This month's playable trends are the kind you only catch when you're staring at hundreds of creatives in a row: the dress-up "please your boyfriend's mom" hook quietly flooding match-3 UA, and the Playrix templated-playable machine that turns one build into an entire portfolio.

Matej Lančarič and Ondrej Mosberger are joined by Robin Kuyer, who leads Unity PlayWorks (formerly Luna Labs) and has been building playables for five years. They break down the fashion/dress-up template appearing across Crazy Labs, Kinetic, and others (often with identical assets) and why it's really a match-3 onboarding wrapper, the Playrix masterclass of strongly templated playables reused across Township, Gardenscapes, and Homescapes, and the single most underused tactic in the industry: taking one winning playable build and squeezing everything out of it with asset swaps, camera-angle changes, and different cut points. They also dig into long playables (and why 3 minutes can pre-qualify your best payers), the authentic-vs-non-authentic debate (where CTR can double but ROAS stays close), network approval chaos, and where AI playable production is genuinely heading — plus why "make a playable that performs well" will never be a working prompt.

The throughline, straight from Robin: production speed means nothing without the foundation. Knowing what a good hook, reward loop, and progression actually look like is the part too many studios skip.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

⏱️ TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Game designers on playable team?

03:35 The fashion / dress-up playable pattern

08:00 Why it's really match-3 in disguise

16:14 The Playrix templated-playable masterclass

20:35 One build, many ads — asset swaps and camera angles

27:00 Long playables and pre-qualifying payers

36:46 Authentic vs non-authentic playables

40:00 Can AI vibe-code a winning playable?

--------------------------------------

PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.

Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/

They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.

- Scale fast

- Keep your shares

- Drawdown only as needed

- Have PvX take downside risk alongside you

+ Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors

---------------------------------------

For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.

Our sponsor FastSpring:

Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years

They power top mobile publishers around the world

Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.

---------------------------------------

This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let's not take it too seriously.

🎙️ HOSTS

Matej Lančarič — User Acquisition consultant

Ondrej Mosberger — Playable production (PlayableMaker)

🎤 GUEST

Robin Kuyer — Unity PlayWorks

https://www.linkedin.com/in/robin-kuyer-76b24b87/

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-3bckldvr8-8PXvzciMWdheOzED9hq0SA

---------------------------------------

Matej Lancaric

User Acquisition & Creatives Consultant

⁠https://lancaric.me

Felix Braberg

Ad monetization consultant

⁠https://www.felixbraberg.com

Jakub Remiar

Game design consultant

⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakubremiar

---------------------------------------

Please share the podcast with your industry friends, dogs & cats. Especially cats! They love it!

Hit the Subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

Please share feedback and comments - [email protected]