[Tiny Teardown] Questopia: Conquer the World
What you are reading is a very quick game breakdown of Questopia by Voodoo. This deconstruction is a light review of what the game is, the systems, the monetisation, and strengths and weaknesses.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
“Questopia: Conquer the World” is a casual exploration game similar to Dreamdale by Saygames where the player explores the world and uncovers resources while upgrading equipment.
The title is developed by Sozap (link) and published by Voodoo (link).
The game is labeled as a casual world building game and is a testament to Voodoos pursuit to venture into hybridcasual as Questopia has a strong core progression arc through expansion and upgrading systems
IAP has clear value propositions with the first session offers highlighting both ad removals (ads are part of the core gameplay experience directly post FTUE)
Ads are very core to the experience (through gating progress with resources) and has different value propositions given permanent or temporary nature
The ad placements that are placed on the expansion pieces offer super clear value propositions given that resource gathering takes time and the 30s wait time for an ad is almost a no-brainer
GAME DESCRIPTION
Questopia is a casual adventure game about building worlds. With intuitive easy control, simple yet pretty graphics, catchy relaxing music and genre crossing exploration gameplay.
GATHER - Chop down forests to keep your sawmills running. Dig your way through caves for metals. And if you can find them, collect rare crystals for advanced upgrades.
UPGRADE - Make sure that your tools stay sharp and your sword cuts true. Each tool has several upgrades which lets you choose how to progress.
FIGHT - Not every creature will be friendly to your presence. Grab your sword, upgrade it, hone your skills and show them who’s the king!
EXPLORE - Scale icy mountains, dig into the deepest caves and navigate giant mushroom forests. Each tile unlocked rewards you with new surprises as you venture into the unexplored corners of worlds.
CORE LOOP
The core loop of Questopia is to collect resources, expand the world while unlocking new resource types, upgrade equipment in order to collect the new resource types, and discover parts to upgrade the ship in order to expand into new worlds.
The player starts off on a beginners island to learn the basics of the game. The player obtains the axe (upgradeable equipment) and also a rope. The rope is required to create the raft so that the player can leave the beginner island and venture into the first real island.
The raft has only two requirements which is the rope and 15 wood, and once that has quickly been collected, the player will be able to go to the first island and start the adventure of clearing out the first destination.
On the new island, the player will understand that now one can upgrade the raft by completing seven requirements. The first ones are to collect 10 planks, a treasure map, and 30 pearls.
You can already sense that resource types will be plentiful in this game, but they are introduced very carefully and it is not overwhelming at all to end up with ten resources to gather and collect throughout the game.
The expansions in general cost either one of two resources, while the upgrades of equipment starts with two cost types and ends with three.
Some resource types are just for expansion of the world (e.g., mushrooms or sea weed), while others are for both expansion and for upgrading, forcing the player to decide where to spend the resources given the motivations at that point in time.
Let's take a look at the equipment cost upgrades. The axe costs has a linear increase over each level for both planks and iron which are required for each level, and then from level 3 and onwards another resource is additionally required.
The total resources required to upgrade the axe are
Plank: 1540
Iron: 770
Pearls: 150
Gems: 250
Gold Nugget: 100
Gold Bar: 400
Gold Coin: 500
The costs for upgrading all three equipments on the first island has exactly the same costs, so all in all, you can take the list above and multiply it by three to get the total cost of upgrading the axe, the pickaxe, and the sword (the sword is not required to upgrade all the way in order to clear the first island)
If a player were to watch the ads for all the resources for the equipment only, then a player would have to watch a total of 216 ads for the ones that the player can watch (still needs to get the coins and the gems)
LIVE SERVICES
The game would easily lend itself to live services, but to date there are no events in the game. Huge opportunity if Voodoo decides to double down on the game
MONETIZATION
The game has IAPs and works with popups and bundles, while also having rewarded videos spread all over the game and at times interstitial ads
Starting offers during FTUE
No Ads (+30 questopia bucks) - $6.99
Pet: Resource doubling (+100%) - $14.99
Shop
The only standard offers that exists in the shop are "questopia bucks". These offers allows the user to skip the rewarded video while still getting the reward (a mechanic that is becoming more popular nowadays in both idle and hybrid-casual games)
These come at six price points
$3 for 30 questopia bucks (one ad valued at 10 cents)
$4 for 60 questopia bucks (one ad valued at 7 cents)
$10 for 140 questopia bucks (one ad valued at 7 cents)
$20 for 300 questopia bucks (one ad valued at 7 cents)
$50 for 800 questopia bucks (one ad valued at 6 cents)
$100 for 2000 questopia bucks (one ad valued at 5 cents)
Post-FTUE offers
The game gives the player plenty of offers to chose from that comes in the form of resource packs (starter pack and resource packs) and character packs. The resources gained from the packs are very small in terms of time saved, so main value proposition of the packs must be from the Questopia bucks and removal of intrusive ads from the starter pack
Rewarded videos
The player will most likely not be able to resist watching the ads if they care about the core progression in the game. The ad placements are attractive and plentiful.
Some ad placements are permanent and consistent from the resource buildings and some are permanent but changes as the player upgrades the equipments (these have higher value propositions than the resource buildings)
The resource buildings gives
Gold Bars: 120
Gold nuggets: 40
Iron: 20
Pearls: 75
Planks: 60
The player will early experience that the gameplay time required to gain resources is way below the value one gets from watching ads. Hence, if progression is the main interest for the player (very likely), then the ad offerings will become very natural to engage with ALL THE TIME, hence most likely a player who doesn't mind spending money on the ad skips will see value in them.
Given the nature of the game, 30 skips is nothing for a few bucks and as users most likely will watch several hundreds of ads in a game like this if they stick around
Interstitials
Interstitial ads appear directly on first session, and appears often when expanding the world or within certain moments (e.g., directly after that the player obtained the axe)
Well introduced and well paced, does not distrupt too much
Other
The game does not use banners
The game does not use offer wall
The game does not use other formats
STRENGTHS & WEAKNESSES
Strengths
The game has a fantastic core gameplay for those who enjoy world exploration and resource gathering
Rewarded ad placements are very attractive and well placed
Weakness
The world progression feels weak post the first world as it does not clearly unfold more of the game
As mentioned above, the game today does not utilize any live services in form of events
The IAP offers feels unappealing against the ad watch gains
The most attractive offer (resource doubling) that is introduced in the first session sits at a very steep price point $15 dollar
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