Royal Match climbed to be the No.2 top-grossing mobile game worldwide this January, demonstrating strong continued player engagement and spending ever since its global launch in February 2021. Driven by its goal of creating the "ultimate mobile game experience," publisher Dream Games' ongoing improvements have yielded impressive results, including a lifetime RPD of ~$34, which towers over various genre competitors.

In a 2023 university presentation, Dream developers revealed they conduct approximately 60 A/B tests annually. We will explore some of the most significant A/B tests, along with the resulting growth opportunities and lessons learned. Since we do not have access to Royal Match’s A/B testing data, we have supported our analysis with available data points, where possible.

1. Experimenting with Metagame Depth

Royal Match was ahead of the curve when it prioritized rich core gameplay over metagame depth, and thereby going against the top-grossing puzzle games grain. It launched globally with a simplified metagame centered upon earning stars by completing levels, and using those stars to complete tasks and areas. Interestingly, the team was simultaneously A/B testing further minimalistic meta features.

This testing was initially observed in Royal Match's first year and remains active today with players in holdout cohorts. The image above shows three variants for an A/B/C test of the lite meta:

• A: No Meta — The level button is in the center and the castle is the background forever. The focus is all on levels, and there is no meta feature.
  
• B: Episode Meta — Here the level button is in the center, and the background (episode) changes after reaching certain level numbers. There are no rewards, apart from a new background, for progressing in this meta, and its progression to a new background is hidden from the player.
  
• C: Episode Meta with Rewards — This is closest to Toon Blast, where players earn stars to unlock the next background and win area rewards.
  
• Control: Area meta with tasks, which is Royal Match's metagame design today.

The Control variant turned out to be the right balance, and is clearly contributing to Royal Match's highly competitive RPD. But it's also important to note that from day one, Dream Games sought to make Royal Match's metagame even lighter, even though most of the market was moving in the opposite direction. It takes a very special kind of team to make that kind of design bet.

While deeper metagame systems previously drove long-term player engagement and retention, there is a new generation of puzzle games that rely more heavily on live ops to do the same. We have previously covered how metagame depth and live-ops dependence in the puzzle genre has shifted over the years here. Examples of lighter meta approaches include Toon Blast's episode backgrounds and Royal Match's area meta with 0 to 1 completion.

All that said, one question still remains -- why is this test still active with holdout groups? There could be a few reasons for this, such as Dream Games not wanting to reset test variant player progress and/or change their game experience. We can only speculate, but who knows how the longer term learnings from this test help inform metagame designs of future Dream Games titles.

2. Experimenting with Monetizing Level Wins (vs Fails)

The image below shows that average minutes per day in Royal Match has roughly stayed the same over its lifetime. While this speaks volumes about the effectiveness of Dream's live ops, it also showcases how increasing average player time spent in a mobile F2P game is very hard. Therefore, a need to monetise the maximum percentage of that limited play time arises.

Royal Match generates all of its revenue through coins, which players need to purchase extra moves and overcome challenging levels (near miss monetization). However, these challenging levels make at best 30%-40% of levels completed by a player. Assuming the players who generate the largest portion of the revenue have unbroken streaks of winning levels, then one could argue that 60%-70% of play time remains unmonetized.

So Royal Match A/B tested a feature for players to spend coins after any level is successfully completed, aiming to increase the share of monetized play time.

This test was observed in Royal Match's first year and remains active today with players in holdout cohorts. 

• Variant: After winning a level, players were offered the choice between claiming free rewards or multiplying them by 10 for 500 coins, as shown in the image above. The rewards are event tokens, necessary for advancing through milestones and leaderboards for various in-game events.

• Control: No opportunity to spend coins after completing a level.

While maximizing the monetization of player time remains a crucial area for growth and offering more rewards for a price sounds great on paper, this experiment was ultimately unsuccessful. The idea of a paid reward after a hard-won level is tempting, but players might've perceived the added cost as excessive, particularly if they invested a lot of currency to complete the level.

While Royal Match's attempt to monetize level wins was unsuccessful, other puzzle games have explored this approach more successfully. For example, Merge Gardens, a hybrid merge-and-match-3 game, offers items for purchase after level completion. This strategy may be more palatable to its audience, given that Merge Gardens already monetizes board items through its standard shop, an accepted feature of merge games. Said differently, just because it doesn't work for Royal Match doesn't mean it cannot work for your puzzle game, especially when implemented in the right context.

3. Experimenting with "Super" Features

The super light ball feature single-handedly increased Royal Match revenue by 1.5 times and has since become a staple in all top-grossing puzzle games. We covered it extensively here. This next A/B test represents the ongoing search for such impactful features.

For the uninitiated, here is how Royal Match's propeller and super propeller work. The A/B test was a simple super propeller on/off test.

Players activated the super propeller after winning 10 levels, doubling the power of all propellers. Maintaining a win streak was required to keep the super propeller active, a concept originating in Playrix's Homescapes.

In Homescapes, the super propeller (plane) was a pre-level booster players could activate before starting a stage. Royal Match made it a "streak" feature, but kept its gameplay intact.

This change evolved the super propeller from impacting the booster economy in Homescapes to boosting coins spent on maintaining long win streaks in Royal Match.

However, choosing the propeller for this "super" functionality had one drawback: It caused player confusion over the power hierarchy of in-game boosters. The color ball, created by a line match-5, was the most powerful booster, but the super propeller visually and mechanically functioned as a double booster, creating potential confusion. Once again, it was Playrix that came to the rescue with the super booster.

The super color ball (super booster) debuted in Playrix's Homescapes in 2022, nine months before it became a staple in Royal Match. As a season pass reward, it granted limited daily uses that players activated before starting a level. Perhaps this provided Dream with a clear direction for its "super" feature, prompting it to adapt it to the color ball instead of the propeller, while retaining the win-streak activation mechanic. The rest is history.

In short: The Royal Match team identified a feature from another game and adapted it to make it even better.

On a slightly related side-note: Win streaks are vital to a puzzle game's success, and Royal Match has continued to explore that potential. Recently, Dream experimented with "super duke," a feature activating after five wins (compared to the super light ball's 10 wins) that granted three extra moves on challenging levels. While this A/B test wasn't successful, likely due to the cannibalization of coin purchases for extra moves, it indicates the team's ongoing pursuit of growth through additional streak-based features.

4. Experimenting with Monetizing Minigame Engagement

Royal Match has continued to add more mini-games (requiring tokens to play, which are obtainable through levels) and is running them more regularly. Mini-games are increasingly crucial for studios to combat rising UA costs and improve player retention, offering new gameplay experiences and monetization opportunities. Even follow-up Royal Kingdom recently added a new mini-game, Cube Blast, inspired by viral hit Block Blast.

The last, most recent A/B test concerns selling event tokens directly for coins through a rotating shop called Golden Offers.

Here, players can buy tokens needed to progress in active events, boosters to help with levels, and card packs to help complete seasonal albums. These are mini-game events that require tokens to play, like Hidden Temple or Train Journey.

For now, this experiment remains inconclusive. A case could be made for cannibalizing level engagement (and potentially higher coin spend through the game's base monetization systems) with a direct purchase token shop. But the quest for monetization beyond core gameplay levels remains ongoing.

Playrix, for example, has successfully implemented "Expedition" events across its portfolio of puzzle games. A new Expedition event launches every three weeks in each Playrix puzzle game (Gardenscapes, Homescapes, and Fishdom). These mini-games feature separate monetization, economies, and dedicated events, providing engaging and profitable content outside of the standard levels.

Royal Match may not be the First, but it's the Best

Royal Match's success is rooted in sharp market analysis supported by a data-driven approach, leveraging A/B testing to validate and refine design decisions based on player behavior.

Dream prioritized core gameplay over complex meta features, going against market trends but ultimately finding a successful balance. They further experimented with various monetization strategies, including attempts to monetize more of a player's time beyond just challenging levels, and found success with streak-based features like the super light ball. And now they're experimenting with minigames related monetization and other growth avenues outside the core gameplay levels.

That said, many perform A/B tests and analyze data, but what makes Royal Match / Dream Games special? My guess -- their ability to truly improve and deliver the best version of a feature that's fitting for their game's context, rather than simply copying it.

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