Scaling Radar — August 20

2026-08-20

40 candidates, 20 new alerts, seven of them substantive.

New alerts

Craft Battle: Block Wars (Coup Coup, 3 days) — a salvo straight into 44 countries in 24 hours, #2 in Chile, install bracket already 1,000,000+. And yet zero reviews and an empty purchase catalogue — they're pouring for volume on ad monetization, without tests or a ramp-up.

Smash Land! (Flow Games, 5 days) — entering the US right away, #48 Top Free on day five, 294 reviews a day. Expensive geo without a cheap run-in — the creative was clearly proven in advance. Now this is the start of a phase.

Jam Bus: Sandfall (Nova Games, 63 days) — 7 → 17 countries in 24 hours, JP #40, 300 reviews a day, and Play confirmed the install bracket jumping to 100,000+.

KPOP Sandbox: Demon Hunters (Q8Power, 9 days) — 2 → 6 → 13 countries in two days on the KPop Demon Hunters wave, CL #28.

House Makeover: Dream Clean (Lemon Global, 88 days) — 4 → 8 → 13 countries, AR #26, 84 reviews a day.

Last One Standing (tnySocial, iOS, 5 days) — 0 → 4 countries, FI #17. A celebrity quiz, a rare genre for this list.

Obby Keyboard ASMR Runner (Evkar, 98 days) — 8 → 15 countries, SA #23 → #10.

The other 13 — one country, close to zero reviews, noise.

Breakdown

Water Sort: Romantic Dream (Blue Blaze, 8 days) — adding for the third day running: 4 → 7 → 11 countries, all tier-1, purchase catalogue up to $99.99. The best early case of the week is holding up so far.

Zoodoku! (HURELAX, iOS, 24 days) — 7 → 9 countries, PH #13 → #8, 340 reviews a day and +69% in velocity. The forecast from the day before yesterday holds: the phase is running. Amusingly, there are now two "-doku with animals" on the list: Oakever's Meowdoku is at #1, Zoodoku is catching up.

Smash Land! and KPOP Sandbox are the most valuable finds of the day precisely because of their age: 5 and 9 days, narrow geo, live reviews. Whereas Craft Battle is not "caught early" but "caught at the moment of explosion": 44 countries on day three of its life leaves no ramp-up phase at all. The only question is whether it survives the week.

24-hour movement

Gained: Grass Master (SayGames) 10 → 20 countries, US #39. Crafty Blox World 24 → 29, MX #17. Get Color Pack (Tripledot) 33 → 34, #14. Ragdoll Skater (KAYAC) 27 → 29, but the best rank slid #26 → #32 — reach is still growing, intensity isn't.

Gave way: Royal Smash! on iOS is contracting for the second day, 36 → 32 → 26 countries — while Android holds 46 and #2. Dear passenger vanished from the charts all at once, 13 → 0 — looks like the title was pulled from the store. Don't Stop the Beat 3 → 0 — the Scandinavian test ended before it began. Obby Escape Prison 8 → 5, Chickpot Load 8 → 6 — both salvos ran out of breath.

Publishers

GOODROID — a third title in the magazine: alongside CubeAway (43 countries) comes the fresh Catedrop on iOS. Oakever is holding Meowdoku at #1 on both platforms (30 iOS / 35 Android). Cypher is buying Royal Smash on both stores, but winding down the iOS part. Also on both platforms is Jigsaw Drop (Runyou): iOS grew 16 → 20 countries against 46 on Android.

Chart snapshot is as of yesterday.

Scaling Radar — money, August 20

Endless Puncher (Rollic) — Grossing expanding for the third day running: 9 → 13 → 17 countries against 18 in Top Free, install bracket jumped to 100,000+, purchases up to $179.99. A rare case where reach and money grow in sync from the very start: the buying pays off, Rollic will keep pushing.

Royal Smash! (Cypher) — Grossing has grown to 43 countries, best rank #23 in the US, 5,000,000+ installs. The money is coming in, but specifically on Android — and against that backdrop the contraction of the iOS rollout reads as shifting budget to where it pays off.

Jam Bus: Sandfall (Nova Games) — installs jumped into 100,000+, purchase catalogue up to $99.99, and Grossing is empty. For 63 days that's no longer "early": volume grows, the money isn't visible. The week will tell — either IAP kicks in along with scale, or this is pure ads.

Craft Battle: Block Wars — 1,000,000+ installs on day three, zero reviews, an empty purchase catalogue, zero Grossing. The entire economics are ad-based, and the traffic structure doesn't look like honest buying: there's volume, there are no traces of a live audience.

Block City Mansion (ABW apps) — the bracket jumped into 1,000,000+ with a single country in the chart, TR #98. Installs are growing past the charts — the traffic isn't store organic; the same picture as Shoot Die Repeat yesterday, only an order of magnitude bigger.