Last Thursday, ZeptoLab released the first third-party game. In Russia, it is called “Am Yum: Evolution” and is an idler with merge mechanics. We have in the material a story about the project and a short interview with the head of the publishing direction of ZeptoLab.
What kind of game is “Am Yum: Evolution”?
The closest analogue is Merge Town! from Gram Games. The novelty is based on the same mechanics. There is a playing field where boxes with monsters fall. Each of the monsters generates gold. Monsters can be combined to get a cooler monster. The cooler it is, the more gold it brings in a unit of time. Gold is spent on new monsters.
Advertising is an integral part of the game. Monetization is built on it. This approach is also called view-to-play. The player is constantly offered to save the time spent in the application by watching a commercial. For viewing, they give expensive monsters for free, double the revenue of gold, accelerate the receipt of boxes, and so on.
Adam Telfer, a former Wooga product lead, wrote in detail about how such games work in 2017. We remind you: since such projects do not have a complex meta and the main money in them comes from advertising, they are designed primarily for coverage, not retention.
Curious details
Before the launch of the new product, ZeptoLab announced that a separate internal structure, ZeptoLab Green, would deal with all games about Am Nyama. In general, all work on the brand “Am Yum” (in other regions Om Nom) will be on it, including game development, cartoon series development, licensing and merchandising.
It is still unclear how closely the publishing capacities of ZeptoLab itself are going to cooperate with ZeptoLab Green. Perhaps we are talking about a formal separation, since “Am Yum: Evolution” is released under the main account of the company.
Also worth attention is the history of the development of a new game. It was not created within the walls of the Moscow office of the company, like most of the previous games. On the contrary, it is the development of a third-party British studio Amuzo, which specializes in creating games under popular licenses.
Interview
As a result of the release, we talked a little with Dylan Tredrea, head of the publishing direction of ZeptoLab.
Dylan Tredrea
Can you share the softlonch metrics? For example, the retention rate, DAU, or the number of pre-registrations?
Unfortunately, we cannot share this information. But, since we approved the game for a global launch, it means that we really believe in it. Zeptolab has an exceptional reputation for two reasons: high quality games and their replayability. The worldwide release was made possible thanks to the business potential of the game, which we saw in the framework of sotflonch, and its compliance with our standards.
Tell us a little more about the development. How long has the game been created?
We started discussing the game with Amuzo in early fall 2018. They had a prototype of a merge game, which we launched around the office. The game immediately had fans. Even before that, we thought that a game with merge mechanics would fit perfectly into our portfolio. But it was Amuzo who proposed a project with a key, magical ingredient that is usually the hardest to find.
How comfortable was it working with Amuzo?
We enjoyed working with them. Of course, both companies made mistakes. But, you know, throughout the development, I was confident in the project. Each employee was ready to quickly, without drama, admit if something went wrong and, importantly, call for help to solve the problem.
Game development is always a complicated and confusing business. No matter how diligently you treat it, no matter how experienced you are, it will never be simple. Development is effective if everyone in the team is modest, conscious and understands that there will always be mistakes and surprises. Therefore, the key to success is good team interaction and its constant progress.
Are you ready to announce the future plans of ZeptoLab Green?
We will continue to release fun and creative games that have market potential. We plan to strengthen such projects with the help of our IP and marketing. We want Cut The Rope fans to have more ways to interact with our green monster. And, of course, on the way to this task, we are ready to introduce Am Nyama to a new audience. I think that the 1.4 billion downloads available in the series is a good start for this campaign. But this is only a fraction of the world’s population, so there is still a lot of work ahead.
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