Nice Plans Studio's ambitions to independently scale a new shooter in a challenging mobile market

Nice Plans Studio has raised $3 million towards its new 3v3 shooter Ricochet Squad.

The team of 21, based in Cyprus, is working on a new mobile game in the competitive shooter genre at a time when the world's top publishers have found it challenging to launch a title.

Even the brand power behind Activision’s Call of Duty franchise wasn’t enough for Warzone: Mobile to succeed.

The team at Nice Plans Studio has experience in the genre, with the founding members previously working at Panzerdog on Tacticool, which is said to have racked up 30m downloads and $90m to date.

But that was a different time. So, we ask how the developer hopes to stand out with a newcomer like Ricochet Squad.

"We’re confident because Ricochet Squad has already met key benchmarks for retention and monetisation, and we’ve done the work to understand our audience deeply," co-founder and CEO Roman Malakhov tells PocketGamer.biz.

"We’re targeting both underserved players who don’t usually play mobile shooters and overserved ones looking for something fresh. Ricochet Squad offers realistic physics, destruction and a cheat-proof experience that sets us apart.

"On top of that, we’re building on the gameplay and tech formulas we originally developed with Tacticool, proven over six years and millions of players."

Nice Plans Studio is running a full game simulator for Ricochet Squad on its server, meaning that damage dealt to the in-game world by one player is seen in real-time by everyone else - the same debris landing in the same place at the same time.

Aiming high

Richochet Squad is already out in soft launch and the team claims it has had a "strong early performance", particularly regarding retention on days one and seven.

Malakhov says the game's retention and early monetisation metrics are also "exceeding what we saw in Tacticool’s at any stage".

Following this successful soft launch, the studio currently plans to release Ricochet Squad globally this autumn.

Malakhov notes that there is a "strong conversion" from new players to paying users, but an increase in average revenue per paying user is desired before the game advances to global launch.

He also shares that there’s a need to improve day 30 retention and CTR for Ricochet Squad before Nice Plans Studio can commit to going global.

Going fully independent

Though Ricochet Squad was previously published by My.Games, that deal has since been dissolved and Nice Plans Studio has published Ricochet Squad itself - with a brand-new app listing on Google Play. The old app can no longer be accessed via the storefront.

It's a seemingly tougher proposition still to take on the mobile market without a publisher to back the team up.

"We had a great experience working with My.Games in the past, but as their priorities shifted, we mutually agreed to branch off," explains Malakhov.

He adds that this change hasn’t affected the team developing Ricochet Squad and that "100% of the original developers" are still working on the game, "pushing it forward under Nice Plans Studio".

The studio itself is also now fully independent and venture-backed, including that $3m of funding recently raised.

"The funding will go toward fine-tuning the product and marketing metrics," says Malakhov.

Standing out

Of course, Ricochet Squad will also need to try to stand out against the team's earlier game Tacticool, developed by Panzerdog.

While the competition is fierce, Appfigures’ recent report found that nearly 6% of the 1,000 highest-earning mobile games were shooters last year, making it one of three key pillars of midcore behind RPGs and strategy games.

Furthermore, DataIntelo projects that the shooter genre will grow at a compound annual growth rate of nearly 13% until 2032, by which time the genre’s market will be valued at 24.3bn.

Following its $3m funding round, Nice Plans Studio is now preparing for a Series A round to scale Ricochet Squad further still.