Blast broke the puzzle rules on purpose

Everyone was fighting over Match-3 and left the door open

This month's Puzzly Monthly episode went back in time to answer a listener question that turned into something bigger: how did Toon Blast grow its ARPDAU while every other blast game was falling off a cliff?

Super Light Ball - one feature to save them all

The answer covers a decade of genre history, one very fast feature copy, and a live-ops rebuild that most people are still crediting to the wrong thing.

The events rebuild was the engine

Make sure to watch the episode for the full discussion.

The decision wasn't a pivot. It was a forced bet.

Before Toy Blast, "blast" wasn't a genre. It was clicker-match, and the closest reference points were Pet Rescue Saga and Diamond Digger: scrolling boards, a single correct solve path, and a fail rate baked into the design. The episode digs up a detail about Pet Rescue's early funnel, which is that its success curve went down before it went up, because players needed a few attempts to work out the right answer before they could solve it consistently. That friction was considered a bug at the time, and teams were actively trying to engineer it out. Today the same design sits at the heart of Block Jam and the whole solitaire-association wave, where failing three times before you crack a board is the product.

CodeDev launches optimisation division The Performance Guys

UK co-development house CodeDev, also known as The Unreal Guys, has launched a specialist optimisation division called The Performance Guys, built explicitly to tackle project-critical optimisation work. It contains exclusively engineers and technical artists and is actively seeking senior engineers. Read more

"This is us speaking to the world" � Why London is keen to host esports events like the Valorant Masters

Last month, London hosted the Valorant Masters, one of the biggest dates in the calendar for Riot Games' tactical shooter. Read more

John Romero announced as keynote speaker for Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show

Gamescom Asia x Thailand Game Show has announced that id Software co-founder John Romero will headline the business area conference of this year's event in Bangkok, with a keynote entitled "Why We Still Make Games" about "a lifetime of building games, overcoming setbacks and navigating decades of industry change." Read more

Why new EU deepfake legislation means games need to be careful when featuring real-world people and locations

The EU AI Act's deepfake transparency rules present an interesting challenge for game studios. The obligation is broader than the popular understanding of a deepfake, extending beyond fake videos of politicians, to a wide range of AI-generated and AI-manipulated content. This has prompted concern among many game studios that AI-generated assets may be prohibited – yet recent guidance suggests that several common uses of AI in games are unlikely to fall within its scope. The real complexity lies in the grey areas between fantasy and realism. Read more

After half a decade of job losses, there is no "business as usual" | Opinion

The past five years of writing about the games business has come with a helping of cognitive dissonance so severe that it often felt like whiplash. Record success one week; record layoffs the next. Studios launch critically and commercially acclaimed games, only to make large swathes of their creative teams redundant a few months later. Every even-numbered headline is about financial doom and gloom; every odd-numbered one is about soaring demand and record-breaking sales. Read more