Pro Mobile Blog #2: The Cover Image Challenge - Catch'N'Merge Edition

In the last post I wrote about the CTR challenge for Clean, our hex tile puzzle game. Some people asked whether we face the same problem with our other games. The short answer is yes. We are not designers and design was always our weakest side. But the details are different for Catch’N’Merge and that’s what I would like to write about.

Catch’N’Merge is our merge arcade game where you catch falling objects and merge them into higher evolutions before your flask fills up or before a boulder falling from the sky breaks the flask. It’s fast, chaotic and satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain until you play it yourself.

Arcade games need a higher bar

One thing I learned while working on Clean is that CTR benchmarks are not universal. They differ by genre and if you compare yourself against the wrong standard you risk draw the wrong conclusions.

For puzzle games, the bottom 20% of titles sits just below 2% CTR. But for arcade games, which is the category Catch’N’Merge falls into, that threshold is a bit higher. The bottom 20% starts slightly above 2%, at around 2,3%. I think it’s because arcade players browse faster and try out several games at once, maybe by opening several games each one in a new tab. Another reason that I think plays here is that free arcade games naturally have more dynamic, energetic and therefore more attractive cover images.

So that made my bar even higher. I need to aim for higher than 2% CTR.

Public preview isn’t the same as launch

There’s another thing that makes Catch’N’Merge different from Clean: the game isn’t fully live yet. It’s in public preview and available only to a small subset of players on the platform. From my experience with other free online game launches, CTR during public preview is almost always lower than after full release. So I didn’t expect a strong number at the beginning.

But what I saw was still an unpleasant surprise.

First cover: character-centric (~0.2% CTR)

Our first cover image featured a cute angry snail - one of the creatures you can catch and merge in the game. I thought and still think that it is charming. I hoped that the snail’s personality would make people curious enough to click.

The CTR came back at 0.2%. Ten times below where we needed to be and below even our lowered preview-phase expectations. So we started working on the second attempt.

Second cover: more game-focused and serious (~0.3% CTR)

I thought maybe snail wasn’t the right direction for an arcade game. Arcade players expect energy, speed, action. A snail might not signal “this is exciting” and might look too childish. So I decided to go in the opposite direction. The second cover was more composed and direct, less character-focused and more about the action.

The CTR improved to 0.3%. Technically a 50% increase, which sounds good until you remember we started at 0.2%. We were still deep below baseline. But at least I got some level of confidence that this direction is right. Moving away from a single character and toward something that communicated the game’s energy was a good idea.

Third cover: showing the chaos

For the third cover I wanted to show the chaos - the flask with the creatures and the objects flying around the flask. If my game is a physics-based merge experience then the cover should feel like it.

I don’t have enough data on this one yet - will need to wait a couple of days and will probably write a summary blog for both - Clean and Catch’N’Merge cover images progress. And I’m genuinely curious to see how the game performs when it will go live to a wider audience.

What’s next

Eventually I want to have it like a constantly evolving process for our games - change cover image, wait for enough impressions to form a number, then change again trying to make CTR even higher. In the meantime, please try the Catch’N’Merge game yourself and let us know what you think about it.