Scaling Radar — August 22

2026-08-22

40 candidates, 19 new alerts, seven of them meaningful.

New alerts

Gugu Gaga: Keyboard Escape (Goldoint, 9 days) — 1 → 4 → 11 countries in three days, install bracket jumped to 100,000+. A classic exit from test into scale.

Rampcrest Car Trials (Hubkom, 16 days) — 1 → 7 → 11 countries, #14 in Pakistan — with zero reviews. The volume is there, the live audience is nowhere to be seen.

Nail Salon: ASMR Simulator (WeGit, 20 days) — 2 → 6 → 11, the whole entry across LATAM and Africa. A cheap test for volume.

Bus Crowd - Traffic Jam (Hyper Surfer, 65 days) — 5 → 14 → 23 countries, a third day of acceleration.

Home Clean: Makeover ASMR (126 days) — 2 → 7 → 13, #18 in India. Not a young title — this is a buying restart, like Driving School last week.

Find Em All! - Hidden Objects (Agave, iOS) — an entry into Benelux (#23 in Belgium) while Android is live — see the publishers block.

Embabi Games (16 days) — #3 in Egypt, 980 reviews a day, bracket up. But this is an Egyptian YouTuber's game: the growth is influencer-driven, not buying.

Another 11 — one country, zero reviews, noise.

Breakdown

The earliest is yesterday's pair, and both confirmed their phase within a day. Cat Match (SoftoVerse, 8 days): 10 countries, #2 in the Philippines, reviews 550 → 1,580 a day, bracket 1,000+ → 10,000+ — Play itself confirmed the multiple growth. Smash Land! (Flow Games, 8 days): 12 → 18 countries, rank #41 → #28, the whole rollout tier-1 Europe. Two eight-day-old titles with mirror-image geo strategies, both at the very start of the phase. Gugu Gaga is the third in the same category: young, narrow geo, bracket up.

ASMR Cleaning (Amazuro, 46 days) — 27 → 30 countries and a jump #16 → #7 (Brazil). A second day of rollout, the pace is not dropping.

Bendy's Nightmare Run — Android 35 → 37 countries and already #1 in Chile, while iOS shrank 19 → 13. Looks like the budget is being moved to where the response is better.

Movement

Up: Driving School 23 → 32 (#8 in South Africa) — the restart is picking up. Craft Builder (Coup Coup) 16 → 36 in a day. Lordrush (Century) 14 → 20 on iOS, #5 in Denmark. Unscrew Bolts 19 → 22 and #10 → #7 in Egypt. Block Bloom 25 → 28. Hair Salon Halloween Party 17 → 26 countries — still zero reviews with a 1M+ bracket.

Down: Water Sort: Romantic Dream 17 → 12 countries and #48 → #66 — yesterday's "tidiest rollout" wobbled backward for the first time. KPOP Sandbox 5 → 1 — that's it. Jam Bus stalled: 23 → 21 at the same rank.

Publishers

Agave Games is driving the whole portfolio: Find The Cat 2 — 42 countries and #5 on Android plus iOS, Find Em All — a fresh entry on both platforms at once, Art Block Puzzle — 6 countries with #7. Four titles in the charts simultaneously — watch the publisher, not the games.

Nebula Studio — Block Bloom 28, GOGO! Blast 12, Tap Tile! holds 45 countries. Brocker Bus Studio — both ASMR titles on full geo: Mystery Dumpling 47 countries and #1, Bracelet Maker 42.

Scaling Radar — money, August 22

Mystery Dumpling: Unbox ASMR (Brocker Bus, 15 days) — the install bracket jumped 1,000,000+ → 5,000,000+ in a day. 47 countries, #1, 3,770 reviews a day — the hardest fact about volume in the whole batch. And with it, a single $9.99 item in the catalog and zero countries in Grossing: the economy is entirely on ads, the IAP is set dressing.

Cat Match — a second bracket jump in a row: 1,000+ → 10,000+. For an eight-day-old title at #2 in the Philippines, that confirms the buying is converting into installs and not only into chart positions.

Gugu Gaga and Embabi Games — brackets up too, both to 100,000+. Grossing is empty for both, but at 9 and 16 days old it is early.

Bendy's Nightmare Run — Grossing widened from one country to two (#91 in the US) against 37 countries in Top Free and #1 in Chile. IAP is keeping pace with the rollout from the start — rare for a ten-day-old title.

Medal Hunter — unchanged, and that is a good thing: eight countries in Grossing, #28, a third snapshot in a row. The only one on the list whose buying pays back consistently already on wide geo.

Idling. Triple Harvest (67 days) — 23 countries, 1,000,000+, catalog up to $49.99, Grossing still zero. For a two-month-old title that is a diagnosis, not a delay. Hair Salon Halloween Party — 26 countries and 1M+ on day five with zero reviews and an empty IAP catalog: the volume is declared, and neither people nor money are visible.

The young ones with big catalogs — Smash Land! and Beach Bliss (IAP up to $99.99) — did not enter Grossing, but both are under two months old, too early to judge.