This article is part of an ongoing series of data-driven articles from PocketGamer.biz and App Annie highlighting trends in the mobile games sector.
This week, we're taking a look at the mobile game charts for the UK, which is now in its fourth week of national lockdown.
The chart of the most downloaded games is very heavily skewed towards hypercasual experiences.
Playgendary's Perfect Cream is #1. It was also the US #1 in last week's chart.
In fact the only game that couldn't be described as a generic hypercasual game is Scopely's Scrabble GO, which launched in March, and is already proving very popular globally.
Indeed, as we'll see later in the report, as a category, word-based social games are generally doing well at the moment, especially in English language countries.
Looking at the chart of the most engaging mobile games in terms of weekly active user numbers, there's a strong similarity with the US chart.
Roblox is the top game in both countries, and Candy Crush and Pokemon Go fill out the rest of the top three, albeit with their positions transposed.
Word games New Words With Friends and Wordscapes also feature on both charts, as does Call of Duty: Mobile.
When it comes to regional variation, the obvious outlier is 8 Ball Pool, which is operated by UK-based publisher Miniclip.
It's also interesting to the performance of interactive storytelling game Episode; not a title often seen in our chart rundown.
There are also a couple interesting mobile games on the UK top grossing chart, but the top entries are much as expected.
Roblox, Coin Master and Candy Crush were also in the US top grossing top 3, although in different positions. Gardenscapes, Homescapes and PUGB Mobile similarly feature on the top 10 in both countries.
Overall, the chart is a good mix of casual and core experiences, which cover every gender and demographic group from young teens to silver surfers.
The two surprising entries, however, are Plarium's RPG Raid: Shadow Legends and Scopely's Star Trek Fleet Command.
Both midcore games have been very successful but this is the first time we've seen them feature in any charts in this App Annie data series.
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