Minigames and multiplayer seemed to be the key themes running across several mobile game updates in May, with Toy Blast and Bingo Voyage adding new events that encouraged collaborative gameplay. And with Star Wars day taking place on May 4, titles such as Epic-owned Fortnite and Scopely’s Monopoly GO! got a Star Wars May makeover with a galaxy of updates and Star Wars-themed goodies for players to experience, not to mention a cussing Darth Vader.
Outside of minigames and multiplayer, Supercell’s Squad Busters is in its 2.0 phase after a major update overhauled the game’s meta and core mechanics – highly unusual for a game that’s well outside its beta/soft-launch phase. Over in Japan, rogue-like card battler Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter enjoyed brief success in the charts thanks to its AI-generated card artwork inspired by prolific designer Kazuma Kanekos, while a new ‘lite’ version of the popular Puzzles & Dragons franchise soared to the top of the download charts in Japan.
For more information about these updates and titles, as well as the latest trends from across the mobile market, check out our latest analyst bulletin below.
May’s casual game updates
Match3 puzzle game Toy Blast added the Knight’s Journey event, a first-of-its-kind collaborative challenge event where players team up with friends to defeat a dragon and win a grand prize. In the event, players earn Super Balls to use in a Plinko-style minigame, which rewards them with Knight Tokens. These Knight Tokens are used to upgrade the strength of knights for the final battle with the dragon. Players can raise the risk for higher token rewards and must coordinate upgrades with their team.
Monopoly GO! launched a major collaboration with Star Wars, introducing a massive selection of Star Wars-themed events, rewards, collectible albums, and minigames. New board tokens like Obi-Wan Kenobi, Luke, and Leia were added, while events such as Jedi Partners encouraged players to partner with four other players to unlock rewards. The collaboration also tapped into the popularity of the digging meta in minigame events, with players using Laser Guns to dig out Artifact rewards in the Jawa Treasures minigame.
In addition to the Star Wars collaboration, Monopoly GO! launched Tycoon Express, a season-based event allowing players to earn better rewards by ranking up through Tycoon Classes. The event also introduced a new leaderboard system, reducing tournament group player numbers from 100 to 35.
May saw the arrival of another main-themed event, Dragon Strike, in Mattel’s casual card game, Phase 10. Players rolled the dice to gather materials and hammers to craft items and upgrade buildings, while the introduction of a similar “shut down” mechanic, seen in games like Monopoly GO! and Coin Master, allowed players to attack the buildings of other players. Players could defend their buildings with Shields, but if they were damaged, they needed to be fixed with hammers before being upgraded further.
Bingo Voyage added a new event type, Alliance Tournament, which brought 100 players together to form four teams in a race. Players earned items from bingo games across two ranking systems, teams and individuals, and hit reward thresholds to score Flags. As players collect Flags, the grand prize pool grows and is eventually split proportionally across the winning team, who also received Bingo Ticket currency on top of their prize.
Bingo Voyage is a great example of hybridization in the casino genre through minigames, which may be contributing to the game’s continued growth in the charts. It’s got an unusually complex meta for a bingo game, supplemented with collection mechanics and decoration layers, not to mention the various genres in the minigame events.
Additional casual gaming highlights and other news
Epic Plane Evolution is a hyper-casual title from Voodoo, launched in June 2024. The game started scaling in downloads and revenue in April 2025, likely driven by optimized UA strategies. Epic Plane Evolution peaked at a daily grossing rank of 192 in May and has sustained strong momentum with a GR download rank of around 22. The gameplay is simple yet satisfying, while its hybrid monetization combining session-restriction bypasses, IAA, and IAP, is well-tuned for casual audiences, supporting both short-session play and lightweight retention.
May’s midcore game updates
Supercell has been making some major gameplay changes to its mobile portfolio over the last few months, and Squad Busters is the latest game to get an overhaul with a major reworking of its whole core and meta, with significant changes for how heroes and upgrade systems work.
While Squaddies retained their upgrade levels, the removal of Hero characters meant players lost progression for their heroes (although compensation was given according to their upgrade levels of different characters). A rework of this scale is unusual, especially in titles such as Squad Busters that aren’t in a soft-launch or beta period.
The changes were introduced in a Community Event, which contextualised why things were changing: the Squad Busters have lost their fight against monsters, so new heroes are emerging to save the day. Given how major this update is, we’ve summarised the main changes below:
Penguin GO! TD is an interesting wave-based tower defense game blending roguelite, casual casino, and idle elements. The game briefly reached the top 200 grossing in May in the US market, with stronger traction observed in Japan.
Characters are split into Heroes or Squaddies. Heroes are customizable party leaders that must remain alive, while Squaddies function like the original characters. Upgrading Squaddies by merging duplicates in the meta unlocks equipable skills for the Hero. The upgrades for Hero happen through the Hero Journey shop.
Heroes and Squaddies now have roles, and having characters with the same roles as the Hero in your team grants a performance boost.
At the start of the battle, players have a Hero character and two Squaddies of their choice as their main team foundation, but more support can be collected during the match from Chests, where changes have also been made to how team members are unlocked and recruited. After the update, players can only choose between two characters from chest-opens, rather than three pre-update.
Supercell has presumably made these changes to boost revenue and downloads, which have dramatically fallen since the game’s launch in summer last year. At the time of writing, there’s no notable impact on revenue or downloads, but changes of this scale do take time for players to notice and may require a UA push to get the word out there.
While Squad Busters is struggling to capture the attention of players, Supercell’s Clash of Clans continues to go from strength to strength. You know your game is doing well when you start seeing your mechanics being incorporated into other games’ minigame events! Genshin Impact did this in the Clash of Clans-inspired Operation Downpour Simulation minigame, where players attack enemy bases with a limited number of monster units.
In the event, players place a unit anywhere within the outer border of the area. Units attack automatically according to the unit’s priority type, and the battle is won if the player manages to destroy all of the defensive units and buildings.
In PvE, players try to win preset scenarios. In PvP, players build their own defense before they can battle another player, and select the units they want to attack. There’s no way of telling how the other player is doing other than a small progression bar.
May was a particularly manic month for anime collaborations in the midcore market! You can find some of our top picks below:
- Mobile Legends Bang Bang x Naruto: This collaboration introduced seven new Naruto-themed skins to the game, letting players enjoy their favorite anime characters in battle. Some of the featured skins are based on Naruto, Sasuke, Sakura, Kakashi, Gaara, Minato, and Sai, each matched with MLBB heroes. In addition to the Naruto skins, the game’s UI got a Naruto overhaul with Naruto-style recall animations, kill effects, and themed avatars.
- The PUBG Mobile x Attack on Titan collaboration introduced a themed battle pass and multiple gachas featuring cosmetics from the anime. Elements from the series, such as ODM Gear and Titan Serum, which temporarily transform players into Titans, were also added to the main game mode. The collaboration caused one of the biggest revenue spikes for the game in the last year, with daily revenue on iOS growing by more than 300% in the 48 hours following its launch on May 7.
- While IP crossovers aren’t too common in the mobile version of Call of Duty, the Call of Duty Mobile x The Seven Deadly Sins collaboration was a big success. The collaboration introduced events, challenges, and rewards featuring IP from the popular The Seven Deadly Sins anime. Daily revenue on iOS doubled over the first two days of the event launching.
- The Seven Deadly Sins collab wasn’t the only IP integration in Call of Duty Mobile in May. At the end of May, Call of Duty Mobile launched a collaboration with Square Enix’s NieR Automata. This collab introduced the NieR: YoRHa’s Counterattack limited-time event, a NieR-themed minigame event designed like a board game, and various offers with NieR-themed rewards were also introduced into the game.
Additional midcore gaming highlights and other news
Penguin GO! TD is an interesting wave-based tower defense game blending roguelite, casual casino, and idle elements. The game briefly reached the top 200 grossing in May in the US market, with stronger traction observed in Japan.
Puzzle & Dragon 0, a lite version of the hit title Puzzle & Dragons, peaked at top-grossing 35 and is a DL 1 game in Japan. The game completely omits its signature gachas and doesn’t have any social features, yet it retains the familiar Match3 puzzle RPG mechanics of the original title.
Gameplay revolves around clearing dungeons and collecting materials, which are then used to create or upgrade characters. Monetization is primarily ad-based, focusing on stamina refills and post-clear reward boosts. Ads can be permanently removed with a one-time purchase. The monetization strategy is then almost the complete opposite of the original, and quite unique in a primarily gacha-focused market such as Japan.
Tsukuyomi: The Divine Hunter is a new roguelike card battler with cards that are AI-generated based on your dungeon runs. It made a quick entry in the top-grossing charts in Japan after launching on May 7th. The implementation of AI-generated cards means every player’s experience with the game is completely unique.
One of the reasons the game got attention at launch might be because its artwork is influenced by renowned video game artist and designer, Kazuma Kanekos.He is best known for his work in the Shin Megami Tensei game series. While the AI generation in the game is said to have only been trained on his artwork, players have reported getting cards that resemble characters from Superman and Frozen’s Elsa.
Fortnite made its long-awaited return to the iOS App Store in the US and Europe after Epic’s court win against Apple over App Store fees. It broke straight into the top of the download charts and also hit the top-grossing 50 in the US.
The game is 1:1 with the PC/Console client, with all the same features, events, and crossplay. The UI is also very similar, and the game is generally well optimized for mobile devices.
The grossing rank is notably lower compared to the pre-appstore ban in 2020. One of the main reasons for the lower appstore revenue is likely due to the many advertisements encouraging players to purchase V-Bucks via the Epic Games Store, rather than in-app. Being able to display advertisements for external web store purchases in-game is one of the outcomes of Epic’s victory over Apple in court.
Fortnite’s webstore link popups advertise 20% Epic rewards cashback on purchases made in the webstore (Epic Games Store), and a direct option for players to choose between appstore or webstore purchase whenever making V-Bucks purchases on mobile.
One State RP: Role Play Online is a GTA-style open world sandbox released in 2022, but weekly/monthly revenue has gradually scaled over time. Reached its all-time high in daily revenue in May and peaked at GR 99 at the end of the month. There are no real competitors in the mobile market as far as GTA clones are concerned, so the growing anticipation for GTA VI might be contributing to the success of One State RP as GTA fans seek out similar titles on mobile.
Netmarble’s latest game, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, also launched in May on PC and mobile. While Game of Thrones is a globally recognized IP with a lot of appeal, there hasn’t been a video game adaptation that’s been a success yet, and Kingsroad struggled to make a splash at launch, with a brief appearance at No.3 in the US download charts before quickly disappearing. The game is a cross-platform open-world RPG, but single-character RPGs struggle to find an audience in the mobile market and the game is currently sitting at around 350 in the GR top-grossing chart.
