or Puzzles & Survival; at times, it was even reminiscent of Supercell’s Clash Quest. Every move on the board, which occupies the lower half of the screen, transforms into an attack on the enemy in the upper half of the screen.

In v2, gone are the friends and other players representing the enemy to vanquish, replaced by a new villain called the “Dark King”. This transition from PvP to PvE reduces the amount of social gameplay in Royal Kingdom but increases the narrative and nicely frames a larger player objective: restore the kingdoms AND prevail against the Dark King.

The other notable change introduced with these special levels is related to level design. In this updated version of the game, a new type of enemy is introduced: the Golem. Adding Golems completely alters the gameplay experience for special levels since they can move vertically. The initial version already introduced obstacles that moved horizontally in various ways, adding depth to the level design. However, none of them would interact with the lower half of the screen where the players make moves. Players weren’t threatened by the enemies on the upper half; they were merely targets to destroy. Golems, on the other hand, start moving from the upper half of the screen and take one step every move until they reach the board. Once they reach the board, they spread ivy through the column they occupy.

This alone adds a lot more fun to the special levels than before. The levels feel much more dynamic now, with an inherent yet obscured timer mechanic. Including these ‘hidden’ timers in puzzle levels is a subject for debate, since it heightens tension, potentially dissuading "escapist" players seeking relaxation. Given the context of special levels where you're demolishing castles and battling a dark king, Golems feel like a natural addition. There's no visible timer on the screen, which might have a negative impact, but observing the Golems move one step after each move is intuitive enough. You can see the bomb ticking. Next is a clever detail in how Golems function. Players can defeat them right before they spread ivy. This embodies the "near win/fail" moment we often discuss in puzzle level design. If everything aligns perfectly, players can defeat Golems during their final animation just before they spread ivy on the board. This creates a brilliant moment of triumph for the player, adding a significant depth to special levels.

5. Live Events

Royal Kingdom didn't have a wide range of events running before this recent hard reset. The game's sole event was the "Grand Tournament," a slightly altered version of an event seen in Royal Match. And since it was the only event running for a whole year, the game felt a little empty compared to other puzzle titles. So, even for players who really liked the game and wanted to stick around, there wasn’t much to do. Does this mean Royal Kingdom didn’t meet Dream's expected KPIs for additional live events or was there simply a lack of resources to implement them? It was likely the former; adding live events will bolster an already performant game, but will do little to turn around mediocre KPIs. Dream is smart enough to know this and likely paused to focus on making the core and meta gameplays solid.

Will this Kingdom reap the harvest?

The changes mark a step in the right direction for Dream’s second game or Royal Match’s spiritual successor, but is unlikely to “pop”. Investing in one’s strengths is the right approach, Dream IS the king of Match-3, but they will still need to find a solid point of differentiation, or unique selling point (USP), to have a positive network effect and grow their audience and their revenue through another title. 

The themes are still so similar so unless they throw their weight behind the new Kingdoms in the World and the Dark King levels and use those as the foundation for their UA creative, they’ll be competing against themselves acquiring users. Royal Kingdom is like a younger sibling trying to emulate its big brother, Royal Match, as it matures. However, it needs to learn to stand on its own feet in the competitive Match-3 market.

What would be great to see next is a big swing - they are some of the best minds in the market to figure out what is the next great social envelope. Or, if they are up for even more of a challenge, figure out how to better connect the Match-3 engine with the tempting world they’ve created - how can the Ice World affect gameplay in the engine once unlocked? Royal Match is in it for the long haul, hopefully granting them the freedom to truly bring a new experience via Royal Kingdom to players. Royal Kingdom v2 isn’t quite there yet.