two & a half gamers

Jakub Remiar takes you on a no-bullshit, data-driven tour through the real top 25 grossing mobile games in the West (Jan–July 2025). The episode breaks down portfolio dynamics, market shifts, revenue spikes, and the high-stakes race for dominance between 4X, casino, merge, puzzle, and gacha giants. This is not just another leaderboard—this is the context and commentary you need to understand who’s...

Today, we break down Granny: the solo-developed mobile horror hit that racked up a billion downloads and $50,000 daily ad revenue with no UA, no team, and nothing but YouTube virality. You’ll learn: The secrets behind Granny’s viral growth and billion-plus downloads Why four simple interstitials are better than banners, IAP, or rewarded video How meme culture, Let’s Plays, and YouTube Shorts keep...

We break down Century Games’ Tasty Travels, the new merge hit muscling into a category long dominated by Travel Town and Microfun. Tasty Travels is not just a clone. It’s a polished, high-velocity merge machine, doubling the ARPDAU of Travel Town and already scaling toward $200,000 daily revenue, with a launch playbook built on AI, altered gameplay, and relentless creative iteration. We explore wh...

In this solo episode, Matej breaks down the new rules of user acquisition for mobile games in 2025, backed by real survey data from 20,000+ newsletter subs and hundreds of UA managers. Full report: https://lancaric.substack.com/p/q1-2025-brutally-honest-ua-report From channel splits and rewarded UA to the creative volume arms race, fraud, AI hacks, and why your next UA hire needs to be a creative...

Inside Bending Spoons: the $2.5 billion app juggernaut behind Evernote, Remini, Splice, and more. Special guest Darius reveals the hacks behind viral UA, review scores, creative iteration, and the brutal playbook that’s rewriting consumer SaaS. You’ll learn: The secrets behind Bending Spoons’ $500 million annual revenue Why TikTok, Shorts, and Reels are more powerful than any ad network for app gr...

In this live session, the hosts discuss various aspects of game design, gameplay mechanics, monetization strategies, and the future of game development. They provide insights into the gameplay of a specific game, analyze its mechanics, and compare it with other games in the market. The conversation also touches on audience engagement and upcoming events in the gaming industry. takeaways The live s...

Jakub Remiar dives into Uma Musume Pretty Derby’s “Spark” and legacy mechanics—one of the most advanced progression and inheritance systems in any mobile RPG. See why this game’s depth is pulling 100,000 downloads a day and racking up 450,000 dollars daily revenue even outside Japan. From Genshin-style stat RNG to community-driven parent borrowing, you’ll learn why this system is built for both th...

This episode is a tour through the wildest creative trends dominating mobile games in June 2025. We break down why two- and three-minute video ads are everywhere, how AI hooks and long-form ASMR are pre-qualifying high-value users, and why the best-performing creatives this month are often stitched together from hits of the past. What’s inside: Long-Form Video Surge Copy-Paste Mania ASMR and Satis...

We unpack KnitOut by Rollic, a surprising hit blending simple, relaxing puzzle mechanics with clever monetization and UA execution. Underneath the soothing yarn is a sophisticated, scalable system that echoes the Turkish studio’s proven blueprint. KnitOut is already generating $ 60,000 daily revenue and 20,000 downloads a day, with the US accounting for sixty percent of revenue and CPIs exceeding...

In this solo episode, Felix Braberg walks through the six most effective ad placements he’s tested and rolled out across top ad-monetized mobile games and client portfolios in 2024 and 2025. Drawing from live examples in games like Woodoku, Happy Color, Screwmaster 3D, Subway Surfers, and more, Felix details exactly how to engineer ad placements that boost ARPDAU, drive first purchases, and turn n...

We go deep on Uma Musume Pretty Derby, Japan’s gacha horse girl sensation, and a masterclass in roguelite meta complexity. With real horse DNA, multi-layered training runs, six gacha layers, and a live ops cadence that powers up to 72 million dollars per launch month, Uma Musume is a unicorn in the global market—an RPG sim that’s too Japanese for most of the West, but a billion-dollar franchise at...

We dissect the phenomenon of FPS Strike, a low-poly, Counter-Strike-inspired mobile shooter racking up more than 4 million DAU, mostly across India, Pakistan, Brazil, Egypt, and Southeast Asia. Despite its massive scale, nearly everything about the game is stuck in the “admon nightmare” zone—zero iOS presence, almost no user acquisition, unoptimized ad stack, endless rewarded ads, and zero LiveOps...

Paul West, founder of Fumb Games, joins Two and a Half Gamers to share the real growth story behind the studio’s breakout year. From Bitcoin Miner’s $10 million run to the launch of Idle Mine and a creative rebrand that hit $1 million in sixty days, Paul explains how ruthless UA strategy, creative expansion, and a “cut what doesn’t work” mindset allowed a lean team to scale tenfold—right in the mi...

We break down Wittle Defender, Habby’s latest departure from the mass market, blending deep meta, squad RPG mechanics, and a relentless gacha system. This is not another Survivor IO. It is a meta monster built for hardcore RPG fans, multi-layered progression, gear grind, rune systems, and dozens of monetization hooks. But is it too deep for global scale? What’s inside: Meta Gone Wild Gacha and Pro...

Today, we deep-dive into Raid Rush, the Turkish-made tower defense game that is bringing roguelike deck-building, build-your-own-path mechanics, and IP crossovers to the top of the mobile charts. The crew unpacks why this game feels so deep, why Korean and US players are eating it up, and how the game balances heavy progression, smart ad placements, and old-school strategy with real modern LiveOps...

In this episode, Two and a Half Gamers sit down with Shobeir Shobeiri, Director of Publisher Sales at Moloco, to give the industry’s most practical, no-BS crash course on the history, mechanics, and real money in mobile ad monetization. From the origins of banners to today’s machine-learning DSPs, the crew demystifies ad tech jargon, reveals the margins and secrets behind every middleman, and lays...

Today, we break down Carnival Tycoon: the “idle” game that’s really a Trojan Horse for social casino and slot machine mechanics. We compare every feature, monetization trick, and creative strategy to Coin Master, Monopoly Go, and the social casino giants. Find out how Carnival Tycoon hit five million dollars a month, why rewarded ads are hidden everywhere, and what makes this copycat succeed where...

We tackle the legacy and latest iteration of Puzzle & Dragons, the game that defined Japanese mobile gaming and reached a mind-blowing five billion dollars in lifetime revenue. From wild metagame depth and monster collection to why Western players just never clicked with the formula, the crew unpacks the hits, misses, and museum-piece vibes of a true industry legend. What’s inside: No Gacha in...

In this brutally honest episode, Matej interviews Zino Rost Van Tonningen, CEO of Tyr Ads, live from MAU (with zero construction noise this time). The focus is on running rewarded UA without getting burned by fraud, bad partners, or weak setups. Zino shares knowledge from his journey through agency work, the wild world of offer walls, and leading Tyr Ads from rewards app to global SDK powerhouse....

We break down BitLife, a simulation game that proves you do not need flashy graphics or complex meta to print money. With an aggressive monetization model, evergreen retention, and a loyal fanbase, BitLife has been going strong for over seven years, now pulling in more than $110,000 a day, with ad revenue making up half of its total income. What’s inside: Ad Monetization on Steroids: Interstitial...

We just dropped our latest episode, and it is a must-watch for anyone building or buying mobile game ads. We break down the biggest trends ripping through the creative market: AI hooks and seamless transitions: five art styles in five minutes, and the line between real and fake is now a blur. Celebrities everywhere: Monica, Phoebe, LeBron, Christina Aguilera, even C-tier cameos nobody asked for Sa...

Legend alert. In this episode, we sit down with Jane Whittaker, a developer, executive, and innovator whose career spans from coding 8-bit chart toppers and Atari’s biggest hits to shaping the DNA of open-world, survival, and RPGs. Jane shares candid stories from the 1980s video game crash, building Alien vs. Predator with just two programmers, working with Sid Meier and Mike Singleton, and steeri...

Today, we sit down with Supersonic’s Samantha Benjamin and Guy Agiv to discuss the hit game Screw Master 3D. From adapting trends out of China to hybrid monetization tricks and creative secrets, this episode is packed with actionable insights for anyone in mobile gaming. What you’ll learn: How Screwmaster 3D’s physics-puzzle and meta layers drive insane engagement The models and tactics behind max...

We just dropped a new Review Radar episode in which we examined every major mobile game from the last three months. Some are breaking the ‘podcast curse’ and scaling up, others are stuck in stable dinosaur mode, and a few are just… lost. Highlights: Triple Match City and Color Block Jam are stacking revenue with surprising ARPU and ad mixes Royal Kingdom and Pokémon Sleep show that audience and IP...

In this special episode recorded LIVE at MAU, Matej Lančarič sits down with Noa Gutterman (VP UA, Misplay) and Brett (Senior Manager, UA, Misplay) for a no-BS deep dive into the business and creative secrets powering Misplay’s explosive growth, and their high-stakes launch on iOS. Brutally honest breakdown: How Misplay overcame App Store hurdles to launch on iOS Incrementality testing, the “always...