Today’s free-to-play (F2P) games are defying genres in more ways than one. Why is PUBG Mobile adding cooking challenges and trivia games? Why does Whiteout Survival have a plinko machine event? Or why do both Monopoly GO! and Royal Match have hidden treasure-reveal digging games? The top games in mobile all seem to be trying very interesting things with minigames lately. 

But is adding minigames just another fun way to fight to win player attention? Or are there other reasons why leading mobile titles are implementing minigames into their gameplay? The answer isn’t as straightforward as it seems.

Scale of Minigames

The idea of using minigames in mobile games has existed since the late 2000s. The earliest iterations were titles like Kingdom Hearts Mobile, which were essentially collections of minigames. However, the adoption of minigames within established mobile titles has gradually evolved and grown over time. Mobile F2P games mostly started implementing minigames on top of core gameplay in the early 2020s, led by publishers like Playrix that added minigames to iconic titles like Township, Homescapes, and Gardenscapes. 

Furthermore, while the minigame trend across F2P mobile games may have started as a user-acquisition strategy, it has increasingly become more of a lever for live ops — and thus has become quite ubiquitous among the top-grossing mobile titles. As you can see in the graph below, 10 out of the top 16 grossing games use minigames now.

For some of these titles, such as MonopolyGO! or Royal Match, minigames are a staple part of their live ops with similar, themed recurring events. For others, like Last War: Survival or PUBG Mobile, minigames are rarer and surface far less frequently. Below are our observations of how often several of these top mobile games surfaced minigames over June and July 2025.

While minigames are widely used, there are significant differences between the volumes, durations, and frequencies of their occurrences. This is because games use minigames to drive diverse strategies depending on the needs of their players, the genre, the competitive landscape, and the expertise of the publisher. 

Popular Types of Minigames

While there are many differences, there are also several commonalities between the different types of minigames because the formats are usually small instances of hypercasual games masquerading as a special game mode or an event inside a midcore or casual game. Hence, these minigames often look like popular hypercasual game formats that are easy for developers to build and for players to play.

One of the most popular formats of minigames is guessing the right secret color combination. Players are given a random assortment of different colored items, and they have to rearrange the colored items in the correct sequence. For this format, every rearrangement requires an event currency that is typically generated through gameplay, deepening engagement and improving retention. 

Royal Match, the highest grossing match-3 title right now, introduced this mechanic in its Magic Cauldron minigame back in September 2023. But since then, multiple mobile games have adopted this format. For example, in November 2024, Monopoly GO!, currently the top social casino game, introduced its minigame Juggle Jam, which has very similar mechanics. We recently covered the top merge game Gossip Harbor, which also runs a similar type of minigame called Clay Color Combo as a live-ops event.

Another popular category of minigames with casual and midcore games is plinko (or pachinko-style) arcade games. During these plinko-style minigame events, players accumulate a certain currency through gameplay and then use this currency to play the plinko board to generate rewards.

The common theme in the integration of these minigames is their close ties to live ops. For instance, Monopoly GO! has a series of plinko-based Peg-E Prize Drop events such as Deluxe Drop, Sticker Drop, and Cash Drop. Royal Match uses this minigame for its Dragon Nest events, in which players partner with each other to raise dragons. They clear core gameplay levels to collect tokens to then use to play a plinko-based minigame that helps them progress toward the event goal. Whiteout Survival also uses a plinko board minigame for its Jolly Marble events, which has very similar mechanics. 

These events are often staged with milestone rewards and typically pay huge in-game resource bonuses, which motivates players to chase these rewards, increasing player engagement and retention in the process. These minigame events considerably deepen both the sources and sinks in-game, adding layers of economy depth to otherwise casual games that typically suffer from shallow economies, limited metagame structure, and high churn. Notably, all three of these titles are among the top five grossing games of 2025. 

The treasure hunt-style digging minigame is also interesting. In this game mode, treasures are hidden underneath a board, and players need to unearth the treasure by removing the top blocks. While these minigames are live, players typically collect a limited-time currency (such as shovels) that give them a certain number of turns at digging. Unearthing items helps players progress through stages that give them rewards. This minigame exists in Royal Match, Monopoly GO!, Whiteout Survival, and more. 

This is yet another example of a minigame archetype that deepens the economy and gameplay while using a hypercasual minigame mechanic that is easy to replicate and easy to play. The staging and milestone rewards keep players engaged, and the large chase reward at the end promotes monetization. 

The above examples are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how top games are experimenting with similar minigames. Other popular minigame formats include roulette wheels, match 3, match objects, bingo, puzzles, trivia map exploration, and more. 

Reasons for Implementing Minigames

The motivation for adding minigames depends on the business challenge the game is trying to solve. Let’s look at some common drivers for minigame adoption. 

Live Ops Acceleration

Top F2P mobile games are constantly under pressure to release new live-ops content in order to engage, retain, and monetize their players. This continuous live-ops flywheel can be very expensive to maintain, especially as players advance deeper into the game and unlock most content. This is especially a struggle for casual games that do not have a deep enough economy to engage their core players for the long run.

As discussed above, minigame events offer a fun way to temporarily increase economic depth while motivating players to play and spend more. To play these minigames, players often need to collect event currency through the core gameplay. Players are motivated to play the minigames because these offer milestones, rewards, and attractive prizes for completion. 

Some games such as Monopoly GO! also use minigames as an explicit monetization lever by selling the minigame event currency as in-app purchases. 

Casual games such as Royal Match and Monopoly GO! also use minigames to accelerate the pace of their live ops. By reusing standard minigame templates for different in-game events, these games can run multiple events that tap into different player needs by offering different rewards. This keeps the games fresh and engaging for players while reducing the cost of production for the developer. Below is an example of how Monopoly GO! reuses a template of the plinko machine minigame to run different events in its Peg-E Prize Drop series.

Improved Game Performance

The ability to run more live-ops events with similar resources can improve game performance overall because players remain engaged for longer and can play through a deeper economy. Time-limited, recurring runs of these minigames also generate short bursts of frenzied gameplay as players try to beat the minigame and win rewards. This leads to a temporary lift in KPIs, which can be repeated and hopefully grow over time.

Monopoly GO!, for example, can run multiple minigames in parallel due to its high live ops velocity through reusable assets. We can observe lifts in daily revenue when minigames are live in the game in the graph below.

A similar performance lift can be seen below for Whiteout Survival during its Marvelous Fantasia event — a recurring mahjong-style tile matching minigame that ran around the middle of July 2025. Of course, even with Whiteout Survival, it is worth noting that not every minigame drives performance improvements. For example, Fishing Tournament, another recurring minigame in Whiteout Survival, was unable to generate a revenue lift in late July 2025. As such, developers should experiment with and optimize the right minigame formats, rewards, and frequencies suitable to their game, which can evolve over time.

Audience Demand

Sometimes game teams implement minigames due to popular demand or to serve a core player request. An example of this is the math-based Frontline Breakthrough minigame in Last War:Survival. In a previous article, we talked about how this No. 1 4X mobile game drove downloads with a viral UA campaign featuring math-based shooter gameplay videos. Importantly, this gameplay actually isn’t part of the core gameplay, but rather a minigame.

This minigame is extremely popular among players, and many (if not most) players downloaded Last War primarily hoping to play that minigame. Thus, by popular demand, Last War continues to occasionally run this minigame as an event, even though the core 4X mechanics in the game are nothing like this minigame. The developer First Fun even ran extensive marketing campaigns showcasing how its game does indeed play like the ads that feature this minigame.

We mentioned earlier that minigames have also been used as user acquisition vehicles. For example, Playrix has long used this marketing strategy for its top titles (Homescapes, Gardenscapes, and Township), which often feature “pin-pull” and other types of minigames. Those games’ core gameplay is quite different from the minigames featured in the ads. 

Adding minigames shown in viral UA ads into gameplay helps keep gamemakers honest and accountable to player expectations, thereby reducing complaints about misleading or “fake-ads.” In the post-IDFA world, this type of minigame strategy has helped midcore games tap into casual game audiences and expand their userbases. 

Alternate Revenue Streams

Minigames can also be used to generate revenue from alternate revenue sources such as creating new surface areas to plug in partnership events and brand campaigns that weren't possible before. This enables deeper collaborations, something we highlighted in an earlier article about how brands are increasingly using games as a marketing channel.

For example, PUBG Mobile elevates its brand collaborations by adding relevant and contextual minigames that run during partnership integrations. PUBG Mobile is also incredibly creative in the types of minigames it implements, including a boxing championship, trivia, platform runs, and even cooking. The sheer diversity of these minigames makes PUBG Mobile a versatile vehicle for brand marketing, and keeps the game fresh and interesting for its large, global playerbase.  

This type of collaboration is particularly effective in promoting entertainment IP in games, and it often takes place in minigame modes that include PvP and social elements. For instance, when Brawl Stars collaborated with SpongeBob SquarePants, it added a limited time 3v3 event called Jellyfishing, in which two teams of three players each competed to capture jellyfish. The recent Monopoly GO! and Fantastic Four collaboration, which coincided with a movie release, also included Fantastic Partners (a lively partnership minigame), Fantastic Racers (a social PvP minigame), and Fantastic Treasure (a solo treasure hunt minigame).

Conclusion

If we observe the top grossing games that leverage minigames today, the volume and diversity of these minigames are high in the more casual titles such as Royal Match and Monopoly GO!, which use minigames to deepen their economies, boost monetization, and keep their audiences engaged. As such, minigames may become even more important than they were in the past for upcoming casual mobile games to deliver sustained performance.

Beyond casual games, midcore games such as Last War and PUBG Mobile, which already have deep economies and highly engaged audiences, are leveraging minigames for more strategic interventions based on their current business needs. As midcore mobile games embed more deeply into popular culture, it’s likely they will opportunistically use minigames to drive even more marketing and partnership campaigns.

The possibilities are endless, and the minigames space is ripe for creative disruption. Let’s see where it goes from here.

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In Other News

💸 Funding & Acquisitions:

• Appcharge raises $58M to scale up with growing DTC demands.
• Shrapnel maker Neon Machine raises $19.5M as its web3 shooter game nears 2026 launch.
• Chinese publisher XD Inc acquires a 5.3% stake in Miao for $14M.
• Impact46 invests $6.7M in five Saudi game studios.
• Tilki raises $2.2M for AI game creation.

📊 Business & Products:

• Sega Q1 net sales decline 22.7% to $548M.
• Fable Town surpasses $1M in monthly revenue.
• Konami's game division grows 14% in Q1 as eFootball soars.
• Xsolla unveils Unity SDK to give developers more monetization freedom.
• Arcanix secures funding to accelerate live ops platform growth.

👾 Miscellaneous:

• After 200M mobile users, Avakin Life is heading to Steam.
• Hidden Door launches social role-playing platform with AI.
• LinkedIn’s Mini Sudoku is a clever twist on the classic puzzle.
• Roblox open-sources Sentinel AI to detect harmful chat messages.
• AstroBeam reveals Stellar Cafe, the first VR game powered by real-time AI voice conversations.

A Word from Our Sponsor: Lightspeed

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Lightspeed is a globally leading VC firm with 13 offices, more than $29B in assets under management, and over 200 exits across the U.S., Europe, and Asia. With its dedicated gaming and interactive media practice, the firm invests from an over $6.5B pool of early- and growth-stage capital — by far the most extensive set of funds in the sector.

According to InvestGame, founders selected Lightspeed as the No. 1 lead investor in the gaming industry in 2023 and 2024. Selected portfolio companies include Anthropic, Believer Entertainment, Epic Games, Gardens Interactive, Inworld AI, k-ID, Mistral, Pika Labs, Snap, Suno, Tollbit, Tripledot Studios, Volley, xAI, and 1047 Games.

Lightspeed also hosts the annual CEO Forum at GDC, the annual gathering of gaming, media, and AI CEOs, in partnership with Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. Together with GamesBeat and Nasdaq, the firm runs Game Changers, an annual list that celebrates and accelerates extraordinary gaming and interactive media startups.

The investment team and its advisory council combine deep gaming, consumer, and enterprise technology expertise with an international multistage investment platform and a culture that puts founders first. 

Content Worth Consuming

How Much Should You Charge for Your Game? (gamesindustry.biz): “In late July, Microsoft announced that the upcoming Outer Worlds 2 would be priced at $69.99 in order to keep ‘full priced holiday releases in line with current conditions.’ That alone would not be noteworthy — except that it was a reversal of a decision to sell the title for $80, a price announced in June. The initial pricing decision followed a backlash from consumers and, notably, the developer community. While the game's director was more diplomatic, stating that ‘for the reasons why the $79.99 price point, you'd have to honestly talk to the Xbox folks,’ others were more vitriolic.”

Sizing the Off-Platform Monetization Opportunity on Mobile (with Chris Hewish) (Mobile Dev Memo Podcast): “In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Chris Hewish, the President of Xsolla, a payments and merchandising platform for video games. Chris previously held senior roles at Skydance, DreamWorks, and Activision. In our discussion, Chris and I discuss the recent changes to mobile platform payment policy implemented by both Apple and Google as a result of Epic's lawsuits.

The Challenge of Live Service Games and How to Win with Ryan Scott (Building Better Games): “Are live service games truly dying, or are we just seeing a new era of evolution? In this episode, we sit down with game designer and product thinker Ryan Scott to unpack the difficult world of live service titles. Ryan brings a wealth of knowledge from his time working on major titles, sharing his unique insights on what makes a live service game thrive or fail. We dive deep into the concept of ‘switching costs,’ the importance of meeting specific player needs, and the delicate balance between mastery and novelty that defines a game's longevity.

ESA's Game Plan for the Video Game Industry with Stanley Pierre-Louis (Game Changers Podcast): “Tired of video games getting a bad rap? Stanley Pierre-Louis, CEO of the Entertainment Software Association, unveils the playbook that turned the gaming industry from a political target into a respected art form. Learn how strategic advocacy and self-regulation built a fortress of trust with both policymakers and parents. With new challenges like AI on the horizon, the lessons from gaming's legislative battles provide a crucial blueprint for any innovative industry trying to protect its creative freedom and foster growth in a world of constant scrutiny.”

Making Myst a World with Rand and Robyn Miller (The Fourth Curtain): “Our guests are Rand and Robyn Miller, founders of Cyan (World) and creators of the smash game Myst. From humble beginnings in Hypercard kids' games, they made the 3D puzzle experience Myst which changed the world of adventure games. We discuss GRR Martin stories, line art to 3D and more.”

Creating the Music for Doom: The Dark Ages with Composer Duo, Finishing Move (The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook): “Austin Wintory chats with Brian Trifon and Brian Lee White from the  award winning music composition and sound design team, Finishing Move Inc. Together they discuss their history in music and what led them to games; why they began collaborating on game scores and the advantages that brings; how they tackled a massive franchise with set audience expectations; and the genres and techniques they leveraged to give Doom: The Dark Ages a distinct sound.”

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