How Rollic hit 2B downloads for its hypercasual games

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Rollic has crossed two billion lifetime downloads across its portfolio of hypercasual games, or accessible titles that you can play in a minute or less.

While hypercasual games have had a challenging time in the past year, Istanbul-based Rollic was able to boost its audience and engagement with more use of live operations, online leaderboards, seasonal events and customizable characters. Rollic has now launched 19 games that have hit No. 1 or No. 2 in the U.S. App Store.

I talked with Rollic CEO Burak Vardal, who cofounded the company in 2018. Zynga acquired the company in October 2020 for $168 million, and then Zynga itself was acquired by Take-Two Interactive this year.

Rollic began adding live services to its titles in 2021 with the launch of the first-ever live online leaderboard in Hair Challenge, the rewarded ad “Adopt a Pet” feature in High Heels, and seasonal holiday events across six of its games.

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To date in 2022, Rollic has debuted 14 games that have ranked in the top-10 most downloaded games in the U.S. App Store, including Car Lot Management, Coffee Stack, Colors Runners, Hoard Master, Crowd Evolution, and Fill The Fridge.

Here’s an edited transcript of our interview with Vardal.

GamesBeat: Tell me more about your history at Rollic, and the history of Rollic as well.

Burak Vardal: We co-founded Rollic, two partners and I, back in December 2018. It’s quite a young company. We started as a