From Hypercasual to Hybrid Casual: Analysis of Monetization Solutions for Idle Games

Hey guys! In this article, I would like to share how we monetize hypercasual idle game mechanics using in-app purchases and subscriptions. With over a hundred various A/B tests conducted, I’m not going to delve into details. Rather, I’ll describe our best solutions that you will probably work for your games, too.

Of course, every game is unique, and successful monetization stems from a deep understanding of the fun and the value for your players. I think you can add purchases to any hypercasual game and thereby increase your LTV. For example, many purchases in single-player games are intended to save time in obtaining new content. Or you can devise mechanisms that can help the players progress faster in the game. But are they ready to pay for this? You’ll know after you try it out :)

One of my favourite books on game monetization is Free-to-Play: Making Money From Games You Give Away. The concept of free-to-play games implies Games as a service. If you aim for the hybrid casual style, you need to adopt this paradigm and make your game a service that doles out fun in batches.

Background

A year after the successful release (in April 2020) of Crash Delivery, I decided to develop a sequel, Airplane Crash Madness. The main differences were a realistic visual style, instead of cartoon-like low-poly, and deeper metagaming. Originally, the game was called Car Crash Madness but then, during the development process, we changed the focus of the game to airplanes and renamed it.

For monetization, our main purpose was to increase in-app purchases revenue by up to 50% of the total app income. (I will provide the relative figures we achieved in the conclusion). There were several preconditions for this. Firstly, Apple introduced a request for IDFA access and, with these new rules, destroyed part of the advertising market and reduced the advertising revenue for all. Secondly, hyper-competition in the hyper-casual games market. Creating a game with a high LTV seemed to be the panacea for cloning. We started developing Airplane Crash Madness in the spring of 2021, and the latest content update was in the spring of 2023.

Let’s analyze which monetization solutions proved to be the best ones during this period.

Subscription Integrated in Metagaming

If you ever played Fortnite, you probably noticed the game’s monetization strategy. Each season, the developers offer their players multiple new characters and skins for weapons, music, etc. All these “facelifts” are available only during the season, so the players who want a new skin for their character need to buy a battle pass and earn the necessary stars. The stars can be earned with skills, but if you don’t have a battle pass, you can’t spend your stars and unlock great characters. A battle pass is a kind of subscription, but not for a month – for the entire season (i.e. three months). Please see a more detailed analysis of the monetization in Fortnite here.

After playing Fortnite for a couple of seasons, I decided to try a similar approach in our Airplane Crash Madness. I was aware that, for a single-player game (rather than a multiplayer one), customization wouldn’t be so popular, with players not being able to boast to others about their new skin. What seemed more important to me in Epic Games’ approach was that players couldn’t spend their in-game currency without a battle pass, with the currency piling up over time, while the battle pass price stayed the same. With such an approach, the deeper a player in the game – the more pressure he feels. And we decided to try a similar approach in Airplane Crash Madness.

In our game, maps and vehicles are the main components, so we decided to classify all players into premium and regular ones. The former were players who bought a subscription. While maps were available to all, the subscription included such items as:

1. Spending the premium currency on vehicles and their customization,
2. Disabling ads,
3. A daily bonus in the form of a large amount of premium in-game currency,
4. An odd number of accessories (discs, antennae, etc.).

We use a weekly subscription with a 3-day trial. The landing page design plays a significant role. In our case, 2D graphics worked better, although I thought that, if you have a 3D game, then a 3D design would be best for the subscription ad, too. Anyway, the landing page is where you test as many design concepts as you can during the whole cycle of product support.

It’s also important where and when you demonstrate your subscription ad. Those who work with subscription-based products know about the Triple Yes rule. It means that a user first agrees to something or fills in some information on two landing pages and then is offered a subscription on the third one. It’s psychologically easier for a user to agree to the subscription on the third screen: he has already completed some forms and the probability of conversion rises because he wouldn’t want to consider his previous actions meaningless (such as in a case when a user doesn’t have a choice, as in “subscribe or leave”).

We didn’t create such a chain of landing pages, which, I think, was a mistake. In Airplane Crash Madness, we sometimes show users a landing page in a format similar to interstitial ads (users can’t skip it immediately).

Here is a list of all screens where we offer a subscription:

1. The game's main menu. We sometimes demonstrate a landing page with the subscription information instead of an interstitial ad ( see the screenshot above).

2. The store’s main page. When a user clicks a subscription banner, he sees the subscription landing page (see Item 1).

   
   

3. In the garage. When a user chooses any vehicle (or an accessory to it) available only with a subscription. Having clicked the subscription button, the player sees the subscription landing page (see Item 1).

   
   

Metagaming, additional subscription mechanisms, and gold sold in the game

Any destruction of the environment wins points to a player: ruining a tree, demolishing a house, etc. So, throwing a vehicle wins the player points that convert to the player level. The higher the player level, the more content is available to him for purchase using gold, while, for vehicles, the players can have a limited number of them for free. A player earns gold for each new level, for completed quests, as a daily bonus if subscribed. In addition, a player can buy gold for the in-game currency.

A player can spend the gold either on unlocking new vehicles, their customization, or on… purchasing a level for gold. It is a legal way to unlock any player level and any vehicle in the game. That’s how we get monetization from the richest players. A player needs to subscribe and pay for the new level and a premium vehicle.

The screenshot demonstrates the unlock button with the price next to the level.

If a player doesn’t have enough gold, the game will make an attractive offer to buy some.

A popular solution to cut steps in the buying journey. Why does a player need to go to the store if the store can come to him with a good offer?

If a player opts out of the subscription, he can’t spend gold anymore but retains the current player level, all unlocked vehicles, and customization. I think the players would have hated the game too much if we took away everything when they canceled the subscription. In our solution, a player can always reactivate the subscription later to spend the gold on new content.

Direct sale of vehicles without a subscription

PLANES PACK

Not all players want to dig into metagaming. Many are not ready to subscribe in any way. But they still want to buy some vehicles. We offer them an opportunity to buy PLANES PACK for a fixed price. The pack includes two most popular plane models and one helicopter. For this, I decided to replace a standard banner ad at the bottom of the screen with our PLANES PACK ad, and I have been very pleased with the result.

Our banner has a simple, eye-catching animation.

Also, we use the garage main page as an ad placement to promote the pack.

Direct sales through limited-time offers. We also introduced a system of 3 offers effective for 12 hours. 1) A plane bundle sold at a discount, 2) A sports cars bundle, 3) A bundle with a discount for upgrades.

The sports cars bundle landing page. We tested backgrounds featuring a city, forest, and canyons. The canyons had the highest conversion. The three offers are shown one after the other continually and updated every 12 hours. A timer button appears in the main menu. After clicking it’s showing the landing page of the active bundle.

Selling upgrades

Since a vehicle's skin is not related to the vehicle’s speed performance, the players need to buy upgrades to boost the performance (engine, fuel, extra income). They can do this either using the in-game currency received for free for every throw or for actual money.

100 upgrades are the most profitable item. The 70% discount works wonders.

Resulting income

We were able to achieve the 60/40 ratio, where 40% is the income from in-app purchases (including subscriptions).

For all purchases, the income can be divided into groups as follows:

• Subscription -  34 %
• Upgrades - 20 %
• Disable ads - 17.1 %
• Planes pack - 8.8 %

Time limited Offer all = 16.8 %

1. Only Upgardes - 7.41%
2. Only Cars - 7.76%
3. Only Planes - 1.6 %

All gold packs -  3.2 %

Several general recommendations for transitioning from hyper-casual games to hybrid casual ones:

1. Use your traditional ad placements (interstitials and banners, and even rewarded ads) as a place to promote your in-game purchases.
2. Focus mainly on the top sale items.
3. Improve and test different designs on your banners and landing pages.
4. Think of ways to add a subscription to your game.

Thanks for your attention! I hope the article has been of use to you. See you next time!