🚀 Market Wire | Obey Me Downloadbringer! This game hits #1 downloads outta nowhere

Obey Me Nightbringer is one of the weirdest games I've ever seen, a bold attempt to make a Japanese style game work in the US

Hey GameMakers,

This week we look at this really weird game called Obey Me Nightbringer, which hit #1 in worldwide downloads this past week.

Also, we have a Saturday School session this weekend:

If any of you are in Bangalore, come by our office. Otherwise, you can register for the live stream/video here:

Top 10 Charts

  • And a new worldwide, global downloads leader: Obey Me Nightbringer. Uhh what?

  • Real Truck Parking Games 3D also pushed into the Top 10 this past week.

  • Ludo King is more impressive than you think for being a top 10 downloaded game. Most installs for Ludo come from just two countries: India and Indonesia.

  • On the revenue side, shout out to Genshin Impact for climbing to #1, and good to see Monster Strike get back into the top 10 last week.

  • Monopoly GO should be an interesting game to follow. Top downloads, as they likely pushed a lot of installs. It seems to be a branded IP version of Coin Master. Coin Master has a pretty high RPD of almost $17* on iOS WW blended; let’s see if Monopoly GO, currently at about $0.78* (iOS WW blended), can get close to there.

* Based on data.ai estimates

Top 10 Mobile Publishers

  • Mihoyo makes a comeback to the top 10. It helps when Genshin Impact is #1 grossing worldwide.

Top 5 Mobile Trending

  • Ok, I need to dig a bit more into this Obey Me! Nightbringer game.

  • The top trending game in revenue here is pronounced Shiro To Doragon, which in English means Castle and Dragon. From the looks of it, the game seems to be an old-school lane battle game where you summon units against a single lane of battle.

Top 10 Steam Game Sellers

  • Shooters have always been the #1 genre in the West for HD (PC/console) platforms. But damn, all top 5 spots on Steam this week.

🔦 Spotlight | Obey Me Nightbringer

NTT Solmare’s new game hit #1 in worldwide downloads this past week, with most of the traffic coming from the US:

So what kind of game can a Japanese company make that seems to be doing pretty well, at least in terms of downloads, in the US?

Obey Me Nightbringer is a new game in a series of “Obey Me” games that NTT Solmare specializes in. They develop “Otome” games, which are story-based games targeted toward women.

The game itself is a really bizarre mash-up of:

  • Story-based interactions reminiscent of Choices or Episodes.

  • Pet collection and maintenance ( you basically engage with male demons instead of pets but the interactions are similar to pets in other games).

  • A weird side-scrolling type of music rhythm game.

  • A built-in simulated social media app called FabSnap.

  • Voyeurism: the ability to check on demons and see what they are doing.

On the story front, the game does a good job of making the story more interactive:

Pet maintenance works very similarly to other pet care games:

The side-scrolling rhythm game is almost like a simplified Guitar Hero in landscape mode:

FabSnap is basically like a TikTok simulation built into the game:

Voyeurism:

This was weird: they really did put like a Zoom experience into the game as well:

Finally, one last note here is the real innovation which is how they’ve managed to integrate gacha into a story-based game:

The music battles require leveling up demons:

I’m not sure how this game will ultimately wind up doing, especially if the focus is on the US market, but I would never count out the power of loneliness. While I’m personally pretty grossed out by this game, I do have to say the polish and interesting approach they have taken is worth studying.

RPD so far though, doesn’t look great at $0.07* iOS WW blended.

*Source: data.ai estimates

Written by Ryan Wilson and Joseph Kim.

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