What do you need to know about Anipop — the most popular match-3 in China?

In recent years, Anipop has been firmly in the top twenty highest-grossing games in China. And in 2018, her MAU was the largest in the global mobile market along with Honor of Kings.

The analyst highlights the following successful solutions of the authors of the Happy Elements Anipop studio: the artistic style of the game, the approach to events and marketing, etc.

Artistic style

• The developers have created 40 different, fully developed style options for the game. One was chosen for the game. Not only testing of the target audience, but also internal analysis helped to determine the choice.
• The characters in Anipop are presented as cute animals with disproportionately large heads and eyes. Note that animals are the most popular topic among Chinese players. Animal characters are involved in 41% of projects in China.
• A huge number of new users are attracted by the Anipop icon in the app stores. The icon is themed, dedicated to the Chinese festival The Dragon Boat. It depicts characters wrapped in a zongzi (a dish of boiled leaf and glutinous rice). According to the analyst, it stands out among others when scrolling the store.

Events

• Happy Elements constantly hold a lot of events specifically for Chinese players. For participating in each of them, users receive in-game rewards.  There are both in-game and real events. This is the key difference between the game and other match-3 titles in the Middle Kingdom.
• The goal of Happy Elements is to make Anipop something more than just a game. Therefore, as part of many campaigns, the developer asks players to share their own content — even those that are not directly related to Anipop itself.
• Community events include a thematic quiz for schoolchildren with questions about the game; a selection of short original videos about how users live; the Father’s Day event, in which players talked about their fathers.

• An example of an in—game event is a free energy boost during the weekend. The boost is limited to only 30 minutes, but it can be increased by completing weekly tasks and inviting friends to the game.

• Anipop also hosts weekly and seasonal competitive events, as well as major thematic festivals (the same The Dragon Boat Festival).
• Information about all activities is available in a special in-game menu. In addition, all events are integrated with social networks and sales channels. Thanks to this, Happy Elements easily convey information about updates to players and increase virality.

Social Marketing

• As mentioned above, Anipop uses the functions of social platforms (for example, WeChat) and local stores. She even managed to gain access to social features not available for other games on the market.
• In general, Happy Elements has made a bet on multiplatform marketing. In the case of Anipop, it goes beyond the classic UA and is complemented by integration with social networks. The graph below shows the scheme of the Anipop advertising campaign during the New Year period, the peak in terms of player spending. The studio advertised the game in the subway and on TV, and also released a thematic short film. All this — within a month.

Other important factors

• In Anipop, it is generally easier for players than in Western match-3. The first hundreds of levels in the title from Happy Elements are intentionally made simple. Therefore, for the first time, the player will face a difficult level, already being fully involved in the game. And he is more likely to have a desire to pay real money to pass it. In Western games, such a level occurs much earlier, and the player is less involved by that time.
• There are very few levels in Anipop where moves are limited in time. So a player can pass one level at least all day. And this has a positive effect on the metrics of the game.
• Now there are almost 2000 levels in the game. About 15 more are added every month. Anipop is generally updated very often, and new chips permanently appear in it.
• At the same time, the size of the title still does not exceed 145 MB, and it can be played without being tied to the Internet.

Note that the total Anipop downloads in Chinese app stores exceeded 2 billion. The rest of the match-3 games (including Gardenscapes and Homescapes from Playrix) have downloads averaging hundreds or even tens of millions.

Also on the topic:

• What do you need to know about the match-3 market in China?Chinese gamers will spend $37.9 billion in 2018