We saw a mix of smart retention mechanics, creative event design, and notable monetization shifts across casual and midcore titles in April. Gossip Harbor introduced a hybrid PvE format blending match3 with merge progression, while Hay Day linked new mechanics to rewarding event systems, helping drive record monthly revenue.
On the midcore side, webstores are becoming increasingly central to monetization strategies, with several titles now shifting new currencies to become the default transaction option over real money. Meanwhile, Invincible: Guarding the Globe rode the wave of its TV show’s new season to a significant player and revenue spike, raising the question of how long the momentum will last.
We also saw notable launches such as Neverness to Everness and Dragon Quest Smash, plus a growing trend of arrow-based puzzle games evolving beyond pure hyper-casual models. You can find more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends from across the mobile market, by checking out our full Analyst Bulletin below.
April’s casual game updates
Monopoly GO! – The Monopoly Ever After season introduced a fairytale-inspired theme, refreshing the game’s visuals and adding new twists to the core gameplay and progression systems. For the first time, the season goes beyond reskins by introducing mechanics that directly affect how core features play out.
A key addition was the Enchanted Storybook, a Sticker Album feature that helps players progress through later sets. Each Storybook grants one missing sticker from a random late-game collection, with a one-time option to “turn the page” and switch to a different set before claiming the reward. Fairies were an additional mechanic that an enchanted storybook may reveal, and a fairy would then grant the player with extra rewards.
The season also introduced a set of temporary gameplay modifiers that added extra reward layers to some of the core mechanics:
- Ever After Chance Cards added a new outcome to the Chance tile. This could randomly send players into special boosted versions of Heist or Shut Down events.
- In Fairytale Heist, players could participate in an event where they uncovered hidden Gems to boost their rewards.
- If players attacked successfully in Fairytale Shut Down, they could’ve revealed 1–3 hidden Piggies, granting additional rewards like rolls or event points during the event.
Gossip Harbor introduced Norman’s Monster Hunt, a new hybrid PvE gameplay format that blends Match3-style puzzle interactions with merge-based progression. Players earned moves (the event’s currency) from the core gameplay, and then used them to combine items on a board, triggering cascades and dealing damage to enemies across multiple stages.
Progression was driven by earning medals from defeating enemies, which merged into higher tiers to increase players’ rank. Rewards that were gathered as loot drops could be merged and upgraded before being claimed. What makes this particularly interesting is how it combined merge and match3 gameplay, with multiple layers of merging across gameplay, progression, and rewards.
Hay Day’s April Fools’ Day celebration lasted for a week and focused on mischievous chicks taking over players’ farms. Similar to previous events that featured seasonal creatures, players completed event objectives by catching various types of chicks introduced each day, such as the explosive TNTillys.
The week’s main new feature was the Takeover event, where rewards were tied to milestones for catching the day’s featured chicks. Additionally, this event introduced the same interface used for the game’s first progressive reward offer.
Recent events show how Hay Day increasingly links new mechanics and rewarding progression systems, moving away from loosely connected events toward cohesive, engaging event collections. This approach, combined with new reward types, contributed to Hay Day’s record-high monthly revenue in April.
Additional casual gaming highlights and news
Dicero is a casual roguelite from HABBY, the studio behind the Archero series and Capybara Go. It’s built around a dice-rolling combat system where each battle plays out similarly to a Yahtzee-style roll. Players roll up to five dice, are able to reroll up to three times, and then try to score the best combination possible to maximize their damage output. Rolled values unlock and trigger skills, with synergies between dice outcomes, gear, and a weapon-specific build, which encourages light strategic thinking within an accessible format. Outside of runs, the game features an extensive meta progression suite spanning gear upgrades, a talent draw system, and permanent bonuses tied to specific dice outcomes.
Dicero is often compared to the indie hit Balatro due to their shared roguelite/card combo-building. However, similarities are mostly surface-level: the two differ in outside-run progression, monetization, and social features.
The game had a decent launch and is now in the top 150 grossing games.
Arrow-based puzzle games are currently a popular gameplay trend in the hyper- and hybrid-casual space. Arrows by Lessmore has been topping download charts for months now, and this new genre has attracted a wave of fast followers seeking similar success. Most of these entries lean heavily into a pure hyper-casual model, relying primarily on ad monetization (IAA) and offering highly similar gameplay experiences.
However, Arrow Out by Lion Studios stands out for its hybrid approach. In addition to IAA, it incorporates in-app purchases (IAP) and borrows elements from casual games, such as boosters and light live operations, signaling a shift toward deeper engagement and monetization within the category. The game ranked among the top 200 IAP-grossing games in April.
Block Out is a Grand Games’ casual puzzle game where players slide coloured blocks toward their matching-coloured gates to clear them from the board. The game monetizes primarily through IAP-driven convenience and session-length restriction bypasses, such as extra lives, purchasable Coins, boosters, and continues. Block Out also features a light Journey progression layer and a solid live event framework to support the core puzzle loop.
Its strongest competitor is Color Block Jam from Rollic Games. However, Block Out keeps scaling in both downloads and revenue, entering the top-grossing 50 in April. We’ll see if it can keep rivaling Color Block Jam in the coming months.
April’s midcore game updates
Webstores have become a must-have in midcore games, with many titles now adding additional in-app currencies that are primarily acquired through web stores. Some titles have even begun shifting this currency to become the “default” option for transactions, replacing “real money” purchases. This month, games such as Last Z (4X strategy) and MLB Perfect Inning (Sports) added these type of currencies into the in-app store. It’s a notable evolution in monetization strategy, steering players toward web storefronts while reframing how in-game spending feels at the point of purchase.
Invincible: Guarding the Globe scaled in both downloads and revenue in late March and into April due to new characters and event content. This coincided with the Invincible Season 4 release, which gave them a boost in numbers and pushed it into the top-grossing rank 50, peaking at 25.
Just like last year, a new season of the animated show on Prime brought in many players to try out the game – this year, even more so (see the graph below). Invincible: Guarding the Globe has taken full advantage of the new season by adding a lot of IAP offers to celebrate the show and the new characters we see on the show. Players could obtain some of these characters for free from limited-time events, including Thragg, the main villain of the season. In other events, players could re-live the fights from the show in the game.
Invincible VS, a new fighting game launched on PC, was also released at the end of April, which brought more eyes to the franchise from the community. Promotional activities in the US have also gone viral on social media, with people buying pizzas that they don’t want to eat just so they can get the code for exclusive skins on a promotional deal.
Invincible: Guarding the Globe is thriving in this uplift of players from the buzz of the show’s new season and the virality of the marketing campaigns of Invincible VS. This all correlates with the spike of players the game has been receiving, but looking at the bigger picture, how long will it be until the player count cools off again?
Additional midcore gaming highlights and news
Neverness to Everness (NtE) is a supernatural, urban open-world action RPG developed by Hotta Studio, a subsidiary of Perfect World Games. NtE is among the year’s most-awaited gacha RPGs within the community and one of several “anime GTA” titles launching in 2026, alongside Ananta.
What sets NtE apart from other gacha RPGs is the level of freedom players have in interacting with its world. Similar to GTA-style systems, players can engage in activities like stealing cars or attacking NPCs, which can trigger a “Wanted” level and result in consequences such as being arrested and sent to prison. Beyond that, players can purchase and own vehicles, manage their condition by visiting repair shops, and explore an open world filled with interactive elements and side activities that make the environment feel dynamic and alive.
Recent Gacha games have been experimenting with new ways of doing Gachas, and NtE is doing so by making their Gacha a board game, where players roll dice and are guaranteed to get the limited-time character after a certain number of pulls, meaning there is no common 50/50 system.
The game reached the top-grossing 100 during the launch days, but it will remain to be seen if it can keep it up. The RPG genre has been struggling to get any of the new games to stay in the top-grossing ranks, even if the game (like NtE) has miHoYo levels of production.
Fans of the Japanese RPG brand Dragon Quest were treated to a new light action RPG at the end of April. Dragon Quest Smash/Grow evolves the Archero-style roguelite gameplay with a 3-character party system, 4-player sync co-op possibility, and requiring players to stand still in order to attack. The game’s name comes from smashing the monsters with ultimate attacks as finishing blows, resulting in satisfying animations and lots of experience for players’ roguelite skills.
Replay value is added by having players revisit old stages, where they collect and merge memories of defeated enemies. These memories act as equipment items, which give both stat boosts and skills.
The characters in the game can be customized to players’ liking in terms of facial features and clothing. Each of the main pieces of equipment (weapon, shield, helmet, body armor, and leg armor) changes the stats of the character, but they also double up as cosmetic overrides, meaning players customize their look while also keeping their optimal stats.
The game also features a storyline to follow, both in the main progression and in the limited-time event featuring the story of the original Dragon Quest game.
While the game has flown under the radar in the West, in Japan, the game rose to the top spot in both downloads and grossing at launch. It’s maintained a top-10 grossing for the last 10 days of April, with no signs of slowing down for now.
Honor of Kings: World is an open-world ARPG/MMO released in the CN market in April. It’s a cross-platform game that’s available on both mobile (iOS/Android) and PC, and has shared progression across platforms. A global multi-platform release is also planned for the future.
Set in the Honor of Kings universe, the game combines PvE and PvP elements. Players take on the role of the “Flowborn (Yuan Liu Zhi Zi)” and explore a large, interconnected world while engaging in combat, progression, and competitive gameplay. The game is structured around three main components:
- Open-world exploration, including map traversal, resource gathering, and building and constructing systems.
- PvP modes, which take place in separate instances. These can be 1v1 duels, 3v3, 4v4, and 5v5 matches.
- Casual and social content, which encompasses fishing, card games, co-op dungeons, and AI-assisted gameplay.
The Flowborn is central to both the narrative and combat systems, with the ability to switch between three distinctive roles before battle: Tank, Mage, and Marksman. Each role is tied to its own unique weapon system and skill set.
Combat features a dual-character switching mechanic, where players control the Flowborn while resonating with a companion hero in battle (such as Kai, Garo, etc.). This allows for real-time switching between the different combat styles: melee, ranged, and support. The Flowborn’s progression and level is shared across all three roles, while heroes and weapons are mainly earned through gameplay. There are additional unlocks via direct/indirect IAP, and cosmetics are obtained through gachas.
The game maintained a stable top-10 rank in the free charts, while its top grossing rank declined from approximately top-30 to top-100 before showing a slight recovery in early May.
