Dream Games’ Royal Kingdom goes live worldwide today after over 18 months in soft launch and a slight pivot.
The follow-up to Dream Games’ monster hit Royal Match is another match 3 puzzler in the same ‘Royal’ universe, but this second title has a more competitive edge. Royal Kingdom’s first iteration featured regular social PvP/Coin Master/Monopoly Go-style levels in which players used the puzzle board to attack friends’ bases.
But Dream later removed this feature, and turned those ‘attack’ levels into PvE ‘Kingdom’ boss fights. It must have resonated better, because that’s the version Dream Games has pushed live worldwide today.
With a shared universe and many other similarities between Royal Match and Royal Kingdom, Dream Games appears to be adopting Playrix’s model of having several complementary titles in the market at the same time. But doesn’t this also carry a risk of cannibalising Royal Match? We asked three product experts for their thoughts.
Senior director of product at Big Fish Games and Deconstructor of Fun contributor Laura Taranto described Royal Kingdom’s journey through soft launch as “a masterclass in development.”
“The first wave of Royal Kingdom wanted to target a different player profile than Royal Match – maybe puzzle players with a slight inclination to midcore, maybe a more male-centric audience,” she told us. “While the attack levels are new to casual puzzle/match-3 games, Dream seemed to take inspiration from Supercell’s Clash Quest or even Zynga’s Empires and Puzzles.”
“Dream also added a Player Rank in V1, which unlocked new areas to decorate, layered on top of a decoration currency propelled by skill, then removed it in V2, changing the overall feel (and economy) of meta progression. And, more importantly, severed the tie between skill and progression.”
Taranto continued: “With the V2 changes, it appears they’ve backtracked on the midcore appeal – axing rank and skill incentivized progression – and leaned more into the novel Kingdom levels: V1 had these levels every 10 while the most recent version changed this to every five. Maybe the broader appeal stuck without needing features like rank that might complicate the game.”
“Will it cannibalise Royal Match? There will be some cannibalisation, the theme and game itself are similar, but Royal Kingdom has higher difficulty,” Taranto added. “Royal Kingdom will likely reach a smaller more enthusiastic audience that will pay more. While I’ve been bullish on Royal Kingdom and more so on Dream since the beginning, I have trouble seeing this game dwarf Royal Match’s success.”
Game economy and design consultant Tom Froud isn’t all that concerned about cannibalisation, and is confident that Dream Games can succeed in adopting the Playrix model.
“Homescapes was better than Gardenscapes but they co-existed (and thrived) perfectly nicely,” he told us. “With only one title, it’s easier for people to drift out of the ‘Royal’ ecosystem and play Candy or a ‘Scapes game. On a macro level it’s less about cannibalisation more about creating a safety net for people that fall out of one of the games.”
“The first version of Royal Kingdom just didn’t reach as wide an audience as had been hoped so it makes sense for Dream to pivot to the above approach rather than create a slightly different offering that just doesn’t resonate.”
Froud adds: “Dream have made a lot of money, the cynic in me feels like it’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. They can buy players and iterate as much as they want – and they’re great at both those things – until both games are successful.”
Rovio game design lead Harshal Karvande writes in this week’s Naavik Digest that Royal Kingdom is a superior product to Royal Match, but Dream does also risk cannibalising its predecessor. “The puzzle audience has shrunk, so there’s no way this launch won’t have a material impact on Royal Match if Royal Kingdom scales, right?”
“This is a play straight from the Playrix playbook, which has locked Gardenscapes, Homescapes and Fishdom into the top 10 highest-grossing puzzle games since 2017.”
“Royal Kingdom may not overtake its successful older brother as its growth will be cautious because of the risk of cannibalization,” he added. “But with Royal Kingdom’s global release, Dream is on the path to have two games locked in the top 10 highest-grossing games in the casual puzzle market for years to come.”
