Lately, social media has been setting more and more trends to create new mobile games. The hype for some trivial (or is it just that simple?) things on social networks has spawned a whole series of games that have been downloaded tens of millions of times. To get to the bottom of it all, Appmagic has done some interesting research, which can be found here.

A side note: Top mobile game publishers of 2022

Soapcutting-style mobile games

Mainly social media trends have given rise to many mobile games. You’ve all seen those eye-catching shots of a soap bar being cut or crushed by some object in TikTok. But hardly any of you realised that all the games in this category have racked up as many as 3.6 billion views, and have also given birth to the simulation games of the same name. The first game in the series, called Soap Cutting, was released back in 2019 by developer Crazy Labs and since then has racked up 114 million downloads – the all-time leader in the list of games. Best of all, the game is still generating around 1 million downloads a month.

Shredding-style mobile games

The trend has racked up 1.6 billion views on TikTok, giving life to Will it Shred? by BoomBit Games. The idea is, you guessed it, to shred different objects, which actually brings a certain aesthetic satisfaction: 16 million downloads for the most popular game on the list.

Viral ‘hydropress’ videos

TikTok recorded 3.5 billion views for its videos, although you should have met them on Youtube as well. Pressed everything, including the aforementioned soap. In the top again is a game from BoomBit Games called You Crush! It’s almost racked up 3 million downloads, though that’s not very impressive, but it’s an impressive figure.

Steak cooking is one of the most popular categories

No surprise really, as almost everyone loves food and cooking and 14.6 billion views is proof of that. Crazy Labs’ game King of Steak has been less fortunate, as it has racked up 2.4 million downloads, but that’s just the beginning considering its release in May 2022.

Frozen honey and the most popular game in the category

2.2 billion views have given this trend a chance to trickle down behind the scenes of hyper-casual developments. It’s Crazy Labs again with Frozen Honey and 46.4 million downloads. And it’s out of competition, as the closest game on the list barely made 0.5% of the total downloads of the ranking leader. However, Frozen Honey also had a difficult fate as a hyper-casual game: it lasted about three months in the trends of popular games on the platforms, and then was left to graze the backsides.

Slaps? It’s a piece of cake!

Slapping someone is an art form, it’s really relaxing and lets all your negative energy out. There’s even a whole sport based on which of two opponents will slap the face harder. Videos of this format became popular during the COVID-19 era, where they racked up millions of views. And it couldn’t help but inspire Lion Studios to create Slap Kings, which has nearly 120 million downloads.

mobile games

The art of Sneakers

Seemingly everyday footwear for all of us can be especially popular on the other side of the screen. Viral videos of trainer designs or laces have easily garnered 265 million views on TikTok. Naturally, developers from TapNation couldn’t help but take advantage of such a great idea to create a hyper-casual mobile games and gave birth to Sneaker Art!, which managed to rack up a whopping 33 million downloads.

As a result, we can clearly see a correlation between the creation of mobile hyper-casual games and the things that are happening in social networks on various levels. We can say that games based on internet trends become almost instantly popular, but after a while are just as dramatically lost in the general flow. In addition, only 1 game on the list gains dozens of times more downloads than its competitors. What trends will further affect game development, we will find out soon.

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