Casual puzzler Chrome Valley Customs from UK developer Space Ape is off to a flying start, taking $40m in its first six months, and - speaking to mobilegamer.biz - Space Ape co-founder Simon Hade is predicting that the game will even surpass their enduring hit Beatstar in earnings this year.

“We’re expecting Chrome Valley Customs to grow and be our biggest grossing game within the year. For context Beatstar took two years to gross $120m and Transformers six years to gross $150m - our other games did around $50m each,” Hade told the site.

“The Chrome Valley Customs team was 50 at launch, is now 75 and we’ll get to 90 plus soon, which will make it the largest team we’ve run to date,” he added. “We’ve still got a sizable team on our music games, around 25 people, and around 15 people on our Transformers game. But we see most of our growth coming from casual puzzle games now, with Chrome Valley being the big bet for this year.”

Smart promotion

Chrome Valley Customs was launched in June 2023 alongside a promo within their hit Beatstar music action game that placed the game front and centre with a new Beatstar song being offered as a reward for registering interest.

The promo and the team's hard work made CVC Space Ape’s fastest earning game, and biggest launch in their 11 year history, hitting $10m within two months of launch. And the game's earning potential has only grown since then as it hits $40m earned in six months. 

And with Chrome Valley Customs off to a flyer it’s no surprise to find that Space Ape are planning further releases in the same genre with an as yet unnamed title in development within the same casual puzzle space in order to further monopolise on their designs and Chrome Valley Customs' success.

“In the past I’d feel a little bit ashamed to say we had ‘only’ one game in development but given the state of the mobile market and the unrealised potential for Chrome Valley Customs I’m feeling good about it," said Hade.