Knit Out is a sort-puzzle hybridcasual game by Rollic Games, released in January 2025, and it has recently scaled up to generating over $40K in daily revenue from IAPs alone, with only 15K-20K daily downloads.
Let’s take a look at the strategic design decisions behind this game.
Deterministic Levels
The game features deterministic puzzles that remain consistent with each retry, allowing players to improve through trial and error—particularly helpful in more challenging levels. Combined with the absence of time pressure, this design choice lets players solve puzzles at their own pace, enhancing accessibility and minimizing frustration. As players progress, they permanently unlock additional bobbin slots, eliminating the need to unlock them level by level. To keep things interesting, the game also introduces new elements such as hidden fabrics and concealed bobbins, adding variety and challenge to the experience.
Visual Appeal
Leveraging a good quality and satisfying animations such as ropes of knitted fabrics gets sorted into bobbins, creates a polished and immersive experience. Each bobbin displays a completion percentage, adding clarity and helping players track their progress. Also the visual changes in harder levels and on level map signal increased difficulty and progression, keeping the experience dynamic. Additionally animated icons in the in-game shop and Ad Removal offer add an extra layer of polish. Also, giving players the option to see their progress on post-failure screens show players how far they’ve come, subtly encouraging them to use the revive option and continue playing.
Hybrid Monetization
The game blends IAPs and ads, creating a balanced hybrid monetization model. RV multiplier in level completion screen unlocks at level 10, while interstitial ads are gradually introduced after level 13—ensuring a smoother onboarding experience. Players can also watch RV ads to refill health, and boosters and revives are gated behind soft currency, subtly nudging players toward in-app purchases. Additionally, loss aversion techniques (some giving a free revival too) and the in-game shop presenting a wide variety of offers tailored to appeal to different player preferences, enhance its monetization potential.
Genre Insight: Sort Puzzle
The Sort Puzzle genre remains fiercely competitive, with only 17 out of 3,002 tracked titles surpassing the $100K+/month revenue mark—a success rate of just 0.6%. Yet, Knit Out has broken through, thanks to its elegant and thoughtful design.
Data Source: AppMagic
Original Post: Kavindu Priyanath-LinkedIn
