What are hyper casual games, really?

Want to know more about hyper casual games? You are in the right place!

Hyper casuals are mobile F2P (free to play) video games that are very easy to play and understand. They accomplish this in a few ways:

• simple controls (very often just one from swiping, tapping, pressing 1/2 buttons, virtual joystick)
• single game mode
• minimal UI
• never-ending (eg. looping levels)

You might remember the success from Flappy Bird - some consider this the first hyper casual mobile game, that spanned a whole subgenre in the mobile gaming space! This weird-looking and colourful game was super simple indeed: tap screen to make a bird fly up, while avoiding the constant obstacles. This might sound easy and boring to play, but that would be quite wrong! This game quickly became a huge success online, and all over the world players were comparing their scores with friends.

Many other companies tried to emulate this success, and some even dedicate their whole portfolio to this kind of game. Some of the most famous examples are Ketchapp and Voodoo, but really there are thousands of developers now trying to get a piece of this interesting and challenging market!

There are a few downsides to this kind of games that you must be aware though: because there are so many such games out there, and because these are so simple, players tend to leave them after playing for a short while and move on looking for the next thrill on some other game.

That is the reason why it is very important to have, right from the beginning, a very strong monetisation strategy in place which will ensure that all players installing the game will possibly become sponsors of your development ;)

It is very common for hyper casual games to present a considerable amount of advertising to players, right from the first sessions! It is no wonder, after all: most players will likely not return on the next day! As such, it is critical to try and leverage all possible opportunities to bring in some revenue from all possible contributors. This is why you might expect that a hyper casual game will start displaying ads after as short as 30s, possibly after completing the first level, or in some cases even before you even play!

Another very common monetisation tactic is to present users with an option to purchase the ad-free option, which allows them to play the game as much as they want without being ridden with disruptive advertising to other games (very often those are other hyper casual games), apps, and random online products. This might mean that the player will need to pay around 2 to 5 US dollars to get it, but also ensures that their experience will be much smoother and enjoyable.

Even though these ad-intensive projects can sound annoying, in fact these provide a lot of fun to so many players around the world, and there are even reports from players that they end up enjoying the experience of watching some ads - whether that’s because they appreciate the little pause it provides, or maybe they are actually getting some interesting ads to watch and good suggestions for other games to try right after.

If this sounds like a great and rich business experience, maybe you want to start working with mobile games, or possibly expanding your mobile games company portfolio into this new territory, stay tuned for more post for great strategies around making this type of hyper famous games!