Mobile Puzzle games had a strong growth year in 2025, generating over 9.7B downloads and $10B in IAP revenue, which is a 14% year-over-year increase. However, this growth did not come from traditional leaders. Match Swap’s revenue flatlined, along significant drops in new downloads, while legacy subgenres like Hidden Objects, Match Merge 3, and Word saw declines in both revenue and installs. Instead, growth was concentrated elsewhere: Match Merge 2 games accounted for roughly 60% of Puzzle’s YoY revenue increase (as we previously covered), with the remaining 40% driven by fast-emerging niche subgenres such as Sort, Screw, and Block. In this digest, we examine how these emerging Puzzle subgenres are quietly capturing market share from legacy incumbents.

#1: Block — The Explosive Scaler

Block Puzzles have modernized the classic and inherently satisfying Tetris-style spatial packing mechanic (see gameplay here). The massive 39.4% surge in downloads (driven by a variety of titles) underscores the mechanic’s immense top-of-funnel appeal. Revenue seems to tell a stronger story with a staggering 2,900% spike — although, it is the smallest puzzle subgenre of all (~$183M in 2025 revenue) and most of this growth was driven by a single title, Color Block Jam by Rollic (which now captures ~75% of subgenre revenue).

That said, Color Block Jam provides a scalability blueprint for the subgenre. The game relies on a highly successful hybridcasual business strategy that pairs aggressive, mass-market (aka hypercasual) UA campaigns with deeply engaging, easy-to-learn puzzle mechanics. Its monetization model uses a dual-stream approach, combining ad revenue (both forced interstitials and rewarded videos) with a high-converting IAP strategy. The primary financial driver is the game's cleverly engineered difficulty curve, which uses strict time limits and complex levels to naturally pressure players into buying premium currency for extra time, lives, and power-ups. Lastly, the game’s competitive leaderboards make this monetization flywheel spin even faster, with 3 out of the 5 active LiveOps events centering on time-limited player competition.

Ultimately, while the explosive top-line growth in the Block subgenre is currently dominated by a single giant, this data doesn't necessarily mean the door is closed. Rather, we see it as highlighting a massive, proven player appetite for tactile-spatial puzzles, a flurry of ineffective competitive attempts, and a replicable formula for building a scalable and sizable business. In some ways, it reminds us of the early days of the Luck Battle subgenre, which was dominated by Coin Master for years and had a huge competitive graveyard (some even called the subgenre “locked”), until Monopoly Go came along.

That said, competing directly with Color Block Jam in a highly concentrated market is a capital-intensive bet — particularly for studios without comparable UA scale. Instead, two alternative paths stand out. The first is product-led: redefining what “tactile-spatial” puzzles can be and carving out a new sub-niche through more meaningful mechanical innovation, which can ride on the proven high marketability coattails of the subgenre. Examples of products currently taking this approach include Color Block: Jam Puzzle 3D (integrating circular blocks that rotate clockwise) and Block Go: Escape Jam (utilizing sliding blocks for traffic jam-style puzzle solving). The second is marketing-led: pairing incremental iteration on the proven block formula with differentiated positioning, distribution, or IP leverage. We are starting to see this approach in action with titles like Tetris® Block Party, naturally reinforcing the block fantasy and providing a brand UA scaling advantage without matching Rollic dollar-for-dollar. Whichever path developers choose, the next wave of experimentation in Block puzzles will likely be worth watching closely.

#2: Sort — The Mass-Market Funnel

Sort games trigger a deep psychological human satisfaction related to organizing chaos into order (see gameplay here). They usually have a frictionless learning curve that scales beautifully in difficulty, making it a prime target for hybrid-monetization tactics (rewarded video ads and IAPs). With ~1B downloads in 2025 (second to Match Pair at ~1.1B), Sort acted as a primary onboarding funnel for the entire puzzle genre. It was also the fifth-largest puzzle subgenre by revenue (~$280M in 2025) and grew by 176.4% YoY.

If the Block subgenre is a ruthless, winner-takes-all monopoly, the Sort subgenre represents a thriving, democratized middle class. The revenue by title data above paints a picture of healthy, gradual revenue distribution across many games simultaneously. The leading title, Magic Sort by Grand Games, commanded a respectable $50M (~18% subgenre share) in 2025, but rather than dropping off a cliff, the second-place game, Hexa Sort by Lion Studios, brought in nearly $20M (about 7% subgenre share). This is followed by a robust ecosystem of over a dozen games reliably generating between $5M and $15M annually each.

This gentle slope suggests that demand for sorting mechanics is not only massive, but that players are also increasingly seeking gameplay variety. In other words, Sort players appear comfortable distributing their time across several titles, pursuing novelty rather than locking into a single dominant experience. That behavior shifts market dynamics away from winner-take-all tendencies and toward one that rewards fast followers and creative iterators. A look at the core gameplay of the top three Sort games helps illustrate this, as seen below.

Further, since this core mechanic is so visually intuitive, mirroring hypercasual dynamics, these games benefit from low UA costs. For example, Magic Sort showcased a $0.50 CPI on Android in early 2025, according to this case study. By hooking players with frictionless early levels and later introducing intentional progression and level-completion bottlenecks, Sort games successfully convert cheap casual traffic into highly profitable IAP spenders and ad viewers, when players pay or watch an ad to overcome the friction. Obviously, this tilt eventually leads to UA-driven scale.

Ultimately, the Sort subgenre offers a refreshing and optimistic outlook for gameplay innovation in mobile Puzzle. Yet, effective innovation remains difficult, and Sort’s primary barrier appears fundamentally creative rather than financial. For developers, that makes the core sorting mechanic a blank canvas: because the baseline gameplay is universally understood and reliably relaxing, studios have the freedom to take bold creative risks with everything else required for scale, built around it. It remains a space where strong ideas and polished execution still have a very real chance to flourish, and we are likely to get a taste soon with upcoming titles like Sand Loop, Yarn Flow, and Color Blaze Shooter.

#3: Screw — The Highly Retentive Monetizer

Screw puzzles represent a masterclass in high-friction monetization (see gameplay here), doubling their YoY revenue to over $206M in 2025, despite a decline in downloads (~399M or 12% YoY) in the same timeframe. That said, and similar to the Block subgenre, Screw’s success is highly concentrated in a single title, Screwdom by iKame Games. This title dominates the subgenre, earning the vast majority of the IAP pie (~45% subgenre share in 2025). After that, per title revenue drops sharply, with the second-place game bringing in less than $10M in 2025 and most other competitors struggling to break the $5M annual revenue threshold.

Screwdom’s massive growth was primarily driven by a strategic shift from 2D of its predecessors like Rollic’s Screw Jam, to immersive 3D physics-based puzzles, which introduced camera rotation and increased spatial reasoning complexity. Levels are designed with a limited number of "screw holders", often just five, where filling the final slot results in an immediate out-of-moves, pay to continue screen. This essentially helps manufacture frustration and a "stuck" state that triggers players to spend (either through IAPs or ads) to overcome mechanical hurdles.

While the takeaways for Screw are pretty similar to those of Block (with Screwdom providing a scaling blueprint for other competitors), a key differentiating factor that Screwdom specifically showcases over the top titles in Block (Color Block Jam) and Sort (Magic Sort!) is its long-term retentive power. Screwdom’s US D30 retention is estimated at about 17%, according to Sensor Tower, and towers over those of its Block (~4%) and Sort (~8%) counterparts.

This, paired with a very impressive ARPDAU (especially compared to Color Block Jam and Magic Sort!) essentially indicates the subgenre’s potential to not only gun for high top-of-the-funnel marketability, but also focus on monetizing a core, "sticky" player base over the long term. It’ll be interesting to see how some upcoming Screw titles like Word Screw and Happy Screw Merge use this foundation to compete with subgenre’s current mammoth.

A New Puzzle DNA in the Making

The rise of these innovative subgenres (Sort, Screw, and Block: ~$0.7B or 222% YoY, a 7% genre share) stands in stark contrast to Puzzle’s historic queen (Match Swap: ~$5.3B or 1% year-over-year, a 54% genre share) and rising princess (Match Merge 2: ~$1.7B or 95% year-over-year, a 17% genre share). It showcases how:

• Core gameplay innovation is rampant in Puzzle.
• Developers are learning how to pair the above with scalable marketing and monetization strategies.
• Player interests seem to be slowly shifting/expanding their center of gravity.
• A new DNA is being shaped for mobile Puzzle’s future as a whole.

All that said, one key challenge for each of these emerging subgenres(and likely any new ones that surface in the future) remains in crafting the next“forever” subgenre like Match Swap and Merge 2, which are defined by their robust long-term retention curves. Screw, Sort, and Block still have a long way to go in that regard.

This retention gap likely impacts long-term UA profitability, as seen in the RPD curves below. While established leaders like Royal Match and Gossip Harbor see a steady, linear RPD rise over time, Color Block Jam and Magic Sort! show much shallower or inconsistent growth, highlighting the difficulty of converting short-term engagement into sustainable long-term value. Screwdom, on the other hand, showcases a much healthier RPD curve during its first year, but there is a chance that this starts to taper off similarly to its Block and Sort counterparts, due to the game’s weaker long-term retention.

Taken together, the rise of Sort, Screw, and Block signifies a fundamental shift in Puzzle genre's DNA. While these emerging contenders must still bridge the significant retention gap to achieve the sustainable, long-term "forever" status currently reserved for legacy Puzzle subgenres, their explosive growth has already begun rewriting the Puzzle playbook. As developers continue to iterate on these blueprints — whether through product innovation or marketing leverage — the Puzzle market is moving toward a more democratized landscape where creative risks can lead to massive scale, with bigger players clearly taking note. Ultimately, this wave of experimentation likely marks the beginning of a vibrant new era for mobile Puzzle, where fresh ideas and polished execution ensure the genre’s future remains as engaging as it is profitable.

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In Other News

💸 Funding & Acquisitions:

• ByteDance in advanced talks to sell Moonton to Savvy Games Group for up to $7B.
• Saudi Arabia's PIF transfers $3B Take-Two Stake to Savvy Games Group.
• Scopely acquires majority stake in Istanbul’s Pixel Flow developer Loom Games at $1B valuation.
• Türkiye-based PC and mobile games developer HOGO Games has received investment from Türkiye-based developer Nokta Games (creator of Supermarket Simulator) at a $10M valuation for an undisclosed stake.
• UK-based PC and mobile games developer TruePlayers has raised £140k (~$190k) in pre-Seed funding.
• Spain-based AI infrastructure provider Submer has acquired Australia-based GPU cloud services provider Radian Arc Operations for an undisclosed sum.

📊 Business & Products:

• FirstLook 1.0 launches with new player relationship-tracking features.
• Why Hiro is bullish on UK and EU game dev funding after helping The Chinese Room and Bulkhead go independent.
• NetEase revenue grows 6.9% to $16.1B in 2025.
• Sega’s operating income down 55% as it takes $200M impairment loss on Rovio.
• Stillfront’s top shareholders call for extraordinary meeting to elect new board and chair.

👾 Miscellaneous:

• More than 10M Duolingo users have a 365-day streak.
• King and Yahoo Games: filling a bite-sized "appetite" with Candy Crush Crushable.
• US video game consumer spending predicted to reach $62.8B in 2026.
• “Scale lets us focus on years, not quarters”: Unico Studio on building games that last.
• Tencent's TiMi Studio Group reportedly funded Highguard dev Wildlight Entertainment.

Content Worth Consuming

The State of Video Gaming in 2026(matthewball.co): “Despite reaching record revenue after three consecutive years of growth, private funding in the games industry fell by another 55% year-over-year in 2025. According to Epyllion CEO Matthew Ball’s State of Video Gaming in 2026 report, now available to read in Early Access, the last three months of 2025 saw less than $100M in pre-seed investment, just over $200M in early-stage funding, and ~40 deals in total. All three figures were far from their peaks during the pandemic.”

Peter Molyneux and Friends Tell Us How It Feels to Reunite for One Final Game(The Game Business YouTube Channel): “In this special edition of The Game Business Show, Chris visits 22Cans to meet with five video game legends: Mark Healy, Kareem Ettouney, Ian Wright, Russell Shaw and Peter Molyneux. The five are famous for Fable, Black & White and Dungeon Keeper, and have reunited to create one last game together: Masters of Albion. Chris uncovers their history, what drove them back together, and what to expect from their gaming swan song.”

Mobile Ad Monetization Basics: What Every Studio Gets Wrong by Felix Braberg(two & a half gamers YouTube Channel): “If you think eCPM is the most important metric in ad monetization, this episode is for you. Felix breaks down: eCPM vs fill rate, why ad ARPDAU is king, recency model & impression decay, why more ads can hurt revenue, and more. This is a practical introduction to how mobile ads actually work once the SDK is live.”

A Practical Guide to Indie Comms: How Studios Can Build Visibility Without Burning Out (gamesindustry.biz): “Indie development is full of contradictions. You are creating something deeply personal, yet are expected to know how to promote it every day. You're instructed that visibility is essential, but you have scarce time, a limited budget, and few people to help you. You want to reach players, but you're frightened of shouting into the void. This guide dissects the basics: how to talk about your game, when to begin, where to apply your energy, and how to build momentum sustainably. We'll also wade into the "tiers" framework for public comms, because it's one of the most sanity-saving tools that an indie team can have.”

The Real Reason Estimates Fail in Game Dev (Building Better Games): “Stop treating your game dev estimates like a prophecy; you aren't a prophet. If your estimates keep failing, it's not because your team is bad at math; it's because you're using estimation as a fortune-telling machine instead of a decision-making tool. In this episode, Ben breaks down why "perfect" plans are a trap in the high-uncertainty world of game dev. He introduces a four-level framework — from "Priorities First" to "Relative Sizing" — to help you gain predictability, set external expectations, and find shared understanding across disciplines without killing your team's soul in meetings.”

Mintegral's 2026 Global Non-Gaming App Trends Report(mintegral.com): “The report combines global market intelligence with granular platform-level data to help developers, marketers, and publishers to navigate an increasingly competitive app ecosystem. Get a strategic roadmap — from OS-level revenue dynamics to automated bidding benchmarks — to help you scale profitably into 2026. Discover top trends including how AI is reshaping growth across categories, which new breakout category is sweeping the globe, how iOS and Android differ across multiple monetization models.”

More About Naavik

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• Strategy Consulting: Projects covering market research, corporate strategy, game & economy design, gamification, live ops strategy, AI strategy, product management, brand & performance marketing, and more.
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