Guest Post by Ken Landen, an experienced figure in the gaming industry, currently serves as the CEO and Co-Founder of a startup that's currently in stealth mode.

With a career dating back to 2012, Ken has contributed to renowned gaming companies such as Blizzard, Scopely, and Kongregate. Now, he's embarking on a new venture, eager to bring fresh ideas and innovation to the gaming world.

Legend Of Mushroom has rapidly climbed the top grossing charts, notably in Tier 1 Asian markets like Japan and South Korea, primarily driven by revenue growth. The game features an ultra-simplistic idle gear collection and enhancement loop, where players progress by killing waves of minions and bosses, acquiring gear, and enhancing their character.

The gameplay heavily relies on RNG-based mechanics and incentivizes long sessions, resembling an RPG-themed slot machine. With numerous progression verticals and monetization strategies, including battle passes and gacha systems, the game effectively engages players through explicit goals, psychological motivations, and social interactions.

However, there are notable areas for improvement such as refining gacha mechanics, optimizing ad placements, and enhancing social features to foster long-term retention and revenue growth.

Significant Revenue Growth

Over the last month, Legend Of Mushroom has raced up the top-grossing chart to a top 10 spot, largely due to revenue growth in the Tier 1 Asian countries of Japan and South Korea.

The revenue from those two countries makes up more than 2/3rds of the total revenue in March, while downloads from those countries make up less than 20% of the total installs of the game during that same period.

This may be because those two countries made up the lion's share of downloads the month prior. We will need to check revenue distribution at the end of April to see how the revenue from the countries where the game launches a month later develops over time.

Overview of the core gameplay loop and progression systems

The core gameplay loop in Legend Of Mushroom is an ultra-simplistic idle gear collection and enhancement loop. Players are tasked with killing waves of minions and bosses. Killing content progresses the player onto further content which becomes more and more difficult for the player to kill.

*The main action sequence on the primary action screen*

Players can acquire gear by killing bosses. When a boss dies it drops magic lamps which are a form of free gear gacha pull. Players then tap on the magic lamp to acquire a piece of gear for one of their 10 standard gear slots.

*The lamp pull gacha, nestled down at the bottom of the main action screen*

The slot the gear is for, as well as the secondary stats attributed to the gear, are random. Both primary stats and substats increase with rarity, and primary stats increase at higher gear levels. The gear level that drops is set to a range from the player's current level +/- a few levels. Players can improve the drop rates of higher rarity gear by leveling up their magic lamp through a combination of gold and time, both of which the player can pay for. When a player chooses not to equip a piece of gear, but rather to sell it, they then earn a combination of gold and experience points. These experience points are the primary way the player levels up their hero, so it is essential that the player acquires lamp pulls and sells the nonusable gear from the lamp pulls.

The game incentivizes long sessions, lots of RNG

During the tutorial phase of the game, the player is made to manually choose to equip or sell each piece of gear that is pulled from the lamp. This process is intended to teach new players about the benefits and tradeoffs of different types of gear. This is especially important later in the game as players choose a class specialization that is greatly enhanced by specific secondary stats.

*The player class selection and progression path tree screen*

However, this process is extremely tedious after a long session, given the sheer amount of gear pulls the player does during a session, and as such the developers added an auto-selling feature into the game that will sell any piece of gear under a certain rarity or without a specific stat on it that the player can control. Many of the deconstructors in our community argue that this feature needs to be unlocked much sooner in the FTUE.

*The magic lamp evaluation and automation UI windows*

Players can earn hundreds, and even thousands of these lamps in a single session, and as such, spend a significant amount of time opening, reviewing, equipping, and selling the unused gear. Players have no way of opening this gear unless they have their app open, and because of the auto-sell feature, can easily put their phone on a charger or a stand and leave it running, auto-opening / selling for them for hours on end.

It’s interesting to note that this idle gear opening loop is the vast majority of the early gameplay, and it boils the gameplay down to an RPG-themed slot machine with near-permanent free entries. There are moments of evaluation and min/maxing, which are key components of idle gameplay, as well as boredom and elation when a particularly good piece of gear drops. Other than selecting which gear/skills/palls/etc to equip, there isn’t any other game to the gameplay.

When a player becomes stuck due to a lack of lamps to open, their only recourse is to wait another 24 hours to acquire another large batch of lamps, or a small amount of lamps via store purchases. This daily comeback incentive is quite strong. The amount of lamps that you get daily, via a daily mini-game called The Lamp Thief, scales as you level up. However, you also scale the number of lamps you can open at any one time, and as such, it takes you about the same amount of time each day (1-2 real hours) to open them all.

Power progression verticals galore

The game presents the player with a variety of progression verticals to progress, which is one of the primary reasons the spend depth in the game is so significant. There are currently 11 different progression verticals, each of which impacts the player's primary or secondary stats, or player and pet abilities in some way (excluding the player’s guild level). These progression verticals are unlocked slowly over the first 14 real days of gameplay.
In addition to the hero’s core gear slots, these verticals include:

A Mount system

The mount system unlocks on day 4 and is one of the key unique carrots that is used in the LiveOps event system.
Top leaderboard winners get an event currency that they can use to buy mount variants which are significantly more powerful than anything you can earn outside of the event system.
Players unlock the non-event materials needed to progress their mount through a daily mini-game called the Chrono Tower, which is another idle battling system that players need keys to enter.
The keys are refreshed each day and can be bought for gems or earned, within limits, through ad views.

An Artifact System

Artifacts are a weapon skin system that also applies tertiary benefits to the player's weapons.
These weapon skins are a primary carrot of the guild event system, and as such, the materials the player needs to level them up typically come from the guild events.
All a player has to do to farm these materials is sign up for each of their guild’s raids, or Guild vs Guild events, which are both fully idle, and they will be able to progress with Artifact.
Much like the Mount system, there are a few Artifacts that are reserved for the top leaderboard placements in specific live events. These artifacts are a significant stat increase over their counterparts.
Players can also purchase gacha pulls for these items via a dedicated event store page.

A Relic system

Relics are unlocked after the player defeats Hard mode level 1-10.
Relics are acquired via a semi-RNG ‘search for relic’ sub-feature within the relic tab for a cost of N relic shards. Every pull increases the cost of acquiring the next relic.
There are 7 relic slots and players can choose to equip 1 of 5 relics per relic slot.
Each relic enhances the stats of a specific piece of gameplay, ranging from a base stat, to a specific palls effect multiplier.
Players can level up each relic with excess relic shards, which they primarily acquired through a daily mini-game boss fight.
The daily mini-game pairs the player up with two other real players to defeat a few waves of enemies and a boss. This pushes the player slightly to make some comparisons between themselves and the other players they are paired with, as well as gives them opportunities to team up with friends to defeat more difficult levels.

Skills and skill handbook AND Pals (pets) and pall handbook

Both Skills and Pals and their related handbooks are unlocked fairly early into the gameplay experience. I am lumping them together because their acquisition and progression are the same system.
Players acquire both skill and pals through a shard-based gacha system. They can pull on the gacha in three different ways. Through gacha tickets, gems, and limited ad views.
Players must pull on the gacha tens of thousands of times to collect enough palls/skills for them to be meaningful later on in the game. This in turn makes the system feel less meaningful to the player.
When players acquire enough of a specific type of skill or pall they level it up. In collecting multiple rarity variants of a specific skill or pal they also unlock levels relating to those pals/skills in their handbook which gives the player specific stat increases.
Players can earn hundreds of free pulls every day by interacting with the ‘Molten Ruins’ Mini game. This key-based and time-gated mini-game pits the player against 5 waves of dragons. Clearing the 5 waves unlocks the rewards.

The player’s Hero Level

As we mentioned previously in the article, the player’s hero level is improved by selling unused gear items.
Players obtain that fodder gear through a combination of methods. Primarily through the daily lamp thief mini-game, but also through daily login or event rewards, limited bundle pop-ups, or the lamp fund battle pass.
This is one of the least heavily monetized systems in the game.

The player’s Lamp Level

The player’s lamp level is deceptively one of the most important levers of player progression, in that by increasing the level of the lamp, you increase your drop rate chances on higher-quality gear.
Players spend a combination of gold and time to improve the lamp level.
At higher lamp levels players can expect to easily spend over $1000 per level in gold or speedups to increase the lamp level.

The player’s Guild Level

The player’s guild level limits the amount of free resources the player can earn each day from the guild store, as well as the total cap on guild members a guild can have.
These caps, when increased, help accelerate a player's progress in other systems by inflowing additional free resources each day.
Players need to be in a competitive guild to have access to the best skills and pals in the game, which are only accessible via a guild-based currency that is earned through guild vs guild combat.

The player's Tech Park/Mine (Skill tree)

The Tech Park/Mine systems are a combination of mini-game and limited skill tree.
Players earn mining tools over time, which they then use to dig up resources that they spend inside of the Tech Park on stat modifiers.
These stat modifiers are a meaningful part of a player's overall power stack, and competitive players need to maximize the amount of resources they collect and invest into this mini-system.
This progression vertical is monetized through a monthly mining pass, which increases the output of resources collected, as well as the total cap on mining tools a player can idle generate. Additionally, players can sink hard currency into time skips to speed up research time on the skills.

The player's Prayer Statue (Garden)

In another two-part mini-game, the player’s Prayer statue and Garden work in tandem to increase the player’s base stats.
Players grow food in their garden by planting seeds of varying rarity and then waiting out a growth period.
Rival players can steal this food while it is growing if the player is not actively defending their crops. You can ask friends to help defend your crops, but nothing stops your friends from stealing from you either.
Players can spend gems to speed up the growth cycle and buy a monthly pass that increases the daily amount of free seeds, as well as a player’s ability to steal resources from other players.

The soul system

The Soul system is currently the last progression vertical to unlock in the game.
Players acquire souls through a dedicated gacha system.
The currency needed to pull from the gacha is primarily earned through a combination of events and the main ‘floor’ based unlock ladder, which essentially gives you 10 pulls every 10 ladder levels you climb.
Players either equip, merge, or fodder the souls they earn. Merging, an option only for the highest rarity of souls, massively increases their base stats.
Foddering gives you shards that can be used to increase the base level of a soul, which increases its stats.

Future Unlocks

There are still three main UI elements in the game that indicate there are more systems to come.
One is called Parking Wars and is reportedly similar to the serf Dormitory system that currently exists in the game, but instead of capturing other players, you can rent out parking space for their mounts.
The other two systems are completely unknown to the player.

A common theme in these progression systems is that they primarily revolve around mini-games that refresh daily through key-based time gates. Players can increase the count of keys they get per day through monthly passes as well as through ad views, thus a strong incentive to monetize off of those systems. Most of the mini-games are just tiny variants of the core gameplay, and the ones that aren’t are so simple that they could be game jam’d in a weekend.

That said, this points to the learning that the players that love these types of games don’t play for the complex gameplay, and thus developers don’t need to spend a whole lot of time inventing new gameplay unless they are trying to shift player behavior.

Another key item to point out is that most of these progression systems have their own monetization feature tied to them. This includes a monthly pass, a battle pass, a gacha system, etc. If a player wants to maintain a competitive power level on their server shard they have to invest in each system equally.

Player goals and how they influence monetization curves

When the player first enters the game, they are immediately taught that they have an objective to kill a monster and that by doing so they will get some items that allow them to better kill monsters. This is an explicit goal set by the game’s core design. This goal is then compounded by the addition of all of the variety of progression vectors that we reviewed above in the article. Additionally, players are taught very early that to get more free resources to acquire gear they should compete against other players in the game’s many leaderboard systems. This is another explicit goal system that directly rewards players for engagement and monetization.

In addition to these explicit goals, we can dig deeper into why players care to get more powerful in the game.

We can explore this with a 5 whys mental exercise. They are typically used to dig into the root cause of a problem, but I’ve found them to be useful for this purpose as well:

By using this methodology we dig into why players may care for specific explicit goals, and how they map to other subconscious natural goals we have as humans. In the above breakdown, we can see how an explicit goal of ‘becoming more powerful’ maps to Maslow’s Psychological needs by the end of the exercise.

From a design perspective, one thing Legend Of Mushroom does well is provide players an area in the game to peacock the rewards that they’ve earned in the leaderboard system in front of their guild. They do this in a few different areas, including a guild town scene that all of the guild members can walk around on, as well as an inspect panel that players can click on to view any player’s gear in the game.

*Primary screens where players can compare and show off in front of their social groups*

This inspect panel also comes with a compare button that allows for direct comparisons of stats between two players. This significantly helps drive a player's ability to show off their hard work in front of their peers.

The leaderboard system, which is a keystone of the game’s goal setting, has no real catch-up mechanics. This leaves players who are unable to win early leaderboards without a way to win the next leaderboard given that those early winners are given access to exclusive items that have a significant increase in power over non-leaderboard variants.

This in turn means that the goal system, driven by a combination of explicit and subconscious psychological goals, heavily incentivizes monetization early on in the game, and disincentivizes it if you are later to the server launch or miss an offer. The price that a player would have to pay to catch up to one of the early winners is a magnitude higher than the spending level of an early winner.

Due to this lack of a catch-up mechanic with early spender advantage, we would expect a game like this to sharkfin the game revenue quite significantly without a seasonal reset of some sort via a LiveOps event system.

Monetization strategies are used to meet player goals

Legend Of Mushroom has captured much of the early progression value in a wide array of monetization offers that present to the player very early on in the first session, and then with each new feature unlock.

D1 Conversion Offers

Players are initially exposed to low-cost IAP gear, skill, and pal offers that are intended to get them through the first 2 days of content. Pricing starts at $0.99, for the first conversion, and then slowly climbs to $9.99.

These bundle offerings never exceed $50, and do not use any form of past purchasing history targeting.

Launch event offers

During the first 7 days of the player lifecycle, there is a live monetization event that runs offers unique to the feature that unlocks on that specific date. Players are given an additional set of tasks and rewards to do that match the theme for that day’s unlock, while simultaneously being offered IAP Bundles that make interacting with those unlocked features more achievable, typically through additional keys or progression materials.

*The daily unlock offer LiveOps event UI window*

These offers help focus the player's spending habits on what is the most important progression vertical for them to focus on a given day

Battlepasses everywhere

There are more battlepasses in this game than in any other game I have played. Nearly every system has its own battlepass. Each pass comes with multiple pathways, typically 3, one free, one priced at $4.99, and one priced at $9.99. Players make progress along the battlepass by completing daily tasks, which earn them progression points towards the next milestone unlock.

*A sample main farming battlepass offer UI windows*

If a player wants to stay competitive on their server they have to buy every single battle pass and farm its progression daily. Some of the battlepasses require the player to also purchase the monthly card related to that system to fully unlock the daily quests available within the battlepass. I would estimate that there’s something like $100 worth of battle passes in the game each month between core systems and event-based battle passes.

*Additional examples of the many battlepass systems in the game*

Gacha game

There are two types of gachas systems in the game. The first one is a shard-based gacha which is used for pal and skill acquisition. Players pull on this gacha tens of thousands of times to collect shards of either pals or skills to unlock those pall/skills and level them up. This first gacha type comes with no drop rate protection that is visible to the player. Players can impact the drop rates by leveling up the gacha. They do this by simply pulling on the gacha.

*The pal/skill Gacha UI screen, pull animation and shard leveling screen*

This means that the player will slowly get better access to skills and pals over time due to the increased drop chances.

The second type of gacha is a direct pull gacha system where the user pulls the full carrot and it doesn’t require multiple copies to add additional value to the player. This second gacha type also comes with a drop cap guarantee, where the player will earn a specific reward, guaranteed, after a certain amount of pulls.

*The paper windmill event gacha UI windows*

These gachas are restricted to limited-time events, and often use an event-based quest system, in combination with an event store offering, to inflow gacha pulls for the event.

How to improve the design

Gacha Improvements

Both of these gacha designs have pretty significant design shortcomings that result in the player not being able to map out the value of their money very well. In the first design, the shard-based system, players never truly feel like they are getting a big win, even when collecting an ultra-rare piece, because they feel they need to collect such a huge amount of them. To compound on that, the items that you unlock don’t always translate well to guaranteed progression. Many of the top-end skills in the game are worse for progression than some of the mid-level skills, just due to a lack of balanced utility.

The second gacha system lacks value translation for the average player due to achieved proximity. The free drip of gacha pulls puts the player at a significant distance away from achieving the pull count needed for a guaranteed carrot pull. That distance needs to be able to be bridged by a single purchase to drive first-time conversion on the system.

Games like Genshin Impact do this beautifully. In Genshin, players earn enough free currency each month to get to something like 70% of the pulls needed for a guaranteed 5-star character. A single $20 purchase helps bridge the gap to get the player to the 100% needed for a guaranteed 5-star.

*Genshin Impacts constellation screen, where players go to see the benefits of unlocking additional heroes*

Spend depth for higher spending players is then achieved through a low count shard system where players collect multiple copies of the character (up to 6) to unlock meaningful utility and gameplay combinations.

Ad Placement best practices in Midcore games

While Legend Of Mushroom does a decent job of building an IAP strategy around their core progression verticals and player motivations, their Ads offering is extremely lacking.

*The permanent ‘Remove Ads’ offer UI screen*

Players can pay $9.99 to remove ads permanently, which, for a game that utilizes so many monthly recurring purchases, feels very out of place and unoptimized. In doing so, players effectively get 2 more keys of each key type to enter daily mini-games, 3 15-run gacha pulls on each gacha type, some short speed-up time skips, and a few other ultra-low value placements.

*An example of an add placement that increases the rate at which your hero idle attack the enemies*

Given the count of progression verticals and the success the developers had with Legend Of Slime’s (the precursor to this game) ad monetization driven by an ad placement on one of the main progression verticals, there is near zero risk of IAP cannibalization.

Future Social Iterations

Legend Of Mushroom’s social features are some of the weakest parts of the game’s design. While the game contains the standard core friends list and guild systems you would expect for a mid-core RPG, they do not create meaningful long-term social goals or bonds as effectively as some other Idle + games that have launched recently, such as social goal systems in Whiteout Survival or Top Heroes. Those two games drive deeper social engagement through an advanced 4x system that sits on top of the idle game.

*Whiteout Survival’s lighthouse serves as a slow transition into a 4x game as a secondary-to-primary metasystem*

The social systems in Legend Of Mushroom fail to incentivize players to coordinate gameplay and invest social or financial capital in their friends/guild. Oftentimes the game requires players to harm folks within their social web to make meaningful progress in the leaderboard systems.

Games like Legend Of Mushoom tend to have better long-term retention and recurring revenue when social systems support long-term friendship/community building. Players, and their social interactions, become a core part of the LiveOps, and due to the dynamic nature of most human relationships, this in turn means that there is always new content for players to interact with.

In summary, Legend Of Mushroom has achieved an extraordinarily engaging core loop through the clever use of a free and semi-continuous gacha pull mechanic. This gacha system slowly gives way to a huge variety of progression verticals, each with its own mini-game and focused monetization system. Access to these systems tends to be time gated behind access keys which are refreshed daily, causing a strong comeback mechanic. Players typically interact with these games because of psychological safety goals they subconsciously set and then meet through social peacocking in shared social spaces. While the game has great early monetization design, its gacha system, IAP targeting, ad placements, and social features could all use significant modernization passes to pull in best practices learned from other industry leaders.

Bonus Appendix Content

The launch month LiveOps event calendar

Player-reported content unlocks

Categories

Apr 15 The Magic of ‘Legend Of Mushroom’

Significant Revenue Growth

Overview of the core gameplay loop and progression systems