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Matej Lančarič

UA Mobile Growth Extraordinaire ·

Helping you stay 2.5 steps ahead of the games industry. Don't be too serious, except about UA.
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As the UA landscape evolves, so do the creative trends that shape how games communicate with their audiences. With the rise of Applovin and increased spend on SDK networks, I’ve decided to bring you a monthly trends review of top-performing playable ads across different genres.

For those that read only summaries, here are playable trends June in a nutshell:

XP Hero – Township-style playable for an action RPG
- XP Hero is a pretty straightforward action RPG, yet the team went with a Township-style playable that has almost nothing to do with the core combat fantasy.
Fish Eater.io – Evolution of eating
- Fish Eater.io’s playable is basically a fully scripted evolution funnel – and I mean that in a good way. You start in pure “almost eaten” panic, and no matter what you do, you keep evolving upwards until the ad hands you off to the promise of fighting the big boss in the real game.
Meowdoku – turning the in‑game tutorial into a playable
- This Meowdoku creative is a nice blueprint for “tutorial-as-playable”: roughly half of the ad is a guided lesson, and the rest is you finishing the puzzle on your own so you feel ready to play the real game.

XP Hero – Township-style playable for an action RPG

XP Hero is a pretty straightforward action RPG, yet the team went with a Township-style playable that has almost nothing to do with the core combat fantasy. Instead of mowing down hordes, the ad drops you into a cozy fish‑farm loop: you move a worker around tiles, step on a pad, fish pour into a net, and you convert that into coins, upgrades and more troops. It’s the same basic structure we’ve seen in Township playables for years, but transplanted into a completely different genre.

The interesting part here is how little they try to innovate on the template itself — and how much they rely on execution details. The main interaction is as standard as it gets: character walks to a tile, something in the environment starts producing, your counters in the HUD go up, and new structures or units unlock with a couple of steps. There’s no tutorial text, no arrows screaming at you; the layout and familiar Township pattern do all the onboarding heavy lifting, which makes this playable very UA-friendly and easy to iterate.

What actually caught my attention, though, was a micro‑moment: instead of the fish catching feeling like a background automation, the hero literally jumps on the blue button to trigger the net. That tiny animation gives the loop more physicality — you feel like you’re actively “stomping” production into life rather than just standing in the right zone. It also creates a clear cause‑and‑effect chain in a single screen: move to pad → jump → fish fly → coins stack up → troops appear. In a world where half the Township clones blur together, that one extra bit of character motion is enough to make this version memorable.

From a trends perspective, XP Hero is a good example of where playables are in 2026: design teams are comfortable reusing a proven template even when it doesn’t match the core gameplay, but they’re getting smarter about adding small signature touches. You could easily imagine the same layout being used to test different resources (wood, ore, XP orbs) or different “stomp” interactions while keeping the rest of the creative pipeline intact. For UA teams, the takeaway isn’t “Township playables are back”; it’s that you can still get mileage out of these old templates if you invest in one or two unique details that give your version a recognizable personality.

Fish Eater.io – From almost getting eaten to power fantasy

Fish Eater.io’s playable is basically a fully scripted evolution funnel – and I mean that in a good way. You start in pure “almost eaten” panic, and no matter what you do, you keep evolving upwards until the ad hands you off to the promise of fighting the big boss in the real game.frame_004.jpg+2play.google

From almost getting eaten to power fantasy

The hook is very clear: first shot, you’re a tiny fish about to be swallowed by a gigantic sea monster, surrounded by teeth and enormous damage numbers. It immediately sets the stakes (“you’re food”) and frames the rest of the playable as a revenge arc, which fits the core loop of the game where you start small and fight your way up the food chain. Once that fear moment lands, the ad shifts you into a safer, more controlled environment where you drag a small fish around dense swarms of even smaller fish, quickly ramping up your size and damage with every bite.

What I really like is how they use that progression to keep you emotionally on the rails, even though the whole sequence is basically pre-baked. The path is scripted, and it looks like you can’t actually lose – whatever direction you move, the ad has placed enough “correct” fish in your way to guarantee you fill the bar and evolve. But because the camera keeps zooming, the schools of enemies get denser, and the damage numbers explode, it still feels like you’re earning each transformation yourself. By the time you hit the final form and see those huge predators and the mega-boss waiting in the background, the ad has done a neat job of selling the fantasy: this short, fail-safe evolution ride is just a teaser, and if you want the real fight with the big boss, you’ll have to install and play the full game.

Fish Eater.io’s playable is almost a spin‑off experience: visually and gameplay‑wise it feels different from the actual game, but it leans into two narratives at the same time. The playable itself is a heavily scripted “mini drama” about almost being eaten by a gigantic sea monster, framed with cinematic camera angles, exaggerated damage numbers and thick walls of enemy fish that you’d never really see like this in regular gameplay. The core game is a more open, session‑based .io experience where you swim around, eat smaller fish, dodge bigger ones and gradually evolve over multiple runs, but the ad compresses that fantasy into one short, fail‑proof evolution ride.

What’s clever is how they use those two narratives in parallel. The first narrative is pure attention capture: the almost‑death hook shot, the claustrophobic screen full of predators and the huge boss waiting in the background – all designed to stop your scroll and make you drag that tiny fish just to see what happens. Layered on top of that is a second, more honest narrative: “eat to grow”. Even though the ad’s path is scripted and you basically can’t lose, your interaction (dragging through smaller fish, watching the evolution steps, seeing your damage jump) clearly communicates the core promise of the game: start weak, keep eating, become the apex predator. So while the playable doesn’t mirror the real gameplay 1:1, it still does a good job of using a flashy, self‑contained scenario to sell the underlying loop you’ll be playing after install.

Meowdoku – turning the tutorial into a playable

The playable basically lifts the early in‑game tutorial and drops it straight into the ad. It starts with a nearly empty grid, a single cat, and clear rules at the top (“one cat per color”, “one per row and column”, “cats cannot be adjacent”), then walks you through each rule with tooltips and a hand cursor: double‑tap to place a cat, tap cells around a cat to exclude them, tap in the same row or column to mark impossibles. About 50% of the runtime is this guided phase – you’re not really “solving” yet, you’re learning the three constraints that define the whole game.

Once those basics are in, the tutorial quietly fades into a proper mini‑level. Hints turn off, the grid opens up, and you’re left to find the remaining cats yourself, following the same rules you just practiced. That last chunk of the playable feels like a real Meowdoku board: you make a few deductions, drop the final cat, and get rewarded with a “Level clear!” screen, confetti, and a dancing cat – almost identical to the actual game’s win state. By the time the “Play Now” button appears, you’ve already internalized the rules and completed a level, so the install CTA lands more like “continue where you left off” than “start from zero”.

Why this tutorial‑as‑playable approach works

What this creative shows really well is that you don’t have to choose between pure gameplay and heavy onboarding – you can literally use your existing tutorial as the first half of the playable and let players finish a trimmed‑down level as the second half. The tutorial half does the educational work: it removes friction, teaches the core constraints, and makes a fairly abstract logic puzzle feel approachable even for people who have never touched Sudoku or Minesweeper. The “you finish” half then flips the framing from “watch and follow instructions” to “you are already solving Meowdoku”, which is exactly the mindset you want them in when they tap install.

For anyone thinking about stealing this pattern, Meowdoku is a good reminder to keep the ratio balanced. If the whole playable is tutorial, it feels like homework; if it’s all freeform gameplay, new players might bounce before they understand what’s going on. Here they land in a sweet spot: about 50% guided steps to build confidence, 50% autonomous play to deliver a complete “I got this” moment – plus a win screen that matches the real game almost 1:1. It’s a simple structure, but a very clean answer to the question “how do we turn our tutorial into a high‑performing playable without building a fake mini‑game on top?”

Data from PlayableMaker – what is being created?

Our friends at PlayableMaker have shared their latest data and insights for June 2026, revealing trends in templates, game mechanics and ad network usage. Here’s a quick summary:

Did you know that you can now vibecode your playables? Here are some examples we liked last week: