Take-aways from playing Block Blast

Want to know what’s wrong with Block Blast from Hungry Studio?

The game is #1 in the casual category at the moment (March 20), but from a monetization perspective it is pure AdMon and much more simple that many other casual games on the market. Static banners at the bottom. Interstitials after every level, short ones, easily skippable.

The only case of rewarded videos – revival after losing. In this case, the video ad is long because the player is motivated to wait, providing better CPM. Revival happens only one time. If you lose again, it will be final.

There are no IAPs, so there is no game shop, no offers, no resources, no energy, no lives, you name it. Players can play as long as they want. Game sessions are not limited. But absence of IAPs also means the ads cannot be turned off. There is no paid ‘No Ads’ feature.

IMHO: As a player I personally don’t like it when I don’t have this option. But as a developer I understand that, if implemented, it could result in revenue drop. During the life-time players might bring more money by watching ads than by a single ‘No Ads’ purchase (or this IAP should be so expensive that nobody would buy it).

The game has asked me about notifications, I allowed them, but I never received any.

Visual design is simple and clean, calm, and very nice. The game mechanic is super-polished, casual and addictive. Levels are of two difficulties – regular and hard. After winning a hard level, the game shows %% of the audience I’ve surpassed with my skill. Not sure if that %% is real or fictional, but it gives me a nice warm feeling of being smart. So please use this trick, if your game design allows for it.

The game calculates win-streaks, but only to show the counter on the screen. There are no rewards for any milestones or penalties for losing a streak. Actually, loose streak results in activating ‘god mode’ when the game just drops pieces the player needs.

IMHO: It creates a wow-effect, but completely diminishes the fact that these multiple games were actually lost. In the end it just doesn’t matter if a player loses or wins, they just keep playing over and over, watching ads after every attempt. It’s meditative, but not challenging at all. Note: this might be a result of deeply knowing their audience and its needs. Why do they actually play the game? Maybe not for a challenge at all.

After a few levels they ask to give stars for review, at first showing a custom popup to filter out bad reviews and propose to leave a review in the actual AppStore only for a good one. This tactic helps to manipulate the rating on the app page, making it higher than it might be otherwise. That’s a good one, you should always do the same.

The only thing that looks like a LiveOps event is Adventure. The game mode, available for 7 days, proposes to complete a bunch of levels (96 in my case) to reveal the pixelized picture, one pixel per completed level. There is no reward promised, and after I completed all the levels, they just congratulated me. I don’t see any collections section to store these pictures from the previous adventures.

IMHO: Collectors have a particular mentality, but the game doesn’t support them. I find it a missed opportunity for improving engagement and retention. But maybe they are already good enough.

Based on my playing experience, it would be great to have the Undo option, given for rewarded video as well, so the player could fix a mistaken move.

IMHO: They already have revival, so missing Undo I’d called a missed opportunity, too.

Speaking of knowing your audience. In their blog, developers have a huge article about their love of A/B testing. They performed 2000 tests only for core game mechanic, and 3000 in total over the years, having around 100 successful tests, 3% success rate. This is quite a number! They really know their job, so I am completely sure the game is what it is because of the solid proofs provided by those tests. Without knowing the results of those tests, all my theories and propositions made above remain my humble opinion.

Key take-away: LiveOps is nothing without A/B testing and knowing your audience.

Data-driven LiveOps is a must. All these IMHOs are only opinions, and, in your workflow, they must mean nothing more than ideas to be proven right or wrong by testing and analysing real data. Never treat your IMHOs as a final truth.

Michael Khripin has spent 25+ years in online games: LiveOps, monetization and production, including Wargaming R&D and LiveOps on Hero Wars Mobile at Nexters. Author of Game Shops: Ultimate Guidelines. Runs New Perk, a game shop and LiveOps consultancy.