According to the latest industry reports, the most popular mobile games among Gen Z and Gen Alpha are adventure games, while older generations prefer puzzles.
Well, this is not true for Block Blast!
The game is No. 1 in downloads, with a total of 368 million downloads in 2025, and it’s especially popular among teenagers.
So we got curious.
What are the secrets of its popularity?
Block Blast Numbers
Block Blast is a puzzle game developed by the Chinese studio Hungry Games, and it was released in 2022.
While downloads began steadily after its release, 2024 was the year when it boomed, becoming the top game for downloads.
In 2025, the game reached another all-time high, with 368 million downloads. For the second year in a row, it became the most downloaded game of the year.
At the time of writing, the total number of downloads for Block Blast stands at 793 million since its release date.
Its revenue is impressive as well.
It’s estimated that Hungry Studio makes $584,000 per day, or $17.5 million per month.
That’s huge for a game that relies entirely on in-app advertising for its monetization strategy.
Block Blast Overview
Core Gameplay
Block Blast is a puzzle game inspired by Tetris, but with a different dynamic.
If in Tetris the blocks come one after the other, Block Blast gives you a set of three blocks at a time, and you need to place them on the board to clear space. You can’t progress until you’ve placed all three blocks, and the game ends when you don’t have any free space.
So while Tetris is based on speed, Block Blast prefers logic.
That’s it, the game is overall really simple, and you can also play offline. Moreover, you can choose to play in two different modalities.
Two Different Game Modalities
The first one is the Classical game, where your goal is to beat your highest score.
There is no time limit or levels; it’s just you and your new record.
The other modality is called Adventure.
In this type of gameplay, there are 96 levels to complete to discover a hidden picture. The picture updates each week, so ideally, you need to complete all 96 levels before it expires.
However, at the end of the challenge, there is no reward, and once completed, the Adventure starts again from level 1.
Bonus Game
While testing the game out, we discovered a third game modality!
If you open the Classical game and click on the Settings icon, you’ll find “More Games”.
Once you click there, another game opens.
In this modality, the pieces slide horizontally and fall down where there is an empty space. After every move, a new row is added from the bottom of the board.
The goal is to clear the space and prevent the blocks from reaching the top.
What is the Highest Score on Block Blast?
Many people look for the answer to this question, but the reality is that we don’t know!
Unlike other games that have added social elements, such as leaderboards with top scores, Block Blast is an individual game. Essentially, your opponent is your own best score.
However, if you’d like to compare your result with others, you can browse the “Highest Score” section in the game’s subreddit. You’ll find scores up to 10 million and higher!
Block Blast Design
The game has a simple and clean design, with few elements: the board, the three pieces at the bottom, and the highest score in the top left corner of the screen.
However, while playing, you are often prompted with messages or design elements that reinforce your choices.
For example, messages like “Unbelievable!” or “Perfect!”.
These elements, together with sound elements and buzzing of the phone, hook the player to the game and make it almost addictive.
Studies have shown that these kinds of features increase engagement because each prompt triggers the release of dopamine, which keeps us playing for longer.
In fact, Block Blast has surpassed 30 million DAU in 2025 and also shows higher retention rates over longer periods:
- D1: 26.7%
- D7: 13.4%
- D30: 7.1%*
*The data was gathered using the premium version of the AppMagic tool
Block Blast Monetization Strategy
Block Blast has no in-app purchases and relies entirely on advertising:
- Banners are shown constantly at the bottom of the screen while playing.
- Interstitials appear after each level in Adventure mode, or any time you lose the game in Classical mode.
- Rewarded ads give you the chance to retry a level or to keep playing when you lose.
Banners and interstitials appear from the very beginning, and so do rewarded ads.
It is unusual for a game like this not to have at least one kind of in-app purchase, for example, the “No ads” IAP. This kind of IAP could be a useful addition, since it’s also directly requested by players.
However, since the offline version of the game has no ads, we understand why the studio hasn’t implemented it.
While Block Blast’s ad strategy isn’t among the most aggressive, there are people on Google Play and the App Store who complain about the length of the interstitials.
We noticed this to be true, interstitial ads on Block Blast are longer than on other games, but on iOS they never interrupt the gameplay.
However, on Android, people complain that interstitials also run during a level.
Block Blast User Acquisition
Hungry Studio has invested a lot in UA campaigns for Block Blast.
And besides classical channels, the studio also experimented with non-traditional UA campaigns, such as CTV ads and Smartphone OEM partnerships.
TikTok Ads
As we said, Block Blast is very popular among teenagers, and on TikTok there are lots of videos that talk about it.
Hungry Games leverages these videos and uses them as ads, adding captions that highlight the benefits of the game. For example, the one above: “Get rid of your boredom and train your brain!”.
UGC content is one of the latest user acquisition trends, and it’s effective because it’s perceived as more authentic.
Meta Ads
On Meta, there are different kinds of ads:
- Ads relying on social proof, which highlight the rating of the game and its popularity.
- Ads showing the actual gameplay.
- Fake advertising that portrays Block Blast as Tetris (when the mechanics are different). This is an interesting choice because the studio chose to win users on the popularity of Tetris, even though the ads don’t represent the actual gameplay.
Overall, the UA strategy of Block Blast is rather diversified and always changing.
But what the game aims at is retention.
In an interview, the VP of Brand Marketing at Hungry Studio said that they always A/B test new features and dynamics to make the game more engaging to players and increase playtime.
Apparently, the game automatically predicts the player’s behavior and adjusts its difficulty to keep it just hard enough to be challenging, but not frustrating.
Final Thoughts on Block Blast
We understand now why Block Blast has achieved such a result.
While being extremely simple, the game has elements that make it almost addictive. And even though it completely lacks any social features (there are no best score rankings or prizes to win), it has become viral thanks to social media and word of mouth.
People are using the game as a stress reliever, and are challenging themselves in real life to achieve the highest score possible.
If you liked this game analysis, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter. We often analyze popular games, so make sure you don’t miss the next ones!
