The Hypercasual games market has witnessed significant growth on mobile over the last few years, according to Sensor Tower’s Mobile Game Taxonomy Report.

Hypercasual games led the mobile game installs in 2020 accounting for 31 per cent of all the downloads.

“The Hypercasual games market has exploded on mobile over the last few years. In 2017, the genre took a 17 per cent share of downloads in the sector among the top 1,000 titles, putting it behind the Arcade genre, which accounted for 19 per cent of installs. One year later, Hypercasual became the largest genre for downloads,” Sensor Tower said in a blog post.

Overall, the Covid-19 pandemic and related lockdowns have led to a surge in revenue for mobile games apart from increased downloads, and usage across almost all mobile gaming genres.

Hypercasual games were followed by the Arcade genre which accounted for 15 per cent of all installs. Puzzle games came in third with a 13 per cent share of the downloads.

The downloads of Arcade and Puzzle games increased by 33 per cent and 78 per cent respectively in 2020, owing to titles such as Subway Surfers from Sybo Games and Among Us from InnerSloth, as per the report.

In terms of revenue, RPG (Role-playing games) and Strategy games led the way accounting for a combined 50 per cent share of mobile games revenue in 2020 among the top 1,000 earning titles.

“While the market share for RPGs has shrunk, revenue still increased year-over-year, driven by new titles such as Genshin Impact from miHoYo, which generated approximately $560 million in 2020,” according to Sensor Tower estimates.

Casino and Shooter also witnessed a growth in spending, accounting for 10 per cent and 9 per cent of revenue, respectively.

Titles such as Coin Master from Moon Active and PUBG Mobile from Tencent contributed significantly to each genre, both accumulating over $1 billion in 2020 alone.

“While these titles have led the surge, Call of Duty: Mobile from Activision, in partnership with Tencent’s Timi Studios, was also another exceptional performer in the Shooter category. Since its launch in 2019, the game has surpassed $760 million in player spending,” as per the report.

The Fashion theme is also gaining popularity on mobile, featuring in hit titles such as Project Makeover from Bubblegum Games and Super Stylist from Crazy Labs.

Fashion was also one of the fastest-growing themes in 2020 with downloads of the top 100 titles utilizing it up 109 per cent to 991 million in 2020, as per the report.