Over the past two years, Merge has evolved from a subgenre dominated mainly by one company (Zynga) to a more competitive market with stronger contenders and new flourishing apps. The launch of Evermerge at the beginning of 2020 started changing the merge landscape; in terms of revenue, it led to a major decline for Merge Magic! and a substantial erosion to Merge Dragons!. Evermerge brought sophistication to the table by tying in more robust progression and elements from other genres, setting a new baseline for the genre and a wave of fast followers. Read our previous breakdown of the Merge subgenre for additional context.
With the release of Merge Mansion, once more, a new app managed to shake up the merge landscape. Launched at the end of 2020 by Metacore, the app received $180 million in investment from Supercell and has experienced steady growth, dethroning Evermerge to become the merge market’s second-biggest player. With a more casual approach to its main gameplay and a cross-genre meta, the game is showcasing the path forward for the merge subgenre.
Merge Mansion Gameplay
Merge Mansion creates a unique merge experience by combining a very hyper-casual merge mechanic with puzzle & decorate elements, which is clearly inherited from puzzle games like Homescapes and Matchington Mansion. Players' actions in the main merge gameplay are translated into completing tasks and progression in the mansion-renovation narrative. The merge action occurs on a separate screen, and the merge grid size does not change.
Players merge pieces two-by-two, and there is no perceived bonus for combining a larger pack of objects simultaneously. Combining these elements makes the gameplay fairly casual, less overwhelming, and less time-consuming than Merge Dragons or Evermerge.
The progression almost follows the entire puzzle & decorate recipe: complete tasks, renovate the house, unlock areas, and progress the narrative. For now, players cannot choose the decorations for their mansions, a key component of puzzle & decorate. This is a component that fast-following apps are already building upon.
Merge Mansion vs Other Merge Apps
A comparison between Merge Mansion and the other top games in the merge market shows how Merge Mansion brings an experience that both different and familiar.
*Merge Town is brought to this table to bring a perspective of a Hyper Casual merge game.
Both Merge Dragons and Evermerge present a merge-3 mechanic followed by a rapidly growing map and bonuses for merging several items simultaneously. These elements translate to a crowded map and a hoarding of objects, with every session demanding considerable time to be completed. The merge mechanic in these games could be classified as less casual and more complex.
Merge Mansion focuses on a more simple approach to the merge gameplay. It is heavily influenced by hyper-casual games with a simple merge-2 mechanic, and it also limits the hoarding of items with a fixed grid size and the fact that items need to be sunk into various narrative-progression related tasks.
*Homescapes is presented as a comparison to Merge games.
The casualness of the gameplay translates to how users interact with the game. While Merge Dragons and Evermerge players spend on average 70 minutes daily in the apps, Merge Mansion players spend less than half that time in the game — only 33 minutes on average. Even compared to a newer app, the Evermerge-inspired app Merge County, the difference in playing time is still significant. This makes players' behavior in-game much more similar to Homescapes, a puzzle & decorate game in which players spend 43 minutes per day on average.
Merge Mansion’s merge gameplay is more casual than other traditional merge games, but at the same time it’s more sophisticated than hyper-casual merge titles. It utilizes diverse resources and requires users to use resource management skills. This element, present in more traditional apps like Merge Dragons and Evermerge, is key to enticing more traditional merge players.
The cross-genre meta is where Merge Mansion stands out. The app builds on top of the light narrative presented by Evermerge and transforms its storyline into the most essential aspect of the game. It also introduces house-renovation elements falling short of being classified as a puzzle & decorate game.
A New Proposed Segmentation
Merge Mansion blurs the line between hyper-casual viral merge games and top-grossing traditional merge games while at the same time distancing from both of them with its high cross-genre meta. With the differences in merge gameplay and meta in mind, we see a new segment emerging that helps better describe this new corner of the merge market.
The segmentation above presents the same groups we are already familiar with: 1) viral merge games with low complexity of gameplay merge and nonexistent meta (hyper-casual merge), and 2) traditional merge games with more complex gameplay and subtle use of cross-genre elements in its meta (traditional merge).
It introduces, however, a new group led by Merge Mansion — apps that blend low complexity gameplay with cross-genre elements in the meta. Merge Mansion becomes the leader of this group — which let’s call “casual merge” — by successfully combining merge mechanics with casual elements from decorate games. As we will explore in the next section, though, this is not the only cross-genre mashup being explored, and we likely will see different games being included in this group in the future.
As a casual merge game, Merge Mansion appeals to two different groups of players:
- Traditional merge players will see the app as a casual break from their main merge app. It competes for less time and energy but still provides a similar satisfaction of managing, organizing, and discovering new resources.
- Puzzle & decorate players will see it as a break from the sameness of the match-3 experience while being casual enough for them to engage with. Merge Mansion’s UA and creatives strategy already makes it clear that this is a segment that the game aims for.
This is not an explanation for why Merge Mansion works, but it points out a direction that other studios might take. With a lack of revenue growth and downloads trending down in the overall merge segment, the share of the pie gets smaller with each new app. While this is also the reason behind merge games generally evolving their meta designs (in line with Match 3 evolved over time), new merge games could potentially enlarge the pool of available users by using Merge Mansion’s casual merge template. Merge Mansion might not have been the first to try it, but thanks to a compelling core-loop & meta combination, plus a significant investment from Supercell, it has been the first to do it right.
What’s Next for the Merge Genre?
1. We’ll see more Merge Mansion copycats and higher competition in the Merge x Puzzle & Decorate segment.
As Evermerge showed us (among countless other examples), you can expect a wave of copycats with any new successful app. Merge Mansion will not be the exception. Love & Pies and Mergedom are only a few that have arrived so far, and others include games like Mergical, Merge Gardens, Merge County and Merge Fables. As Merge Mansion lacks a strong decoration aspect, adding new features on top of it is relatively straightforward. There is, however, no lack of challenge for new merge & decorate apps. With growing competition in the broader merge segment, few apps will have the necessary resources to compete in the merge race.
Beyond merge, puzzle & decorate competition is also ever-growing. With the arrival of more non-match-3 titles (Zen Match, Solitaire Home Design), competing for a different puzzle experience within the genre will become harder. With a more mature and competitive merge market, the only way to grow will be to rely on higher LTVs. We will start seeing best-in-class features from puzzle & decorate being introduced to the games, such as boosters, robust live-ops, and social features. Read our part 2 on merge game design evolution for more context.
2. More innovation with casual merge and other genre metas will emerge, but landing the right combination will prove difficult.
It is already happening. Merge Mansion is the first merge app to prove the concept of casual merge, but it has not been the first one to try it. Zynga’s Pirate Evolution!, which brings casual merge to a build & battle meta, has been in soft launch since 2019 and has so far failed to scale. Both Playtika and Metacore are also trying to combine casual merge + build & battle with their respective apps — Merge Stories (in soft launch) and Merge Vikings (in beta).
The challenge here will be to create a game that’s satisfying to two very different audiences: merge players and build & battle players. Playtika (Jelly Button) might experience more success at that challenge since Merge Stories leans on mechanics from its other PVP casual apps (Pirate Kings and Board Kings). We could likely also see other players attempt other different combinations. Puzzle & RPG may be the most obvious choice; nevertheless, it still presents the same underlying issue of a very different targeted audience. Finding a cross-genre combination that works well together and has the right demographic overlap will be the biggest challenge for apps hunting for further innovation.
Big thanks to Fernanda Gonzalez for writing this essay!
