The genre that defined 2018-2022 mobile gaming is more nuanced today. Here is what survived.
Hyper-casual was the dominant mobile genre from roughly 2018 to 2022. We shipped thirty titles in the space. Today the term is unfashionable but the underlying patterns — extreme prototyping velocity, rapid creative iteration, ad-monetized loops — still apply broadly.
The CPI economics that defined the era
Hyper-casual was a CPI/LTV arbitrage. Cost per install dropped to $0.20-$0.50. Lifetime value, mostly from interstitial ads, hit $0.40-$0.80. The studios that learned to test 50 prototypes a month and pick the one with the lowest CPI dominated. Voodoo, Lion Studios, Crazy Labs.
What broke in 2023
iOS 14.5 and ATT crushed deterministic attribution. Ad fill rates softened as the macro economy turned. CPIs rose, LTV stagnated. Margins compressed. The studios that survived diversified into hybrid-casual: hyper-casual loops with longer-term progression to lift LTV.
What still works
- One-finger gameplay loops. They still test best across demographics.
- Five-second video pitch. If your gameplay does not communicate in a five-second TikTok, the campaign fails.
- Aggressive prototyping cadence. The discipline of shipping a playable prototype every week is now a base-level studio skill.
- Server-driven progression. Every modern hyper-casual ships with remote config so the team can tune difficulty post-launch without app updates.
What died
Pure ad-monetization without an IAP layer. Build-to-flip studios with no live-ops capability. The "ship 100 prototypes, hit one viral game" model — the math no longer works.
What replaced it
"Hybrid-casual" — hyper-casual core loops with progression metas, social features, and IAP. The new top-grossing mobile games (Royal Match, Ages of War, Block Blast) all carry this DNA.
Our playbook
For studios entering mobile in 2026, we recommend hybrid-casual from day one. Ship the core loop in 6 weeks, layer the meta in 12, expand to live-ops in 6 months. Skip the pure hyper-casual gold rush — it ended.