This article is part of an ongoing series of data-driven articles from PocketGamer.biz and App Annie highlighting trends in the global mobile games sector using App Annie’s app market data.

In this week’s column, we’re drilling down into the Casual > Simulation > Builder subgenre.

I'm in charge

Characterised by the experience of players acting and making decisions as the leader of a town or a city, these games continue to prove very popular.

Over 128 million such titles were downloaded in Q1 2021.

Currently most popular is Toca Boca’s Toca Life: World, which is part of the larger suite of apps and games from the kid-friendly publisher.

The previously most downloaded title was Playrix’s Township.

“Township targets a more general audience and contains more sophisticated gameplay features including chat, tournaments, guilds/clans and leaderboards,” commented App Annie’s head of marketing insights Lexi Sydow.

Indeed, ranking these games in terms of global app store consumer spend not downloads places Township in the #1 position.

“It enables the in-app purchase of consumables, power ups, starter packs and other items, while Playrix also complements its monetization strategy with in-app ads, offering a hybrid model to monetize gamers via the app store or ads,” Sydow adds.

Other familiar titles in the download list are Supercell’s Hay Day, which features despite being released way back in 2012.

More generally, however, its newer titles from the likes of Belarus developers Melsoft and Vizor that have gained attention.

For more insight into the gaming sector, App Annie’s Game IQ is a vertically tailored analytics product that provides insight into dimensions such as class, genre, subgenre and tags. Games can now be analyzed by broad category class (tuning), genre, subgenre, and tags (modifiers) such as IP, art style, settings, monetization mechanic, and more.

For more information register for a demo here