Analysis of BitMango's Word Cookies Mobile Game

I have been watching many of BitMango's games reach the top rankings on iOS and Android, and noticed all their games are clones of other successful games. Yet, BitMango often is able to outperform the originals, and they seem to have a winning formula, even though some might argue it is morally questionable. I would like to explore one example, their new game, Word Cookies.

Word Cookies shares many similarities to another popular game, Letter Soup Cafe. The gameplay is identical. The player must find words out of given letters. There are blank tiles at the top where words need to be filled. Once all the tiles are complete, then the player beats the level. Even minor things are copied. In both games the player can click a button to reshuffle the letters, even though this does not change the word combinations and is only a aesthetic.

BitMango does change a couple things though. There is a great proliferation of ads between the levels, while there are few to none in Letter Soup Cafe. This obviously increases ad revenue, but also annoys some players, which can be seen in the reviews. In addition, there is a more robust reward system to entice the player to return. With a huge ad spend surge Word Cookies was able to reach the top quickly.

Looking at the graphs below, we can see the peaks in terms of rank for each game.

There are many things we can learn from this study. People may have a negative reaction towards BitMango, and I share that sentiment to an extent, but we can bring a positive message. It appears that there are games that have not quite reached their potential due to a host of issues. BitMango is reliant on finding games that are decently successful, making a few modifications to the core game, and then blast the copy with proper advertising.

 Perhaps an indie developer made a great game, but has no understanding of advertising and therefore fails. Or maybe he was just unlucky. It is not reasonable to think that many games that did not quite make it could if given the right support. Instead of cloning games, in the case of BitMango, perhaps we need a hunter to find this hidden gems, give them the proper support, and mutually share in the rewards.

I provide links below if you want try these games out for yourself!

Word Cookies: iOS Android Website

Letter Soup Cafe: iOS Android