Field Notes
The Special Sauce in Match-3
Core gameplay is everything in match-3. If players don’t enjoy playing, they won’t stick around, no matter how good the meta is.
There are a few parts to this:
- Switching mechanics and boosters
- Type, complexity and combinations of blockers
- Difficulty and economy balancing
And one that often gets overlooked: polish.
For Molly's Match, we set the benchmark for polish at Royal Match. Check out their row blasters in the video below. When the animation slows down an incredible level of detail is revealed - animations are sharp and satisfying, adding feedback without interrupting gameplay.
Now compare that to Molly’s Match when we started working on it (the other game in the video). Gameplay was functional, but the animations were basic and janky. Why would a player chose that over Royal Match? They wouldn't.
We see this a lot. It's easy to assume once the switcher works, you can move on. But if you want to compete with the best in the market, you've got to hit a much higher bar than that. Details here matter because they have enormous surface area and players are used to a highly polished experience.
If you're working on a match-3 game that's struggling to hit your targets, this is worth considering.
Why Teams Get Stuck
Teams rarely get stuck because of a lack of effort.
There’s a deeper, more elusive problem we see all the time: blind-spots.
The most common is perspective. Teams often have a bias towards or away from data. Those who are heavily focussed on it can sometimes overlook the experience of actually playing the game. Others, guided by qualitative feedback and gut-feel, can easily get caught up in unfounded ideas about what matters to players.
Both are problematic in their own way.
Teams need to understand the player experience for data to have meaning. Without it, analysis is too abstract, it’s changing numbers in a spreadsheet and hoping for the best.
Similarly, ideas based on thin evidence can be dangerous. Without a clear understanding of how players behave, teams can box themselves into imaginary corners or become paralysed by speculative discussion about who their players are and what they want.
When we were first exploring the idea of The Experimentation Group almost two years ago, Dennis Hettema recommended we find a way to deliver value as quickly as possible.
Helping teams identify their blindspots has become ours.
It’s natural for teams to become locked into a way of thinking and over time run out of inspiration. We’ve found providing an external perspective is a great first step towards getting back on the right track.
How Dynamic Difficulty Can Reduce Churn
Attempts Per Success is a useful tool for tracking difficulty, but that can mask players who get stuck.
How can you mitigate that risk and get the most from your monetisation and retention?
In match games, most monetisation happens at the first fail because that’s when players have the most to lose:
• 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗸-𝗯𝗮𝘀𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 e.g. Butler’s Gift, Lava Quest and Superlight Ball
• 𝗖𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝗼𝘂𝗿𝗰𝗲𝘀 e.g. coins, books for Book of Treasure and lightning bolts for Lightning Rush
• 𝗔 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝗲
If players don’t spend on the first fail, their streak breaks and the value of buying extra moves quickly drops. The more a player fails, the lower the chance they’ll spend and the higher the risk they’ll churn.
Here are some tools to help reduce difficulty and prevent players from getting stuck for too long.
Before the level begins:
• Increase time or move limits
• Reduce blocker difficulty (e.g. depth or type)
• Reduce the number of colours on the board — fewer colours increases the likelihood of boosters spawning
• Use seeds — as Phillip Black recently pointed out, they alone can increase pass likelihood by 5x
During a level you can spawn boosters if it still looks possible a player will fail.
Any of these tools can be flexed as required to get players past a level and back into the progression.
Block Blast has a very elegant version of dynamic difficultly, subtly varying challenge via the pieces the player has to place, depending on desired difficulty.
The game undulates difficulty, sometimes providing the perfect blocks to clear the board and sometimes providing pieces that require careful thought to place correctly.
As it monetises with ads, this means Hungry Studio are able to seamlessly orchestrate the player experience, optimising for monetisation and retention. It’s subtle and incredibly effective.
We've worked with many teams at The Experimentation Group to add and tunes these tools. They're a proven way to keep players in your game.
How Match Villains shakes up early gameplay - and why it matters
The first 25 levels in a match game typically make up the first day of play, so it’s important to get the experience tight.
Royal Match created a benchmark for this, spawning hundreds of clones. However in such a competitive genre, copying without innovating is not good enough to make an impact.
Good Job Games’ new title, Match Villains, takes a different approach:
🔸 Levels 1 to 3 ease players in with a familiar setup. From there, things change quickly….
🔸 At level 4, the Syrup blocker is introduced. Players must spread the Syrup across the board — the opposite of Royal Match’s Grass, also introduced at level 4. This creates phases within levels: first clear the board, then spread the Syrup.
🔸 At level 5, players unlock the Lucky Snitch — a twist on Royal Match’s Propeller. Ordinarily, matching four pieces in a square creates a standard Snitch. After this unlock, a Lucky Snitch will occasionally be spawned, releasing two Snitches when activated.
New blockers are then introduced at a rapid clip, some of which are relatively complicated for this stage of the game:
🔸 At level 7, Violets, a simple layer to be removed.
🔸 At level 10, the Safe, which requires players to match specific colours — an idea first seen at level 41 in Royal Match.
🔸 And at level 11, Emerald, a variant of Royal Match’s Ice, which they introduce at level 141.
By level 23, events unlock in both games, by which point Match Villains players will have encountered seven blockers vs. four in Royal Match. This feels fresh.
Good Job have also thought about visual progression. Match Villains uses scenes rather than locations. Scenes are passive, players are rewarded for unlocking them (done by completing levels) which is a smart evolution. In Royal Match locations require regular interactions to progress and earn rewards, but can be ignored from level 10. This can lead to the centre of the home-screen becoming wasted space (no new goals and no rewards).
All these tweaks add up to an experience that feels exciting and worth coming back to, something that's become increasingly rare in this genre.
We’ve helped teams shape early experiences like this many times at The Experimentation Group - it’s a brilliant place to experiment and get the most from those hard-won installs.
How Match Villains’ innovative approach to blockers shapes gameplay
In the post above, we covered how Match Villains brings a new experience to match-3 by introducing sophisticated blockers early in the FTUE.
Good Job Games doubles down on this by introducing blockers that deactivate power-ups soon after - something new for the genre.
The first of these is Laser (see slideshow below), which projects a laser beam across an entire row, destroying any power-ups that cross its path. This idea adds an element of strategy to gameplay - to maximise efficiency, it makes sense to remove Lasers before tackling other blockers.
Their approach continues deeper in the game:
🔸 Camera: Cages power-ups that aren’t used after two moves.
🔸 Police: Freezes power-ups one square either side of them.
🔸 Hungry Flower: Eats power-ups one square beside them.
A third phase is added to gameplay through Syrup - a “blocker” players must spread over the board, creating this flow:
1, Remove blockers that deactivate power-ups
2, Remove other blockers
3, Spread Syrup
In a genre where gameplay is king (no pun intended 😂), thoughtful twists like these suggest the Match Villains team are thinking deeply about what really matters to their players.
How Level Sequencing Increases Retention
One metric can help you score some easy wins. Here’s are the key lessons from casual puzzle:
Start by allowing players to build momentum and a pot of currency with a run of levels that have an APS (Attempts Per Success) of 1.1 or below.
APS is a useful measure because it clearly communicates difficulty. A score of 1.1 implies almost all players pass first time. Something closer to 2 means that, on average, each level takes two attempts — some players will pass first time, others may take three or more.
Before the end of the first session (around level 16 in a match puzzle), introduce a level with an APS around 1.6. Make sure players who fail have enough currency to buy extra moves. This adds challenge and begins to build the habit of spending.
Labelling these difficulty spikes as “Hard” or “Super Hard” levels (based on their relative APS) can increase engagement. Make sure labels align with actual difficulty — if players encounter high-APS levels that aren’t labelled, or “Hard” levels that aren’t challenging, they’ll learn to ignore the system and it’ll lose its effect.
After a difficulty spike, consider adding a bonus level. Failing too often isn’t fun — and if players regularly have no choice but to buy currency, the game can start to feel predatory. Bonus levels give players a chance to rebuild their pot and alleviate that risk.
Repeating this sequence throughout your game helps create an engaging balance between currency sink and source:
• A short run of easier levels (APS 1.0 to 1.2)
• A difficulty spike (APS 1.6 to 1.9)
• A bonus level (APS 1.0 — impossible to fail)
The image below shows how Royal Match does this:
Early on, keep APS below 2. Monetisation in casual puzzle is a long game — and failing a level more than a few times leads to churn.
Now consider how your events and features map onto this sequence. For example, introducing Lava Quest so that the penultimate level of the first play coincides with a hard level can maximise leverage on a failure. This increases the perceived value of extra moves — and the likelihood of spending.
As more events unlock, the jeopardy on failure increases — and so in turn does the likelihood of spending.
Finally, increase difficulty over time. The longer players stay in your game, the stickier they become. Long-term players tend to enjoy a challenge — so slowly bending the
APS curve upward can help drive both retention and monetisation.
Once this setup is in place, the experimentation can begin. Vary the length of sequences, APS, and sink/source rates to find the optimal balance for your players.
How Royal Match Stacks Events To Stack The Cash
Previous posts have been about the importance of clear goals and creating velocity around your game loop. The magic ingredient that makes these ideas sing is stacking events.
Royal Match is an amazing example of this. At the moment I have ten events running simultaneously, all of which combine to create an engaging and highly-monetised experience. Here’s how they break down:
Short term goals:
Two events are pretty much always on:
⚡ Lightning Rush is a competition that runs for an hour and gifts the player infinite lives to take part.
🎁 Butler’s Gift is a streak feature that incentivises players to pass levels first time by rewarding power-ups on the next level.
This is a powerful combination:
Lightning Rush creates a goal the player wants to achieve in their current session. Setting the duration at one hour likely extends out session length.
Butler’s Gift adds monetisation. By increasing the jeopardy around losing a level, players are more likely to spend on extra moves to retain the benefit they get from maintaining their streak.
Medium term goals:
There is a lot of juice here, Royal Match has five events that go on for between one hour and four days.
There’s a mix of collection (Hidden Temple and Book of Treasure) and competition (Kings Cup, Team Treasure and Lava Quest). Again, there are a couple of purposes here:
🔁 One is to give players a reason to come back. To win a competition that ends in four days, you will need to play more than one session. You’ll also need to check in on your position. Having three running simultaneously really ramps this up.
🌶 Collection events allow for continual rewards. Spicing up sessions with positive feedback and rewards between level attempts.
Long term goals:
And then there are features that engage players for a week or more. In Royal Match these are the decoration meta, various leaderboards and Royal Collection.
These each give players a long term horizon over the game, providing a sense of progression over time. And of course, more rewards.
Dream Games has created a masterful web of events and features in Royal Match that provides a continual cycle of incentives and rewards for their players.
One thing that is crucial to its success is that they are all structured around the core progression.
Players don't leave the match-3 progression to take part in any of these ten different events. They all serve to make the main path richer and more rewarding for players.... and therefore increases the cash Dream rake in.
The Importance of Velocity Around A Game Loop
Where does your game monetise? How often do players move through those points?
Sounds pretty simple, but to optimise monetisation, giving players regular opportunities to spend maximises the chances they convert.
Back in the day it used to feel like players had to be tricked or somehow coerced into paying. This led to a lot of ideas that might have spiked monetisation at one point, but led to a drop in revenue overall as players churned.
It was a pretty nasty way to make a game.
Thankfully we’ve learnt there are some players for whom paying is part of the experience.
They love to game and are happy to spend where they see value, so:
🏔 Getting your game loop, economy and live ops aligned around one clear goal
🐋 Being generous with rewards
💰 Then integrating regular opportunities to spend towards their goal and
🎽 Moving players through the loop quickly
Is fundamental to creating a game loop that monetises well.
Increasing Monetisation With Your FTUE
If you want to improve the monetisation of your game, the first place to look can be your FTUE.
The higher up the funnel a change is made, the more players it touches.
Improving your first day retention will impact across your funnel, so it’s worth getting it as tight as possible.
Dream Games’ Royal Match is a really interesting case study here:
🥅 Goals are sharp:
In the first ten levels, the player completes the first decoration scene. There are no other distractions, it’s very clear what they will achieve by completing each level.
🏃♀️ Progress is fast:
It took me an average of 47 seconds to complete each level in the first scene. This increases steadily from 30 to 65 seconds.
This means a player completes a level, earns a star and moves a step along the meta in around a minute.
They will complete the first scene in around 10 minutes, so likely within their first session, then progress to the second scene. Very satisfying.
Move limits are generous:
I had an average of 12 moves spare across the first ten levels. This declined steadily from 20 to 10 across the levels.
This adds a feeling of mastery to the feeling of progress. Dream also layer in a second blocker, pre-level boosters and an in-game booster to enhance the feeling of progress and mastery for the player.
The second scene mirrors the first quite closely, but players are able to decide whether to spend their stars or not.
To this point the focus is very much on retention over monetisation. It’s in the third scene (level 23) onwards that events and features (and therefore monetisation) are introduced at a rapid pace.
It's interesting to consider how these decisions about pacing and monetisation might be applied to different games to maximise 1DR and metrics further down the funnel.
Kickstarting Innovation in Your Mobile Gaming Studio
The difference between stagnation and success can lie in your commitment to innovation and experimentation.
Here are some strategies that can take your studio in a new direction:
Embrace a Culture of Continuous Experimentation
Foster an environment where experimentation is not just encouraged but celebrated. Start small, learn fast, and scale what works.
Find the Curious Ones
Answers come from questions. Find the people in your studio who are curious about how and why things work. Give them the time and space to explore your players and pose the questions that will deepen your understanding about what they love.
Learn Every Time
Your goal is to learn. Monopoly Go doesn’t need to worry the first time you ship an experiment, but you’ll be one step closer. Be intentional. Be methodical. You’ll work it out.
Balance Data and Creativity
Too much analysis risks circling the drain. Too much creativity risks spinning into chaos. Keep the tension between the two strong, taking the best from each.
Collaborate and Share Knowledge
Innovation thrives with collaboration. Share what you learn. Seek new perspectives. It’s all good input into your process.
The Seven Fundamentals of Experimentation
Most teams run experiments. Few harness their full power. Here are the seven fundamentals:
Define your goal
Not every idea is worth testing. Set a clear goal (“increase D3 100%”) to guide the team. This provides the focus and scale of change required — anything else can be put aside.
Record the hypothesis
Be specific about what you expect to happen and why. When the results come in, you’ll have a clear frame through which to understand your players' behaviour.
Make it obvious
Subtle won’t cut it. If players don’t notice the change, they won’t react to it — and your test won’t tell you anything.
Test often
Small, fast experiments beat big, slow ones every time. Ship weekly or biweekly if you can. The faster the rhythm, the quicker the learnings — because always…
Expect flat results
This isn’t failure - it's why hypotheses matter.
If you know what you thought would happen, it's easy to see when your understanding was incorrect, which is how you make progress.
Read the data, not the noise
If you’re looking for big results, you don’t need to wait for significance, you'll see it in the data. If the outcome isn't clear, bank it and move on.
Learn and iterate
Every test teaches you something. The magic is to build on those learnings.
Logical iteration is how you discover the features players love—and hit your target metrics.
Why Players Need Goals And How Royal Match Gets It Right
Goals are powerful drivers of player engagement. Short, medium, and long-term targets each have distinct roles in creating an engaging, rewarding experience. But they come with risk - done badly they can tank your game.
The original Hard Level Labelling experiment is a great example. Our hypothesis was that labelling levels players struggled to pass would boost revenue by giving permission to spend. However, the results revealed something more interesting; revenue increased across all levels, not just those with labels. Players were grinding towards the markers; the labels had added goals to what had been a featureless progression.
Royal Match expands on this idea brilliantly. From level 23 onwards, the game quickly introduces a clever, layered goal structure (image below):
🔸 Team Treasure provides a first, relaxed, medium-term goal, with players working towards a shared target over four days.
🔸 Two levels later, Kings Cup adds a slightly spicier medium-term goal with a competitive two-day event.
🔸 Things then heat up with a series of short-term goals through events like Book of Treasure and Lightning Rush.
The result is a rotating mix of short, medium and long term targets that consistently rewards players, while refreshing their goals — both of which keep them locked into the game.
This complexity comes with risk however:
📉 Butler’s Gift makes individual levels easier.
💸 Events introduce currency sources, risking a saturated economy.
This can lead to a game lacking challenge (i.e. boring) and so flooded with currency, players have no reason to spend.
Striking the right balance is crucial, which means carefully tracking and understanding your data. At TXG,Phillip Black has helped numerous teams navigate this complexity, optimising level and economy balancing to maximise player engagement and revenue.
