“Our studio has almost doubled in size,” said Nikita Kharlamov and Diana Korkina from Top App Games about the results of 2025 year

This material was originally published on Game World Observer.

How was 2025 for your team? What were you able to accomplish, what are you proud of, and what did you not manage to do?

Nikita Kharlamov: 2025 was challenging, fun, and interesting!

On one hand, we leveraged the enormous potential of our Ludus project: dozens of growth points, hundreds of hypotheses, and thousands of ideas in both marketing and the product, with the most interesting ones emerging at the intersection.

On the other hand, the market became more expensive. Increased competition in our genre, the continuing wave of hyper-casual releases, the rise of iGaming and betting, plus unexpected "black swans" — these were all challenges for us in 2025.

As a result, it felt less like a year and more like a rollercoaster with its ups and unexpected turns. Some people might get thrown off by this, but it only energizes and motivates us, adding excitement. Thanks to our team, which kept a constant pulse and developed marketing, we managed to grow significantly this year and raise the bar even higher. A significant contribution to this result came from the strategic decisions of CEO Vladimir Markov and investor Vladimir Nikolsky, whose ideas helped us act confidently under the given conditions.

We are very proud of our talented team that created Ludus, a project that is managing to grow in a stagnant (or even declining) mobile game market. From the start, we were able to implement best practices in marketing and establish clear internal and external processes, giving us time to develop new strategies, ideas, and innovations on the whole.

Some directions we consider particularly successful in marketing:

• A successful start in the rewarded direction, accounting for up to a quarter of our UA budget;
• A creative strategy that includes various cluster approaches in videos, playables, and Custom Product Pages;
• A UA strategy with a special focus on ROAS: we didn’t waste budgets on dubious channels just to “test them out” (as they say, “saved money is earned money”).

This year, our project is represented not just in the App Store and Google Play. We’ve launched on Yandex Games, VK Play, and other alternative stores (there’s even a separate web version of the game). We were just short of time to get a license to launch the game in Vietnam, and we expect to receive it at the beginning of 2026.

Diana Korkina: 2025 was truly a successful year for us. Our game Ludus grew and developed confidently. In 2025 alone, we released four breakthrough features: clan competitions, clan wars, spells, and the solo event Atlantida. We have surpassed 8 million downloads. An outstanding achievement for a project that went global just one and a half years ago.

We also started developing several new projects and have already tested a couple of prototypes. One of them appears very promising based on initial tests, though scaling it up remains premature. The primary and most interesting task ahead is scaling content production.

Our small studio has nearly doubled in size, and there’s still much to do in 2026. Team growth always brings significant changes in processes, and we are currently transitioning from a small startup to a full-fledged studio.

For me as a CBDO, one of the main focal points is global scaling of Ludus through partnerships. Ludus is performing exceptionally well in Asia. Korea and Japan are climbing to the top in terms of revenue, and we see tremendous potential in Vietnam, despite tightened publication rules there in 2025. My main task is to ensure Ludus is accessible and grows actively everywhere. 2025 was a serious challenge; 2026 won’t be easier, but that’s part of the thrill. The project must be present in all possible markets, and we are just getting started.

What conclusions did you draw as a development studio by the end of 2025?

Nikita: 2025 showed that even in a complex, stagnant market, a consistent focus on quality, well-thought-out processes, and quick adaptation yields results. We’ve proven that a small yet "hungry" team can compete with major players by combining a strong product with innovative marketing. Challenges like increased advertising costs and high competition don't stop growth if you maintain flexibility, test numerous ideas, and keep the team motivated at all stages.

Diana: This year reaffirmed how crucial marketing is in mobile games. Take, for instance, Kingshot, one of 2025's biggest success stories: the game went global earlier this year and now earns over $3 million a day. From the start, they pour traffic into a wide funnel and gently lead players into a deep 4X strategy with outstanding monetization. Or Township, a game nearly 10 years old that's grown about 30% in the past year, largely due to fresh marketing creatives.

While retention used to be the king metric, this year CPI has confidently stood alongside it. It's essential to determine early if a project is ready for scaling and if it's needed in the market at all. We often expend enormous efforts on new features, content, and art, while postponing marketing until "the game is ready." The lesson is not to wait — assess market perception as early as possible, simultaneously with the first player session.

How was the year for the niche/genre you work in?

Nikita: This was the year of "Fast Fashion" in our genre. Just as mass-market retailers take luxury designs as a basis for new collections and produce widely accessible models from cheap materials, 4X strategy developers borrowed mechanics and visuals from popular titles, presenting their projects as games with a low entry barrier. The problem of creative fatigue was addressed through "industrial espionage."

Diana: Competition became noticeably tougher: in 2025, several major titles raised the bar in all directions.

Players have become more demanding about monetization. Anything perceived as pay-to-win or too aggressive in terms of monetization receives a wave of negative feedback or is simply ignored. The most successful games continue to focus on cosmetics that don't affect gameplay.

What trends in your niche/genre do you anticipate strengthening or emerging in 2026?

Nikita: In 2026, I expect the evolution of "onboarding gameplay" in our genre. Hyper-casual mechanics will completely take over creatives in pursuit of low CPI, while mid-core and hardcore projects will need to adapt the initial stages of actual gameplay to not harm retention. The flow looks like this:

Misleading creative — Misleading onboarding — Actual gameplay

I expect CPM to rise even higher next year. After significant price increases in 2025, the demand for traffic hasn’t fallen. This means game studios are ready to reduce marketing efficiency further. Many projects will have to change their in-game economies to monetize players more effectively and retain their market share.

I anticipate the continued migration of in-app purchases to web shops in pursuit of commission optimization from stores. This, in turn, will lead to loosened purchase KPIs. Consequently: increased marketing budgets, followed by increased competition, leading to further growth in traffic costs.

AI integration will skyrocket, accelerating creative production and localization. Art and graphics in average games will undoubtedly become better and more attractive. However, I am confident that top projects won’t present users with "raw" AI content (though this doesn’t exclude neural network use in internal processes).

Additionally, I hope that 2026 will mark the end of user attribution difficulties on iOS. Many ad networks have already implemented probabilistic attribution. We eagerly await the full functionality of Google’s ICM (Integrated Conversion Measurement).

Diana: More studios will use AI not only for campaign optimization but also for fine-tuning creatives in user acquisition.

We are keenly observing deeper personalization with AI — quests and stories that adapt to a player’s individual style, rather than just generating content "on the fly."

While AI is a powerful tool, it is not a replacement. It is already indispensable for routine tasks like creating textures or drafting dialogues but still requires careful human editing and quality control. Sometimes it even takes more time than doing it manually.

What are your team's plans for 2026?

Nikita: We have several new projects in development. We want to move past the stage of being a "one-hit wonder" studio.

Diana: Currently, our focus is launching new games. We are actively preparing several releases, including in the hyper-casual direction, which our leadership sees as very promising. Meanwhile, continuing the global scaling of Ludus remains my top priority: entering new markets, deepening partnerships, and strengthening positions wherever we are already present.