Grand
Source: Naavik

Grand Games, a Turkish gaming startup behind games like Magic Sort! and Car Match, recently raised $30M in Series A funding, following an earlier $3M pre-seed round. The company’s rapid growth through 2024 saw its two titles bring in over $4M in gross revenue, primarily driven by Magic Sort, which clearly got investors interested.

Net revenue by app
Source: Sensor Tower

Grand pre-seed funding round was led by Bek Ventures (formerly Earlybird Digital East), which also participated in the Series A. It marks the VC firm’s first gaming investment since its successful backing of Peak Games. That participation clearly demonstrates Bek’s confidence in Grand team and long-term vision, both of which are validated by Magic Sort’s impressive early performance.

Grand Game's Timeline
Source: Grand Games, Sensor Tower, Naavik

So what has contributed to Grand’s success to date? Let’s unpack it here.

Grand’s Team and Company

Grand’s three co-founders, Bekir Batuhan Çelebi, Mustafa Fırtına, and Mehmet Çalım, are all ex-Good Job Games developers. They each worked on Good Job’s flagship title Zen Match, which launched in 2021 and swiftly became the leader in the "tile sort" casual puzzle subgenre.

This rapid success caught the attention of Moon Active, which acquired the game and its team in 2022, within just over a year of the game's release. Mustafa and Mehmet continued on the Zen Match team while at Moon Active, but left shortly thereafter to build Grand.

In other words, Grand’s leadership team has not only experienced success firsthand, but also knows how to scale systematically.

The Founders of Grand Games
Source: Naavik

Grand’s work on Zen Match and Magic Sort also showcases its desire to differentiate by building a scalable casual puzzle game business that focuses on maximizing the potential of underutilized casual puzzle mechanics: first tile sorting, and now water sorting. However, this shouldn’t be confused with innovation; instead it might be considered levelling up what’s already proven to work.

Grand’s development process also seems to be differentiated compared to its Turkish counterparts. Rather than the more typical founder-led model, it empowers individual game teams (a little like Supercell), granting them autonomy and decision-making authority within their respective projects. This could be a key talent-hiring differentiator over the long term.

The studio also utilizes its programmer-heavy founder background by strongly leveraging artificial intelligence tools in the game development process. For example, Grand uses AI to generate up to 30% of each game’s codebase and uses platforms like Midjourney to create art concepts. This approach significantly accelerates the development and publishing process, enabling the company to build, test, and refine its games faster. It likely also makes game development cheaper, unlocking the margins and budget needed to plow back into performance marketing.

All that said, there can be no game business without a great game itself. So let’s take a look at what makes Magic Sort stand out.

Grand’s First Game

What is Magic Sort
Source: Naavik

Magic Sort is a level-based sorting puzzle game where players must pour water between bottles until they each contain only one color (gameplay video). If the player runs out of available moves, they can retry the level or buy an extra empty bottle with coins to continue playing, similar to buying extra moves in level-based puzzle games.

The game has a light meta progression layer that motivates players to move up various leaderboards by completing levels, similar to titles like Zynga/Peak’s Match Factory. Magic Sort also features robust live ops with new content, levels, and offers released at a steady cadence.

Going back to our point of “not innovating, but leveling up what’s already proven,” it is important to note Magic Sort’s core mechanic is not new. A quick search on the app stores will result in a flurry of similar sorting games, like Water Sort Puzzle, Ball Sort Puzzle, and SortPuz. Many of these games have a large volume of downloads (about 50M-100M first-year downloads, according to Sensor Tower), high early retention metrics (around 40%-50% D1 retention, according to Sensor Tower), are mostly ad monetized, and have low production values. They also lack well-designed meta progression systems and don’t invest in live ops, both of which result in less than 10% D30 retention, according to Sensor Tower. Finally, not many of them systematically scale with a robust performance marketing strategy. Grand likely saw all these points as big business opportunities.

First, the proven download volumes and early retention metrics suggest this subgenre has a fun core puzzle mechanic that has wide appeal. Magic Sort levels up the experience with in-round consumables, level blockers, and a daily puzzle mechanic. However, the sorting puzzle mechanic demands more player thought compared to the randomness-driven (and arguably more universally appealing) match-3 puzzle mechanic. Increased cognitive effort reduces accessibility on mobile, which in turn lowers the potential maximum scale. This will be important for Grand to consider as they continue to refine their scaling strategy.

Second, the ad monetization-heavy nature of these games also showcases an opportunity for an evolution to hybrid monetization (proven with hybridcasual) to build more sustainable revenue while enabling greater long-term scale. Magic Sort implements hybrid monetization with a variety of casual puzzle best practices, such as starter packs, bundle deals, and straight premium currency purchases, and complements that with rewarded and interstitial ads.

But it’s the introduction of end-of-round monetization mechanics, such as paying to continue a failed level to maintain one’s streak, that helps drive a majority of the game’s IAP revenue — as observed in many other casual puzzle games.

That said, it is important to note that Grand is aiming to acquire casual puzzle players, and behemoths like King, Playrix and Dream Games compete for the same players. That makes casual puzzle one of the more expensive CPI genres on mobile. In other words, the game’s current implementation of hybrid-monetisation tactics alone is not going to unlock massive scale for Magic Sort. More will need to be done over the game’s lifetime to continue to unlock new stages of UA-driven growth, if Grand seeks to compete in the big leagues.

Third, these other titles’ low production values uncovers another obvious differentiation vector. The value in releasing a much more polished game is validated by Match Factory’s success versus many of its competitors. Magic Sort has near-Royal Match-level production values: The levels are fast, interactions have responsive feedback, and the puzzles are clear and readable, as you can see in these gameplay videos.

Next Generation Production Values
Source: Naavik

On the flip side, Grand has now set player expectations and the same production value will need to be delivered across the game’s longer term content expansion plan. Not only can that get expensive, but it will also take more time to produce, especially given the highly consumptive nature of the casual puzzle audience. Maximizing bang-for-buck on a large volume of high production value content, delivered frequently enough to maintain player satisfaction will be key for Grand to keep in mind as it continues to scale.

Fourth, the lack of well-designed meta progression systems and extensive live operations in those competitors are also obvious opportunities to improve LTV and enable scale. Hexa Sort’s stellar over 15% D30 retention, according to Sensor Tower, validates this idea, and Magic Sort capitalizes on this in a few ways:

  • Balancing and level design: Grand showcases a hallmark of Turkish puzzle studios – carefully calibrated level difficulty curves, behind-the-scenes balancing of hard and super hard levels, and crafty level blockers. For example, after the first attempt and failure of level 26, the game eases up the level difficulty by removing one color from the start of the second attempt. While running out of moves is intended for monetisation, players should not be stuck on the same level for multiple attempts this early on. Such design elements help deliver an appropriately challenging experience to engage and monetise over the medium to long term. Grand is on the right track here.
Game Balance
Source: Naavik
  • Light progression systems: Magic Sort doesn’t overinvest here, but levels up on the lack of such systems in competitor titles by adding simple progression trackers that go a long way to improve LTV. There’s a daily challenge completion tracker mechanic, for example, and there are three separate leaderboards — weekly, country specific, and global — for players to look forward to progressing on every day. However, these systems do tend to lose their novelty over time and Grand might need to consider adding new base progression vectors in the months to come.
Progression Systems
Source: Naavik
  • Heavier live ops: Compared to direct competitors, Magic Sort is clearly a few steps ahead in terms of its live ops cadence. It caters to both solo players with milestone events like Broom Streak and competitive players with leaderboards in events like Magic Streak and Jetpack Race. This robust event system, with a new event introduced approximately every two months, has significantly contributed to the game's ongoing engagement and player retention. However, the game’s live ops cadence is not yet close to juggernauts like Royal Match and Match Factory. Grand will likely need to raise its live ops bar soon to continue to make sense of the LTV > CPI equation.
Live-ops Events
Source: Naavik

Finally, Grand is probably reinvesting its CEO’s performance marketing knowledge from Good Job Games (a key hyper/hybridcasual game publisher) to systematically scale Magic Sort. This is likely more than most water sort games do today, and thereby puts Grand many steps ahead of the subgenre competition. That said, Magic Sort is only spending on two networks right now, AppLovin and Meta, and scaling significantly on the former. But a multi-channel strategy will need to eventually unfurl if Grand has its sights set on entering the top 100 grossing list, where such a strategy is usually table stakes.

Source: Sensor Tower

Putting all the above together, it becomes easier to see how through Magic Sort Grand has found a high potential but underutilised casual puzzle mechanic, identified improvement opportunities, and filled those gaps with casual puzzle best practices — on both the product and marketing fronts.

The proof is in the KPI pudding, as seen below.

Looking Ahead

Building a strong team and achieving success with its first game in such a short time frame is a remarkable feat, and something that any mobile F2P startup would kill to experience. That said, and as outlined in the previous section, Grand still has various product risks to tackle and marketing hurdles to jump to enter and sustain in the top grossing charts.

While Magic Sort currently dominates the water sort subgenre, the long-term success of more skill-based sorting puzzle games (Grand’s broader subgenre of choice) remains uncertain. While these games showcase exciting new mechanics, the evergreen success of match-3 or blast games highlights the challenge of finding a core mechanic with similar lasting appeal.

It’s also important to note that the leading casual puzzle games built on evergreen core mechanics are dominated by performance marketing giants such as King, Playrix, and Dream Games. Their stronghold drives up the CPI for the casual puzzle audience, posing a significant challenge for studios focused on achieving massive scale in this genre. For newcomers like Grand breaking into this competitive market, success demands more than simply wedging in with a new puzzle mechanic. They must also create robust game systems and implement effective live operations to LTVs high enough to compete with these industry titans for the same audience.

Also, in its pre-seed announcement, Grand announced it has plans to launch three titles by early 2025, of which only the first title, Magic Sort, has made it to global release. The second title, Car Match, which levels up the "traffic puzzle" casual puzzler, is still in soft launch. Grand’s self-proclaimed flagship title, which will apparently focus on social interactions, remains yet to be seen. While this points toward slowing development iterations, it also shows multiple uses for that $30M in fresh funding.

Zooming out, the success of titles like Magic Sort, Hexa Sort, Tile Busters, and Match Factory signals toward two hidden trends in mobile casual puzzle:

  • There continues to be room for core mechanic innovation that resonates with the casual puzzle audience.
  • The quest for the next major casual puzzle mechanic after match-3 continues across various mobile F2P developers.

These two trends are further underscored by King’s recent explorations to expand the Candy IP across multiple games that don’t use a match-3 core.

Grand Games likely sees these opportunities and challenges too, but now with the backing of Peak Games’ investors and the exceptional performance of Magic Sort, the company’s continued adventures in casual puzzle games will be fascinating to follow.

A special thank you to Abhimanyu Kumar for helping me formulate this piece.


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