The numbers for January are in. Here are last month’s top mobile games downloads worldwide, according to Appmagic data.
There’s commentary on the trends in the top ten, and also other interesting tidbits from outside the top downloads below.
You can also find January’s top grossing mobile games through the link.
What happened with Candy Crush Saga? December’s solid 13.6m downloads were eclipsed by January’s 22m, a prodigious rise of almost 10m in one month. King’s classic puzzler just keeps on rolling, doesn’t it.
Free Fire’s had a bumpy profile since mid-2022, when it was trending around 25m downloads per month. It took a hit in the autumn, and reached its nadir in November with 17.6m downloads. Since then it has recovered, bringing in 19.6m installs in December and almost 22m in January 2023. Free Fire’s biggest ever month was in October 2021, when it passed 40m downloads.
After slumping to 14m downloads in November 2022, Roblox has been on the rise again, with 18m downloads in December and over 21m in January 2023.
Subway Surfers’ monster China-plus-TikTok-driven spike in May 2022 was an all-time record for the infinite runner, with over 34m downloads. It has naturally declined since, but December and January’s downloads of 21m are broadly inline with the same period in 2022.
Homa’s hypercasual hit Attack Hole is the big new entry of the month, blowing up from December’s 1.3m downloads to hit almost 17m last month. It also doesn’t seem to be fading yet, keeping steady through the month and beyond.
FIFA Mobile continues to bask in a post-World Cup glow. December’s huge install spike pushed it to almost 24m downloads as Messi and pals became world champions for the first time since 1986. January’s 16.6m installs is still up considerably on the 5-8m downloads per month it was getting before World Cup fever kicked in at the end of 2022.
Ludo King is super consistent, hitting 12-15m downloads per month since March 2022. January 2023 was at the top end of that scale with over 15m.
New entry Eggy Party got over 12m installs in January, up on December’s 8.5m downloads. The Netease-made Fall Guys-alike is making its mark in the top grossing charts too – it’ll be interesting to see what happens when it goes worldwide on both platforms, as it currently App Store and China only.
Makeover & Makeup’s 12m January downloads were mostly frontloaded in the first week of the month. Having hit over 800k installs per day for the first three days of the year, it has since burned out somewhat – by the end of January it was getting between 110-150k downloads per day.
Gardenscapes downloads have risen substantially every month since September, leaping up from 3.4m that month right up to 8.6m in December 2022. January 2023’s almost 12m downloads is its biggest month for installs since January 2021.
January’s top mobile game downloads 11-20:
11. Stumble Guys (Kitka Games): 11.63m
12. My Talking Tom 2 (Outfit7): 11.26m
13. Dream11 Fantasy Sports (Sporta): 10.82m
14. 8 Ball Pool (Miniclip): 10.80m
15. Royal Match (Dream Games): 10.50m
16. Football League 2023 (Mobile Soccer): 10.34m
17. Fishdom (Playrix): 10.27m
18. Draw Action (Kayac): 10.19m
19. Soccer Super Star (Real Freestyle Soccer): 10.14m
20. My Talking Tom Friends (Outfit7): 10.09m
Some titles worth mentioning here: Dream11 Fantasy Sports is having a wild time, having spiked from nowhere to get 4.6m downloads in October and 10.5m in November. It then plummeted back down to 3.9m for December before hitting 10.8m in January 2023. Bizarre.
Football League 2023 also appeared from nowhere at the end of 2022, reaching 8.3m downloads in November, 12.95m in December and 10.3m last month. That’s all the more impressive given that it’s Android-only and appears to be the developer’s only live title.
And Draw Action is new, and quite novel: a fighting game where you draw on the screen to trigger moves, rendered in that classic hypercasual look. It suddenly spiked halfway through last month and hit over 800k daily downloads before settling down to attract between 180-225k installs per day.
