[Teeny Tiny Teardown] All in Hole (Homa Games)
What you are reading is a very quick game breakdown of All in Hole by Homa Games. This deconstruction is a light review of what the game is, the systems, the monetisation, and strengths and weak
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
All in Hole from Homa Games is “Hole.io meets the best practices from puzzle games meta”
The game offers levels with the Hole.io action phase mechanics
The levels themselves takes inspiration from the puzzle space in terms of varying difficulty (with difficulty labels up-front to incentivise booster usage)
Added to the experience, is a well defined event framework that provides additional motivation to grind through the levels
GAME DESCRIPTION
Help Molly gather treats and unlock delightful rewards! Control the black hole, sort, play with others, and solve relaxing puzzles in this fun, calming adventure!
Welcome to All in Hole: Puzzle Game!, an addictive but relaxing black hole game, where you need to eat and sort to solve the puzzle! Navigate through colorful levels and control the gravitational force of a black hole! Help Molly Solve puzzles as you dive into puzzle games and use the physics of a black hole, to eat all the required treats to advance, but remember, the end goal in these eating games is to relax!
Meet Molly, a mischievous mole, who is on a quest to get all the food in these eating games, solve the puzzles using the black hole, sort and eat what is required, and advance to the next level of the relaxing games.
But if Relaxing games are not your thing, you can challenge yourself and compete against players from around the globe in thrilling puzzle black hole tournaments, where only the top contenders emerge victorious. In All in Hole: Puzzle Game! you can join forces with fellow gamers, form teams, and exchange hearts and coins as you collaborate to conquer the puzzle and the feast hole together.
MARKET PERFORMANCE
Homa Games made a total of $2 million in September 2024 according to Sensor Tower (link under the image) across 257 apps. The top app was indeed the game we are now reviewing: All in Hole, which was responsible for about a third of the total revenue: $700k.
CORE LOOP
For those familiar with the massively successful Hole.io, the game will be very easy to play. For those who are not familiar, well, it will also be very easy to play as they will learn how the game works in one minute - the game is extremely easy and intuitive to play:
You move your hole around and consume items on the board.
You need to collect a certain amount of specific items per level
Each level has a timer that controls the level length until failure
Completing levels gives the player stars
Collecting stars completes packs (which is their version of a saga map a la Toon Blast)
Let’s take a closer look at all the elements that are present when the player is playing a level:
The player will gain higher hole levels by collecting items, which also makes the hole bigger, effectively allowing the player to consume bigger items on the level.
In the top left corner, the player will be able to see progression on more than one level:
How many items are left to complete the level
How many event items have been collected in the level
How many coins have been collected in the level
You will also notice the timer in the top middle, which informs the player how much time is left to collect all the level items. It can look like a lot, but it is very easy to keep an eye on the goals per level, and as the hole increases in size, the camera also zooms out so that more of the level space is visible for the player.
PROGRESSION
The action phase is all about collecting items, and those items gives permanent progress as well as event progress.
The game starts with few available items on the main screen (the player can see at which level most of the things are unlocked), while this amount increases across level completions.
This layering of systems is again heavily inspired by how puzzle opens up more of the game as the player first get’s a solid understanding of the core action phase of the game.
As can be seen in the picture below, the star and level chest are permanent features that always incentivise the player to play more, while several of the systems are event based.
If we try to expand a bit on the earlier core loop, we can see how the systems still are supporting the simple loop of play → complete → collect stars.
EVENTS
The events in general in this game are very short, where the main treasure hunt event (top middle of the screen) runs for just a few days. Alongside that, you have session, day, and multiday events that keep the player on their toes.
As can be seen above, the Star Tournament (ST) and Submarine Race (SR) are both short term competitive events, while the drill up event was made famous with “balloon events” from puzzle games where you need to pass levels to gain rewards. The daily reward is just a callback system with escalating rewards to keep you returning daily.
The only currency in the game is coins, and one can argue that the currency sits relatively weak in the game for the first 50 levels or so. It is very easy to pass levels and the author never once had to use the currency while researching this piece. That, as we will get to, makes the IAP offers less valuable during the onboarding journey as the player does not necessarily need the currency that early on.
In other games, the currency can be used outside of the core action phase for skins / consumables, but even that sits relatively weak during onboarding as the game feels extremely generous (no pinch at all in the first hour of gameplay)
MONETIZATION
As said, the game has several types of bundles, which all relies on currencies as the main value proposition (besides the no-ads pack for $9.99).
One can see from the bundles that the main proposition is on the currencies for both the cooler pack and the beginner pack. If we take a look at how the shop is structured, we can also learn a bit more of how the developer has been thinking on the bundle content.
In the shop, you will first be met by the beginner pack, and underneath, you will see the first standard bundle that is always available, which is twice as expensive for the same amount of coins, making the first bundle very attractive relatively.
An interesting observation between the standard bundle and the plain-coin-price points, is that the developer has not gone the route of making the standard bundles be “plain-coin-price points”+consumables, so that it is easy for the player to make purchase decisions.
As an example, if I am willing to spend $100 dollar, then today I could chose to either buy the ultimate pack (65.000 coins and some consumables) or I can buy the highest currency pack (100.000 coins). As a paying user, it is not immediately clear if the consumable content is worth 35.000 less in coin value, hence there is a risk of purchase regret.
Besides coins, as we mentioned, there is a “no ads” bundle. The player will actually make an conscious choice at one point in the play experience to active ads. This seem to be an increasing trend in hybrid-casual games, and it is very clear that the player will understand that ads now appears in the game experience.
ENDING NOTES
In sum, the game is an excellent re-imagination of the highly successful hole.io and successfully puts it’s own spin to the game with the puzzle inspired meta and event layer.
The strengths of the game is that the game most likely can advertise as a hyper-casual game, thanks for the intuitive gameplay, while the game hopefully leverages the deeper spend potential from the puzzle audience that might be attracted to this experience as well.