As we revealed last week, Chrome Valley Customs is set to overtake Beatstar as UK studio Space Ape’s biggest game.
The puzzler has earned $40m revenue since it launched in June 2023 – and to the casual observer looks like a sudden left turn for Space Ape, once best known strategy games like Samurai Siege, Rival Kingdoms and Transformers: Earth Wars.
But Space Ape had always been “circling around” the casual game space, studio boss Simon Hade tells us. All but one of the founding team previously worked at casual game developer Playfish, as did half of the first 30 Space Ape employees.
“Whereas Zynga stayed independent and IPO’d, Playfish sold to EA, who eventually shuttered the studio,” says Hade. “The diaspora of that studio basically went to us, some went to start King London. Casual was in our blood from the beginning.”
When Supercell bought a large chunk of Space Ape in 2017, the studio felt it could explore the casual category again. Between 2017 and Beatstar’s launch in 2021, Space Ape worked on 24 different games as part of that exploratory phase – and three titles in particular went on to form the backbone of Chrome Valley Customs.
Loved Up
This was a match 3 puzzler with a dating sim meta. “It was a real genre mashup, as much dating sim as match 3 and it looked beautiful,” says Hade. “When we got serious about Chrome Valley Customs we were fortunate to be able to repatriate a lot of the puzzle engine, which was built from scratch for Loved Up.”
Puzzle Woods
This was a Tetris-inspired block-placing game and “an attempt to invent a whole new puzzle mechanic,” says Hade. “It was really innovative, every puzzle expert loved it – if we’d launched this game I’m sure it would have been the puzzle insider’s go-to, but it was just too much of a stretch to expect a mass audience to pick up and form a habit around.”
Its mechanics did not monetise either, but Space Ape did get a more seasoned team out of the process. “The people who worked on Chrome Valley Customs had gone through this crucible of trying to invent a whole new puzzle mechanic, and as a result truly appreciated the many benefits of sticking to a tried and tested gameplay mechanic in match 3,” says Hade.
“If the team hadn’t have that experience of trying and failing to invent a new mechanic then I don’t think we’d have been as successful executing Chrome Valley Customs, as the temptation to reinvent the wheel is ever present.”
Treasure Tails
This was Space Ape’s attempt at going after Coin Master. It was a frustrating project, says Hade, because its metrics were great – better than anything Space Ape had ever done before or since – but player acquisition was too costly.
“Without an IP – like Monopoly for example! – it was dead in the water as soon as we tried to market it,” says Hade. “Nevertheless it was in Treasure Tails that we perfected all the UI tooling and thinking around flow states and event infrastructure that is so important in casual. We were able to port that over immediately to the new game. Crucially though, this experience got us laser focussed on marketability testing and validating product market fit every step of the way.”
After working through these three failed games, Space Ape ended up with an experienced core team, puzzle engine, casual-focused UI, a LiveOps toolkit and a deeper appreciation of testing for product-market fit. From there, it landed on the underserved car-customising male market, and combined all of that in Chrome Valley Customs.
It already had seasoned developers that had worked at King on Candy Crush and Farm Heroes Saga on the team, but as work continued on Chrome Valley Customs it added level designers from Peak, King and Magic Tavern plus marketing folks from Playrix, Popcore and Product Madness.
“The winning formula, especially in mobile, is to be heavily referential,” says Hade. “This isn’t a judgment on your ability to design new experiences. This is a judgment on what the market wants. There are 10 Fast and Furious movies for a reason. Songs that include samples from 20 years ago are popular for a reason. There is a reason match 3 is the biggest category on mobile and the only one that is growing year on year right now.”
“Focus your design energy by taking something that is proven to be appealing to a majority of people, and caring deeply about you can make it feel fresh and interesting as opposed to making something truly new,” Hade continues. “This approach is sadly minimised in most game development courses, and underestimated by almost everyone in the first decade of their career. But after you’ve been around the block a few times you realise that this is the way.”
“Wins in mobile in 2024 are going to come from studios building on their strengths and focussing on incremental growth of things they have some expertise in,” adds Hade.
“On paper Chrome Valley Customs seemed like an insane bet, but in reality we had over a decade of experience in casual and multiple attempts under our belt so it was nowhere near as risky as Beatstar was, or most of the other 24 games that never saw the light of day.”
