two & a half gamers by Lancaric.me

August 21, 2025 🚗 Car Match Review: A 9/10 Product With with 3/10 UA Strategy = Heartbreaking 💔

Grand Games is back with another puzzler and it’s a monster. Car Match has hit $120K/day, combining bench mechanics, Pixar-style cars, and a polished Royal Match meta. On paper, it’s a textbook case of how to scale a puzzle game.

Product, amazing. UA? Not so much.

Here’s why:

The product is a 9/10. Meta depth, endless events, and a proven template.

Monetization is efficient. ~30% of revenue comes from ads, bundles are cleverly layered in, and interstitials start at different levels for different players.

But the UA machine is broken. Grand Games has only 5-7 creatives live. For a game printing $2M in 30 days, that’s a scaling disaster waiting to happen.

Jakub nailed it: “If they stop producing new creatives, they die immediately.”

Felix added: “It’s an easy fix — upscale creative production.”

But Matej countered: “Not that easy. You need concepts, not spaghetti on the wall.”

$5M/month with Magic Sword + Car Match combined

The takeaway: Car Match proves that you can copy, paste, and polish your way to $120K/day. But without a creative firehose, momentum will stall.

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop

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

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.

Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠

Join our slack channel here: https://join.slack.com/t/two-and-half-gamers/shared_invite/zt-2um8eguhf-c~H9idcxM271mnPzdWbipg

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Car Match and Hosts

02:16 Overview of Game Mechanics and Comparisons

04:12 Gameplay Experience and Difficulty Levels

07:11 Meta Mechanics and Game Events

10:16 Monetization Strategies and Player Engagement

13:25 Discussion on Customization and Player Preferences

16:13 Game Performance and Market Insights

20:34 The Financial Landscape of Game Development

22:08 Understanding User Acquisition Challenges

24:59 Creative Strategies for Game Marketing