November was a busy month for mobile, defined by high-profile IP collaborations, experimental gameplay features, and continued genre-blending across both casual and midcore segments. Major partnerships drove much of the activity—June’s Journey launched an expansive, multi-event campaign with the Wicked movie, while Mobile Legends Bang Bang introduced a SpongeBob-themed restaurant minigame.
In casual gaming, new gameplay modes and hybrid mechanics took center stage. Design Home added a recurring Match-3 minigame for the first time, creating a fresh loop in the title. Pixel Flow and Solitaire Associations Journey offered novel spins on familiar genres, while Top Tycoon showcased how idle titles are now evolving monetization through deeper casual casino-style progression systems. Merge-2 mechanics also continued to expand outside their traditional genre boundaries, appearing as secondary modes in games like Coin Master and Royal Match.
Midcore titles saw impactful updates, too. Clash of Clans introduced Town Hall level 18 with a new Guardian mechanic and narrative-driven events, generating notable revenue gains. Meanwhile, MapleStory: Idle RPG maintained a strong top 50 grossing position thanks to its hybrid of idle automation and social MMORPG elements. In China, Abandoned Land offered a standout tower defense–RPG blend with a unique folk-horror aesthetic, while X-Clash: Survival Challenge continued to climb the charts by combining 4X systems with casual-friendly visuals and minigames.
From large-scale collaborations to meaningful tweaks in monetization and mechanics, November demonstrated how mobile game developers are using familiar systems in new ways to expand reach and retain player interest.
Read on for the full breakdown of this month’s market activity.
November’s Casual Game Updates
There was a big IP collaboration in November, in the form of June’s Journey: Wicked Mystery, timed to coincide with the global cinema release of Wicked: For Good, the second and final instalment of the hit Disney IP.
The collaboration is built around the storyline and characters from Wicked, and is running across multiple months with a whole host of timed in-game events and time-limited collectables, all with a link to the brand and the events in the movie.
In-game events that will be familiar to loyal June’s Journey players (Daily Mission Track, Club Mysteries, Sweep the Board, Secrets Event, Minigames) have been reworked with Wicked-themed decorations and Grand Prizes. There is also a Seasonal Collectables Album (Memoir event: Welcome to Oz) with famous Wicked scenes as collections, collectable stories with a Wicked theme, and an Emerald City Beautification reward – this is one of several themed decoration awards dedicated players can achieve.
The whole look of the game has been given a Wicked theme, with reskins of UI elements including loading screens, island frames, and event windows. There’s even a Wicked makeover for the game soundtrack, with passages from the movie music added to the game, including the big theme song ‘Defying Gravity’ (a song with 38 million YouTube views and counting.
To bring the whole collaboration together, the social media channels for the game have been engaging the community with a whole host of promotions, information about all the events, and the special in-game decoration rewards.
It’s clear that Wooga, the developer and publisher of June’s Journey, has put considerable effort into the collaboration, which was always going to be one of the last big movie IPs of 2026. However, for a seasonal campaign of this scale, we feel that the LiveOps execution feels underwhelming. Although the whole Wicked theme has been supported with strong marketing support and visual treatment, the in-game experience has relied almost entirely on cosmetic reskins and themed decorations, without introducing new mechanics or meaningful system-level changes.
On a positive note, the Wicked collaboration felt like a strong thematic fit for June’s Journey, since both lean heavily on narrative, mystery, and character-driven storytelling. It will be interesting to see how successful the tie-in ends up being for Wooga and whether it will lead to similar big-IP collaborations for the game in the future.
Another game that caught our eye in November was EA’s Design Home, which introduced its first minigame, Match Event, a recurring match-3 mode with a dedicated reward track.
Adding a minigame offers something new to players, as historically the game has been dominated by IAP bundles, and new gameplay modes are rarely added.
The new Match Event is a weekly recurring two-day-long Match-3 game mode that carries progress over from iteration to iteration. The Reward Track is updated every week, giving players the incentive to return to each new iteration. To get the rewards, players need to collect green board pieces, obtained by playing matches. Gameplay-wise, it uses familiar match-3 mechanics, without anything new or innovative.
Rewards contain items both for the core game (furniture items and currency) and for this specific event (boosters and event currency). The mode also features its own energy and currency system, and both can be acquired through IAP or ads, as well as event currency through successfully clearing stages in the minigame. The energy recharges surprisingly slowly, giving players one life per two hours, capped at 3 lives. This pushes players to watch ads or spend money to keep playing once they have exhausted the initial lives they are given.
Additional Casual Gaming Highlights and News
Solitaire Associations Journey from Hitapps Games combines the classic mechanics of solitaire with word puzzles. The game launched in September 2025 and quickly found success, maintaining the #1 rank in the download charts for that month. By late November, it had achieved a high point on the revenue charts, peaking at #93 in the top-grossing chart.
The game design feels heavily focused around the core gameplay, and doesn’t show any signs of complex meta-layers that might keep players more engaged over the long term. Monetization is a combination of ads and basic IAPs. It seems that by combining the intuitive physics of solitaire with the mental satisfaction of word puzzles, the game has successfully created a “novelty within familiarity” hook.
Pixel Flow is a hybrid casual puzzle game that introduces a twist on existing gameplay ideas. Its revenues have been rising in tandem with downloads throughout October, and have continued this growth in November, peaking at #51 in the top-grossing games chart.
In the game, you place guns that are shaped as pigs onto a conveyor belt, in order for them to shoot at the central image. They can only shoot at the same colour of puzzle pieces that match the colour of the pig, and once the number (the amount of ammunition the gun has) on top of the pig gun goes to zero, the gun disappears. After circling the image, the pig gun goes into a reserve spot if there are shots left. Players aim to clear the whole picture without running out of reserve spots.
Top Tycoon: Coin Theme Empire is an idle game from publisher BeHeFun that has similar gameplay to Carnival Tycoon. Since launch, the game has continued to grow, finally breaking into the top 100 grossing games, peaking at #88.
Previously, we’ve seen a pattern of success with games that combine low-CPI casual gameplay (to drive installs) with the depth and monetization frameworks of 4X games.
A similar design philosophy now appears to be emerging in the casual casino space: pairing low-CPI casual gameplay with the monetization and progression depth of casual casino titles. Carnival Tycoon is an early proof point—scaling into the top 60 by blending idler mechanics with casual casino monetization. Now, Top Tycoon is following the same principles and is rapidly climbing toward the top charts as well.
Merge-2 remains one of the hottest subgenres in the casual market, fueled by the massive growth of titles like Gossip Harbor and Seaside Escape from Microfun, as well as Century Games’ ongoing success with Tasty Travels.
Recently, merge-2 mechanics have begun to appear outside its traditional genre boundaries—showing up as a side minigame in casual titles with completely different core gameplay loops. This suggests developers are increasingly using Merge-2 as an auxiliary system to deepen retention and diversify progression.
In the past few months alone, we’ve seen Merge-2 modes appear in top casual titles such as:
- Coin Master (November)
- Royal Match (November)
- Project Makeover (October)
- Phase 10 (October)
November’s Midcore Game Updates
Clash of Clans has added a new Town Hall level 18, which introduced a unique new defence mechanic that has delivered a big revenue spike and its own co-op event.
Clash of Clans closed out 2025 with the launch of Town Hall level 18, which brought an array of new content to the game. Highlights included Guardians, a switchable Town Hall 18 defence that can be set to Smasher or Longshot, along with new defences, a new troop, a new spell, and higher upgrade levels across the base. As with past Town Hall updates, the launch of level 18 drove a noticeable uptick in Clash of Clans’ daily revenue.
Before Town Hall level 18 went live, Clash of Clans also ran a community-driven The End of Clash event, and a unique narrative-focused Meteor Observer event presented through comic-style panels that unlocked over time. This LiveOps approach focused on building hype, momentum, storytelling, and community anticipation rather than maximizing the value of any single player’s task completion.
Mobile Legends Bang Bang, from SkyStone Games, introduced a new Undersea Restaurant, thanks to a collaboration with SpongeBob Squarepants. It is a restaurant-management minigame where players cook dishes, serve customers, and upgrade their restaurant.
What makes this event unique is its blend of restaurant management gameplay with the existing Mobile Legends branding, bringing familiar SpongeBob characters, dishes, and visuals into a casual, progression-based mini-event. Players aim to upgrade their restaurant, achieve milestones, and collect special collaboration cosmetics and bonuses.
Additional Midcore Gaming Highlights and News
MapleStory: Idle RPG is the latest RPG success story in the US. This Idle RPG x MMORPG hybrid game was released on November 5th, and after reaching #50 in the top-grossing chart on November 9th, it has remained in the top 50 since.
The theme of the game closely mirrors the original MapleStory IP, carrying over the nostalgic appeal of the original online game to mobile. The idle gameplay is automated by default, but players can take manual control during key gameplay moments such as progression stages, boss battles, and co-op Party Quests. With the core grinding automated, players are able to spend more time engaging in activities like world chat or browsing the in-game shop.
Early in-app purchase (IAP) offers provide high value at lower price points, which may encourage early payer conversion. One notable offer is the ability to remove all in-game ads for a full year for $5. A significant portion of the game’s upgrade systems are randomized, requiring players to rely on chance to obtain desired builds. Cosmetic monetization also includes a random element—such as hairstyles being drawn from a pool of six—meaning premium items aren’t simply acquired through direct purchase, which may appeal to players seeking a more balanced experience.
For a more detailed breakdown of the game’s mechanics and performance, refer to the full analysis available through the GameRefinery service.
Abandoned Land (遗弃之地) is a new Tower Defense RPG game from Hortor, a publisher that has already had a couple of successful titles in Fat Goose Gym (肥鹅健身房), a merge-2 game, and Idle Fish Kingdoms (咸鱼之王), an idle RPG.
As the company has already proven itself successful at creating casual RPG games, launching a Tower Defense RPG makes a lot of sense. The game has a distinctive art style and an unusual Chinese folk horror theme. The player fights against various enemies with the regular tower defense mechanic combined with skill cards. During gameplay, these skill cards need a cooling-off time before they are available for the player to attack enemies with. This kind of gameplay combination and the interesting theme make the game a unique entry for the Chinese market. The game has hit sustained download rank 3 and sustained grossing rank 99.
X-Clash: Survival Challenge is a casual-style 4X game with minigames for UA and onboarding. It continues to scale its revenues despite a drop in downloads in November, when the game managed to break into the top 50 grossing chart for the first time.
This hybrid strategy game layers RPG-style hero collection and minigame modes on top of base building and 4X mechanics. It simplifies some traditional 4X systems whilst using cartoony visuals that can appeal to more casual audiences.
