How Turkey’s Rollic Games Turned Color Block Jam Into a $18M/Month Casual Gaming Phenomenon

In just four months, a Turkish mobile game studio has turned a simple puzzle into one of the most profitable hits in the global mobile gaming market. Rollic Games’ Color Block Jam is rewriting the rules of casual game monetization, climbing the App Store and Google Play charts while pulling in over $18 million a month.

ISTANBUL — For years, hardcore gamers dismissed the casual gaming scene as light entertainment, more distraction than competition. But in recent years, this once-overlooked corner of the mobile gaming market has turned into one of the fiercest battlegrounds in the industry. New subgenres, breakout hits, and fresh gameplay models are launching at breakneck speed — and Turkey’s Rollic Games has just delivered the latest sensation.

Everyone knows the match-3 giant Royal Match. In the emerging “merge” subgenre, Chinese developer Lemon MicroFun has already raked in an estimated $70 million per month across Travel Town, Romantic Restaurant, and other titles, fueled by a dual domestic-and-overseas strategy. On the 3D match-and-clear side, Tencent-owned Miniclip pioneered the format with Triple Match 3D, before Take-Two’s Peak Games jumped in with Match Factory!, peaking at over $28 million per month. According to AppMagic’s 2024 Casual Gaming Market Report, annual revenue for this niche is approaching $400 million.

Now another player is making waves — a veteran hyper-casual studio pivoting to hybrid monetization. And their weapon of choice is Color Block Jam, a block-sliding puzzle that’s rewriting the rules on how quickly a title can dominate the App Store and Google Play charts.

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A Puzzle Game That Prints Money

Launched just four months ago, Color Block Jam has seen revenue skyrocket. Daily income has jumped from around $140,000 in January to over $560,000 per day, with March’s in-app purchase revenue alone hitting $18 million. That’s not counting ad monetization — and the trend line still points upward.

The core gameplay? Think Huarong Dao meets color-matching: players slide differently shaped, colored blocks to their matching exits, clearing them from the board. Finish within the time limit and you move on. The first 50 levels are easy, delivering a satisfying “just one more level” loop. Then the difficulty ramps up — tighter timers, trickier layouts — nudging players toward microtransactions.

Rollic leans hard into what the industry calls “fail monetization”: when players fail a level, the game offers a discounted revive pack (“Fail Offer”) alongside soft-sell copy like “Make it easier!”. Combined with traditional energy packs, power-ups, battle passes, ad unlocks, and banner/ interstitial ads, Color Block Jam has a diversified revenue engine.

What’s notable is that Color Block Jam isn’t dressed up with meta-narratives or elaborate progression systems. It’s pure, single-mechanic gameplay — an outlier among today’s casual hits — and its monetization is tightly woven into the gameplay loop.

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Marketing: Fast, Precise, and Relentless

If the gameplay keeps people hooked, the user acquisition strategy gets them through the door. Rollic’s approach boils down to three words: Fast. Precise. Relentless.

Fast — Ads waste no time. Top-performing creatives are straightforward, 30-second clips of real gameplay. No gimmicks, no fake mechanics.

Precise — The simplicity works because it taps into player nostalgia. The LEGO-like art style plus familiar block-sliding mechanics resonate immediately. Rollic’s data shows these “authentic gameplay” ads consistently outperform influencer-led or alternative-gameplay ads, driving millions of impressions each.

Relentless — Since December, Rollic has unleashed a massive ad blitz: in 90 days, Color Block Jam ran over 500 creative variants, with daily peaks of 800 creatives and up to 160 million impressions in a single day across Facebook, Instagram, AppLovin, Unity Ads, and more. The goal: flood the category, own the mechanic in players’ minds, and raise CPI for any copycats.

This aggressive UA (user acquisition) style carries high risk and cost — often running at a loss early on — but it locks in category dominance before competitors can catch up.

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From Hyper-Casual to Long-Term Live Ops

Rollic Games CEO and co-founder Burak Vardal admits the pivot wasn’t accidental. Since Zynga acquired Rollic for $168 million, the studio has been studying long-term retention and monetization. Apple’s IDFA privacy changes, which drove up CPIs, also pushed the company toward sustainable revenue models over short-lived “hit-or-miss” launches.

But Rollic hasn’t abandoned its hyper-casual strengths: ruthless prototyping, lightning-fast creative testing, and ultra-lean CPI optimization. Every year, the studio works with over 100 Turkish indie teams, testing around 1,000 concepts. Only about 40 reach soft launch, and most are cut unless they meet strict KPIs.

That discipline paid off here. Color Block Jam is a hybrid of hyper-casual production speed and casual game monetization depth — essentially “1 + 1 > 3” in practice.

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What’s Next for Color Block Jam?

April revenue is on track to break $28 million, but longevity is the question. Can a monetization model built around failure-driven spending sustain interest for 6–12 months? If it can, Color Block Jam could be one of the biggest puzzle game success stories of the year.

For the broader mobile gaming industry, the lesson is clear: while heavy titles can build long-term moats with deep systems, there’s still room for creative gameplay innovation to carve out new genres — and deliver outsized profits.

The images in this article are official screenshots released by rollicgames.