Scaling Radar — August 28

2026-08-28

40 candidates, three new alerts — and all three are noise: one or two countries, zero reviews (AgentRookie SvipeFast, Escape Game Marine House, Juicy Fusion). All the substance of the day is in the movement of the old ones.

Breakdown

Goddess Diff (LanFei Dream, Android, 20 days) — the main entry. It sat on 8-9 countries for three days, now 25 and #14 in Japan. The geo is expensive all the way through: US, GB, DE, FR, IT, ES, JP, KR, TW, Scandinavia — not one cheap country in the set. This is not a widened test, this is a salvo straight into premium, which is rare for a 20-day-old title.

Water Sort: Romantic Dream (Blue Blaze, Android, 16 days) — continuing exactly what I wrote about on Tuesday: 9 → 19 countries, #75 → #27, a fourth day in a row without pauses. DACH, Nordics, FR/IT. The run-up after the test is confirmed, and they are not easing off.

Last One Standing (tnySocial, iOS, 13 days) — 1 → 13 countries, #7 in Ireland. Scandinavia plus the English-speaking markets: NO, SE, FI, DK, IE, GB, AU, NZ, CA. Young, narrow, iOS-only — the cleanest "start of the phase" on the list, despite a modest score.

Block City Mansion (ABW apps, 50 days) — 6 → 24 countries and #66 → #23. But the geo is cheap throughout: AR, CL, CO, MX, PE, PH, TR, ID, MY, TH, ZA. Across 24 countries there are only 30 reviews a day — they bought the reach, there is no engagement.

American Farming 2 (SquadBuilt, 7 days) — launched on both platforms simultaneously: iOS #5 in the US, Android #30 in the US, and already Top Grossing #67 in the US across two countries. Money on the seventh day of life is rare; not exactly HC, but worth keeping in view.

Cute Scoop DIY (BLACKGEMS, 13 days) — a plateau: 27 countries and #14 for three days running with 361 reviews a day. The salvo has been fired, there is no follow-up.

Movement

Obby Keyboard ASMR Runner (Evkar) — 19 → 30 countries, the sharpest geo gain of the day, all of Western Europe at once. Triple Harvest (Flyfox) 26 → 35, picked up DE, FR, NL, KR, MX, TR. Crafty Blox World (Tappy) 21 → 29. GOGO! Blast (Nebula) 11 → 23 with the rank frozen at #47 — widening but not growing. House Cleaning ASMR (CAT Studio) 27 → 32 and a third day at #1 in Austria. Smash Land! (Flow Games) picked up JP, BR, AU and reached #10 in Switzerland.

Outside the candidate list but growing in the charts: Rampcrest Car Trials (Hubkom, 21 days) 15 → 20 countries and #9 → #3, Flying Warrior: City Legends 2 → 15 countries and #53 → #20. Smash Out: Cannon Fest has settled at 24 countries / #11 — the rollout is done.

TukTuk Turnpoint (zaks) — on Monday I called this pouring money into nothing: over the week it added one country (9 → 10), the rank is flat, and there are still no reviews. So far that holds up.

Publishers

Cypher Games — Royal Smash is on the list on both platforms at once: 46 countries on Android, 34 on iOS, Top Grossing #21 in the US across 42 countries. The only one in the field whose buying pays back across the whole front.
Tappy Game — two titles: Crafty Blox World 21 → 29 countries, Build Block 3D 4 → 11. Buying across the portfolio.
HM Games (both legal entities) — Ocean Block Shoot 27 countries, Solitaire Stack Sort 3 → 9 plus a presence in Grossing.
SpeedZone — also two: Car Driving Open World entered 6 countries at once with a jump in the install bracket, and the seven-day-old Gangster Crime at #27 in India.

_Deltas are over three days, not 24 hours._

Money — August 28

One bracket up, and a strange one. Car Driving Open World Game 3D (SpeedZone, 65 days) — installs jumped to 500,000+, and at the very same moment the title entered the charts for the first time: 6 countries, #66 in Vietnam. The order is the reverse of the usual — the volume is already there and Top Free is only beginning. Normally that means the game was built up outside the charts and they are now buying reach on top.

Who is in Grossing. Out of 33 Android candidates — four, and all of different quality.

Royal Smash (Cypher) — #21 in the US, 42 Grossing countries against 46 in Top Free. Practically everywhere they buy, they also get paid. The benchmark of the day.

Solitaire Stack Sort (HM Games, 83 days) — the opposite picture: Top Free grew 3 → 9 countries, while over the same week Grossing contracted 4 → 2 countries and slid from #79 to #89. They are buying more reach and getting fewer payers. For a three-month-old title that is not "early".

American Farming 2 (SquadBuilt) — #67 in the US on day seven, with an install bracket of 5+. Grossing ahead of Top Free.

Ghost Sniper (Alda) — 46 countries in Top Free and just 2 in Grossing.

Volume is there, money is not. The main case of the day is Mystery Dumpling: Unbox ASMR (Brocker Bus, 20 days): 46 countries, #1 in Top Free, 1,847 reviews a day, the bracket moved 1M → 5M over the week, an IAP catalog of exactly one item at $9.99 — and zero countries in Grossing. Peak reach on pure ad economics, with the catalog put there for show.

Ocean Block Shoot (HM Games, 42 days) — a second day running in this section: 27 countries, 1,599 reviews a day, catalog up to $99.99, Grossing empty. The same publisher's Solitaire Stack Sort does show money, so the issue is not the publisher but this title.

Meowdoku (Oakever, 125 days) — 10M+ installs, 39 countries, #1, catalog $3.99–69.99 and still zero in Grossing. Four months is no longer "still early", it is the answer.

Smash Land! (Flow Games) and Goddess Diff (LanFei) also have empty Grossing with large catalogs, but they are 13 and 20 days old — look again in a couple of weeks.

Who lives on revenue rather than on buying. Medal Hunter (Ten Square, Android) — Top Free 30 countries, Grossing #28 across 22 countries at once, the bracket moved 500K → 1M over the week. Tellingly, the iOS version of the same title surfaced on the radar in Sweden alone: on Android the machine is already running, on iOS they are only cranking it up.

Week in review — August 21–27

Trajectories: what happened to the ones we flagged

Craft Builder: 3D Block World (Coup Coup) — the best call of the week: 16 countries / #49 on Thursday → 39 countries / #10 today, install bracket 500K → 1M. And right beside it the junior title Craft Battle: Block Wars, 11 days old and already 42 countries / #2. The first one paid back, the second is being started on a machine that is already built.

Bendy's Nightmare Run (Joey Drew) — both platforms in the "deflated" column, and it is the most instructive case of all. iOS: 19 countries / #3 → 1 country / #17. Android: 37 / #1 → 25 / #13. But at the same time the install bracket went 1+ → 100,000+, and Grossing grew from #99 in one country to #54 in three. This is not a failure — it is the planned end of the salvo: buying was wound down and they started taking money off the base they had built.

Gugu Gaga: Keyboard Escape (Goldoint) — 11 → 20 countries, #25 → #2, bracket 50K → 100K. The budget shift from their own Gugu Gaga Penguin Obby, which I wrote about on Tuesday, is fully confirmed.

Rampcrest Car Trials (Hubkom, 21 days) — 11 → 20 countries, #14 → #3, six days of steady gains without pauses. One of those worth keeping on the list for next week.

There are almost no blown calls this week, but there is one: Home Clean: Makeover ASMR (BLACKGEMS) collapsed 13 → 1 country on exactly the days the publisher was running up the fresh Cute Scoop DIY. The budget was moved over entirely, and it would have been timely to notice that earlier.

Genres and geo

Country gains per title: Trivia +0.85, Word +0.80, Racing +0.79, Simulation +0.75. Losing ground: Board −1.0, Roleplaying −0.28, Adventure −0.20, Arcade −0.10, Action −0.06. Casual, across 430 titles, gave only +0.23 — the genre is standing still, and all of its chart volume is inertia.

The entry map differs by platform and that is the most useful observation of the week. Games under 60 days old come into Android through ID, NG, EG, TH, TW, ZA, AR — cheap Asia and Africa. Into iOS — through IE, IL, SA, TH, BE, NL: small rich markets where the top of the chart costs pennies while the CPI signal already looks Western. Whoever tests on iOS in Ireland and Israel is aiming at US/GB.

Publishers of the week

Portfolio growth: Coup Coup +24 countries across two titles, Agave Games +19 across three (Find Em All +15 being the main driver), Nebula Studio +15 across four, Tripledot +13 across eight and on both platforms at once. Hyper Surfer is formally +24, but the entire gain is in a single Bus Crowd — that is not a portfolio.

Winding down: Devolver −49 countries across two titles (POINPY −34, BALL x PIT −15), Kayac −25 across six, Nova Games −21, Smartsolution −12. Meanwhile Kayac's Slow Mo Strike holds 44 countries / #2 — they are cutting everything else to feed one title.

Money for the week

176 titles jumped their install bracket upward — and almost nobody from the top of that list showed up in Grossing.

The sharpest money reversal of the week is Zombie Rush: Idle Survival: Grossing from one country and #90 to 30 countries and #69, with five countries in Top Free. A rollout straight through the money, bypassing the free chart.

The most interesting are those who have Grossing and no Top Free at all: Plants vs Bugs (#61) and Lumberjack Simulator 3D (#78) — zero countries in the free chart. They live off retaining an old base and run no buying.

The "volume growing, no money" basket holds 42 titles. The telling ones: Amaze Romantic Goddess (27 days, 100K → 500K, 35 countries / #4, catalog up to $99.99, Grossing empty) and Solid Games with two at once — People Jam 500K → 1M and idle island planing 50K → 100K, both with catalogs up to $99.99 and zero in Grossing. When a publisher has two titles in a row pouring volume with no revenue, the question is no longer about the games but about the economics of the entire portfolio.