Smash Fest has generated over 16M downloads and $4M in IAP revenue since its global launch in June.
The USP?
A hybridcasual puzzle that requires less cognitive effort to play, while delivering the satisfying feeling of a physics-based Match-3.
And interestingly, it has already sparked a new trend in the puzzle space.
From hybridcasual studios to some of the biggest Casual publishers, everyone seems to be taking inspiration from it.
But the idea itself didn’t start with Smash Fest.
Back in 2018, Voodoo’s Knock Balls showed that this type of physics-based destruction gameplay could work as a mass-market game.
But the more direct inspiration came from Toon Blast’s Cannon Fest, a LiveOps minigame that took a similar concept and made it feel more polished and appealing.
Then came Smash Fest. It essentially took that satisfying physics-based loop, turned it into a standalone game, and found a much bigger opportunity. But while Smash Fest managed to capitalize on the novelty of the mechanic, simply copying it may not be enough for its followers.
And Cypher Games’s Royal Smash demonstrates exactly that. It has become a serious rival to the original, scaling to over $50K in daily IAP revenue. So, what did it do differently? It surrounded almost the same core gameplay with much deeper systems: more events, new boosters and more. And they were not the only ones. Even Spyke Games‘s Knock Out is doing around $50K in daily IAP revenue, following the same direction as Royal Smash.
When looking at other followers, some still closely replicate the original, while others add small twists to the formula. But so far, none have emerged as a major challenger to the top three, yet!
But the trend doesn’t stop with hybridcasual. The loop that went from Casual LiveOps → Hybridcasual is now making its way back into Casual. This time, through UA, with games across genres like Merge-2 and Coin Looter already using the trending mechanic in their ad creatives.
And this back-and-forth shows just how blurry the line between Casual and Hybridcasual has become.
