The casual puzzler Chrome Valley Customs, developed by UK developer Space Ape, has had an impressive start, generating $40 million in its first six months. According to Space Ape co-founder Simon Hade in an interview with mobilegamer.biz, the company anticipates that the game will surpass the earnings of their enduring hit Beatstar this year.
“We’re expecting Chrome Valley Customs to grow and be our biggest grossing game within the year. For context, Beatstar took two years to gross $120m and Transformers six years to gross $150m – our other games did around $50m each,” Hade told the site.
“The Chrome Valley Customs team was 50 at launch, is now 75 and we’ll get to 90 plus soon, which will make it the largest team we’ve run to date,” he added. “We’ve still got a sizable team on our music games, around 25 people, and around 15 people on our Transformers game. But we see most of our growth coming from casual puzzle games now, with Chrome Valley being the big bet for this year.”
Smart promotion
Chrome Valley Customs was launched in June 2023 alongside a promo within their hit Beatstar music action game that placed the game front and center, offering a new Beatstar song as a reward for registering interest. Thanks to the promo and the team’s hard work, CVC became Space Ape’s fastest-earning game, and the biggest launch in their 11-year history, reaching $10m in revenue within two months of launch. Since then, the game’s earning potential has only grown, hitting $40m in six months.
Given the success of Chrome Valley Customs, it’s no surprise that Space Ape is planning further releases in the same genre, with an as-yet-unnamed title in development to further capitalize on their designs and Chrome Valley Customs’ success.
“In the past I’d feel a little bit ashamed to say we had ‘only’ one game in development but given the state of the mobile market and the unrealized potential for Chrome Valley Customs I’m feeling good about it,” said Hade.
