Sensor Tower has released a new list of the most downloaded mobile games of 2022. This time the list covers the SEA (South-East Asia) region, and you may be surprised by some of the appearances on the line-up. Although these lists are based on estimates, they do take into account unique downloads, but do be aware that they do not include third-party stores for Android.
The top games for both the Android and iOS app store were X-HERO (Bingchuan Network) and Save The Doge (Wonder Group). Both casual puzzle games involving line drawing. Subway Surfers (SYBO) ended up hitting number nine on the overall list, and Fall Guys clone Stumble Guys (Kitka Games) ranked at number eight.
Under the SEA
As we move into the top five of the overall list we find Save The Doge sat at number one, Garena's Garena: Free Fire has moved up to number two, while Daerisoft’s The Spike – Volleyball Story has ranked at number three.
Garena’s fortunes may be increasing judging by downloads, but in early September this year their unit saw a number of layoffs due to internal issues in their parent company Sea Ltd and the game being banned in India earlier this year.
The MOBA game Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (Moonton) slid up to number four overall, possibly helped by a heavily promoted crossover with Japanese franchise Saint Seiya that is ongoing till Mid-November. The top five was rounded out by Stick Hero: Tower Defense (Rocket Game Studio) a hyper-casual game that, contrary to the title, seems to involve attacking towers rather than defending them.
Overall we can see that while deeper games still grab top spots on the overall download list, it appears that hyper-casual games still have their place. Although the top games such as Save the Doge and indeed, X-HERO seem to face a lot of criticism in reviews for the amount of ads within them.
The developers of Garena meanwhile are likely to be happy that their game is seeing more success, although it’s unclear if the SEA market will be enough to revive Sea Ltd’s recent fortunes. We also reported on the acquisition of Stumble Guys from Kitka by Scopely early in September as well as its surprising success.
