Scaling Radar — August 14

2026-08-14

40 candidates, 12 new alerts.

New alerts

Four are substantive. Aurora Jigsaw (Android, 31 days) — 0 → 5 countries, strictly tier-1 (AT/AU/CA/GB/SE), #64, IAP catalogue up to $99.99. A narrow, expensive entry, the earliest stage among today's. Boom Chip: 2 Player Mini Games (17 days) — three countries, CO/EG/IL, #50 in Egypt, but installs are already 1,000,000+: the title lived outside the charts and has only now gone into buying. Money Giant (Playcus, iOS, 23 days) — #23 in South Africa, 34 reviews/day. Bolt Fly (ONEMT, iOS, 7 days) — #23 in India; ONEMT rarely tests for no reason. The other eight — one country, zero reviews, noise.

Breakdown

Chillquarium (Snapbreak, Android) — the main one today. Geo 2 → 10 → 15, rank #83 → #53 → #28 (Canada), 147 reviews/day, +230%. Over those same three days it showed up in Top Grossing: two countries, #74 in Colombia, at IAP $3.99–8.49. The buying pays off immediately, the geo is still narrow, tier-1 isn't taken yet. This is where you catch it.

Hedgehog Ranger: Chaos City (Epus Group, 71 days) — 1 → 2 → 14 countries in two days, #44 in Greece, 43 reviews/day, +85%. The game lay in a single country for two months, the budget was switched on the day before yesterday. The geo is European, Grossing is empty — at 14 countries that's normal.

Human Rise: Idle Evolution (24 HIT Riga, 55 days) — 3 → 6 → 11 countries, rank #79 → #26 (Denmark), reviews +175%, installs jumped into the 5,000+ bracket. Caveat: the IAP catalogue is declared up to $49.99 and Grossing is zero countries. They're gathering volume, they haven't learned to earn.

Get Color Pack (Tripledot) — 1 → 3 → 7 → 12 countries, #90 → #41 (Switzerland). Slow and by the playbook, as always with Tripledot — and that's exactly why it's visible from the very start.

Jewel Loop (Ta Ta Game, iOS, 15 days) — HK/KR/TW, #12 in Taiwan, reviews +284%. Three countries, two weeks old — the beginning.

Whereas Paint & Hide: Color Guys (HIGAME, 16 days) went 2 → 21 → 39 countries and #63 → #2 in three days. The speed is exemplary, but it's too late to get in there. Same with Amaze Romantic Goddess: 31 countries, #2, installs in the 50,000+ bracket.

Movement

Jewelscapes (LoveColoring) 19 → 25 countries, #41 → #23, install bracket 10K → 100K. Dream Tiles (Magic Products) 11 → 18. GOGO! Blast (Nebula) 4 → 11, #39 → #28 — an old title on fresh budget. Chameleon Paint: Hide & Seek (MobGame) 27 → 31: the "paint and hide" clone wave is still building.

Two reversals. Dear Passengers (Joy Fast Food) has squeezed geo for the third day running — 24 → 22 → 15 — and although it's holding #1 in Ireland, yesterday's "budget concentrated" version no longer holds: this is a wind-down. Bus Jam: Traffic Trouble (Gimica) has stalled at 8–9 countries and #11; I bet on it twice as the earliest entry — it didn't go. Wordoku (Tripledot, iOS) is on its fourth day in two countries.

Publishers

HIGAME GLOBAL — Paint & Hide (39 countries, #2) and Keyboard Obby (39, #1), +36 countries in a week across the two. Pouring into the portfolio.
Nebula Studio — Tap Tile! (43), GOGO! Blast (11), Zoodoku (18). Flyfox Games — Water Sort! and Triple Harvest, both got 7–8 countries added. CAT Studio — three ASMR titles at once. Tripledot — six titles in the charts, two of them fresh.

On both platforms: CubeAway and Bus Traffic Fever (GOODROID), Jigsaw Drop, Meowdoku, Slow Mo Strike, Ghost Sniper. New on iOS: Dear Passengers and Quack Bag: Duck Mafia.

_Deltas are over 3 days, not 24 hours._

Scaling Radar — money, August 14

Android only: install brackets and Top Grossing are shown by Play itself, iOS has none of that.

Reversal of the week: Amaze Romantic Goddess

The title I praised on Monday precisely because the money came at the same time as the buying. Installs jumped from zero to 50,000+ over the week, geo 25 → 31 countries, #2 in Top Free, IAP catalogue $0.99–99.99. And in Grossing: August 10 — five countries, the 11th — one (#98), now — zero. They cranked up the buying, the payers didn't stick. Thirteen days old, so it can still be replayed, but for now this isn't "pays off", it's "used to pay off".

Who entered Grossing the right way

Chillquarium (Snapbreak) — entered on day three of the rollout: two countries, #74 in Colombia, at 50,000+ installs and IAP $3.99–8.49. Fifteen countries in Top Free and already visible revenue — the healthiest profile in today's list.

Hollywood Merge (VoyagerOne) — installs 1M+ → 5M+, 41 countries in Free and #5 in Grossing in 45 countries. Too late to catch, but it's a reference point for what healthy economics look like in the merge genre.

Coin Collector (Venturesis) — 500K+ → 1M+, 30 countries at #1 in Free, Grossing #69 in 12 countries. Bus Loop: Jam Master (Shoyo Mobi) — 100K+ → 500K+, 36 countries at #8, Grossing #57 in five.

Spot entries: Rap Star: Idle Clicker — 8 countries in Grossing (#63 PH) against 35 in Free; Loop Master: Color Jam Sort — one country (#98 MX) against 39 in Free and a million installs. The buying is wide, the money is in a couple of geos.

Volume grows, no money

The main group of the day — install bracket up, purchase catalogue declared, Grossing empty in every country.

HIGAME GLOBAL — both titles at once. Keyboard Obby: ASMR Speed Run jumped from 100,000+ into 1,000,000+, sits at #1 in 39 countries; Paint & Hide: Color Guys — 39 countries, #2. Neither has ever shown up in Grossing. The publisher added 36 countries to its portfolio in a week and hasn't shown a single dollar of store revenue. Either pure ads, or a very expensive test.

Bracelet Maker: DIY ASMR (Brocker Bus) — 500,000+ → 1,000,000+, 43 countries, #2, IAP $2.99. Thirty-five days, a million installs, zero in Grossing. For an ASMR title on an ad model that's normal, but with declared purchases — not any more.

Human Rise: Idle Evolution (55 days, IAP up to $49.99), Ocean Block Shoot (HM Games, 100K+ → 500K+, 26 countries), Jewelscapes (10K+ → 100K+, 25 countries, IAP $9.99), Drama Story: Exposed Prank (100K+ → 500K+, 24 countries) — all with a purchase catalogue and a zero in Grossing.

Separately, Escape Tsunami: Obby Run (oZ Studio): installs 100,000+ → 500,000+, IAP $4.99–29.99, Grossing empty, and geo dropped by 19 countries over the week. They bought the volume, the money didn't come, the buying got cut — a completed cycle.

Early, but watch it

Mystery Dumpling (Brocker Bus, 6 days) — 100,000+ → 500,000+, 44 countries, #1, Grossing empty. For day six of its life that's expected; the thing to look at is next week — if Grossing is still zero by day 14, it's the same scenario as Bracelet Maker from the same publisher.

Mini Soccer: Football Cup 2026 (1M+ → 5M+, 46 countries, #1) and Survival Sandbox (500K+ → 1M+, 34 countries, #2) — million-scale volumes without a single country in Grossing. Both are older than a month, and both are overdue.

_Deltas are over 3 days, not 24 hours._

Scaling Radar — week in review, August 7–13

Checking my own bets

Eleven titles from the weekly list actually rolled out. The best trajectories — Dream Tiles: Puzzle Link (Magic Products, 3 → 18 countries, #46 → #27), Jewelscapes (LoveColoring, 13 → 25, #50 → #23), Human Rise: Idle Evolution (3 → 11, #79 → #26), Runaway From Vlogger (Sprigame, 3 → 10, #61 → #34). Separately, Endless Puncher (Rollic): only 2 → 7 countries, but rank #56 → #9 — a rare case where buying is deepened rather than widened.

Now the misses, three of them this week.

Bus Jam: Traffic Trouble (Gimica) I twice called the earliest and most correct entry: 6 days, narrow tier-1, a publisher with a playbook. The week's result — 7 → 9 → 8 countries and a rank that never climbed out of the tenth spot. Meanwhile Gimica's whole week was negative: six titles in the charts, minus 11 countries in total, including Astro Merge (9 → 4 countries, #4 → #31). The publisher wasn't ramping up something new, it was drying out the portfolio, and Bus Jam wasn't the start of a phase but its remainder. I cited the publisher's playbook and didn't look at the portfolio — that's exactly the step I missed.

Wordoku (Tripledot, iOS) — "caught in the first days of the test, a must-watch". Fifth day in two countries, geo +0 for the week. The test is running, there's no phase.

Dear Passengers (Joy Fast Food) — on Tuesday I explained the geo squeeze as budget concentration. Over the week 24 → 22 → 15 countries while holding #1; the right call would have been to name it a wind-down right away.

What held up without any caveats from me: Mystery Dumpling (43 → 44 countries, #5 → #1), ChungaChanga (16 countries, #1 all week), Bracelet Maker (43 countries, #2).

Genres and geos: where the cheap test is right now

Country gain per title: Strategy +1.12, Simulation +0.87, Arcade +0.84, Racing +0.67. At the bottom — Adventure −0.56, Roleplaying −0.21, Entertainment −0.11. Casual (+0.41) and Puzzle (+0.52) — an average across four hundred and two hundred titles: the genres aren't moving, individual games inside them are. Word separately: 14 new alerts and +0.03 countries per title. Word games enter a single-country chart cheaply, which is why there are so many of them in the alerts, but not one of them goes anywhere.

The most useful thing this week is the platform split in entry countries. For games younger than 60 days, Android gets launched into expensive tier-1: AU 21, AT 20, CA 18, BE 18, DE 18, CZ 18, PL 18. iOS — into cheap and Asian: HK 6, TR 5, TW 5, EG 4, IL 4. The difference isn't a couple of countries, it's the logic: a Play test is measured against traffic price right away, an App Store one against the mechanic on an undemanding audience. If you're looking for soft launches on iOS, watch Turkey, Hong Kong and Taiwan, not the US.

Publishers of the week

Those who showed portfolio movement rather than a single title:

HIGAME GLOBAL — +36 countries across two titles (Paint & Hide 2 → 39, Keyboard Obby holding 39).
GOODROID — +27 across four positions: CubeAway and Bus Traffic Fever, both on both platforms at once. The only one on the list running two stores in sync.
CAT Studio — +21 across three ASMR titles (House Cleaning 15 → 27, Antistress +6, Skincare +3). The ASMR conveyor works like a genre factory.
Brocker Bus Studio — +19 across two, both ASMR, both in the top 3 of their charts.
Nebula Studio +16 across three, Flyfox Games +15 across three, SayGames +15 across two. In the red, besides Gimica — oZ Studio: −16 countries, of which Escape Tsunami is −19.

Money for the week

214 titles moved into a new install bracket, 97 appeared in Grossing for the first time, 79 grew their Grossing. And 38 where the bracket went up, purchases are declared in the catalogue, and Grossing is zero countries.

What's curious here is the timing. For titles under 20 days old (Amaze Romantic Goddess, Tasty Match, Soul & Soup) a zero Grossing means nothing. But Beauty Voyage (122 days), Jigsaw Glamour (111 days) and Amaze Away (59 days) — all with IAP catalogues up to $30–140 and hundreds of thousands of installs — should have shown at least one country. They didn't. The buying there is running empty, and that's an honest entry point for a competitor: the mechanic is proven, nobody has taken the money off it.