‘My Coloring Book Free’ is currently the top of the iOS game charts in several major western markets thanks to a TikTok trend.
At the time of writing Sensor Tower says that My Coloring Book Free is the top iOS game download in the US, Australia, UK and Italy, and is number two in Canada and number four in Germany. It is not available on Android.
TikTok users are downloading the game, picking the same scenes to colour in separately with a friend or loved one, comparing their work, then posting the results.
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According to Appmagic data, last month My Coloring Book Free generated just over a thousand downloads; November installs to date are at 2.3m.
The trend started to take off at the start of the month. In under two weeks the app leapt from getting 30-40 downloads per day to over 400,000 on November 12. It has declined a little in the last few days, with around 175k downloads yesterday.
Just over 2m of that total are US users, with UK installs at around 280k. Canada, Italy and India are all at around the 100k mark.
The game has not been updated for six years, and has generated around $30k over its lifetime for developer Jeff Pedersen, according to Appmagic’s data. Pedersen has released several other colouring book apps; his second most popular title My Alphabet Coloring Book has around 140k lifetime installs.
@heatherr.rosee Replying to @Hailey ♬ greedy sped up – Tate McRae
My Coloring Book Free is not the first game to suddenly rocket to the top of the charts after a TikTok trend. Bacon: The Game and Dumb Ways To Die have also got a boost from the social media platform in the last 18 months.
TikTok itself has dabbled in playable games – as we revealed earlier this year, it was testing 14 playable hypercasual titles in its For You feed for a short period.
TikTok execs later told us that the social media giant is not interested in becoming a games platform, but instead wants to partner with game-makers to help solve mobile’s marketing and discoverability problems.
