December 2025 Top Mobile Games by Downloads & Revenue

Insightrackr has released the December 2025 Global Mobile Game Rankings for Downloads and Revenue, based on its comprehensive monitoring of the worldwide mobile market.

These rankings are derived from Insightrackr's proprietary estimates of app download volume and gross revenue, listing the Top 15 Mobile Games by Downloads and the Top 15 Mobile Games by Revenue. This report further deconstructs the user acquisition and ad creative strategies of selected standout apps from the past month.

This Month's Case Studies: Arrows – Puzzle Escape, Where Winds Meet, Paper.io 2

Top 15 Mobile Games by Downloads

From the December 2025 download rankings, the overall top-tier landscape remains stable. The Top 3 titles maintain their positions from the previous period, with Block Blast!, Roblox, and Pizza Ready! continuing to rank among the top three by downloads, each achieving modest MoM growth.

Within the No. 4–10 range, several titles experienced notable ranking shifts. The long-standing board game Ludo King saw downloads increase by approximately 16.8% MoM, climbing five positions to secure No. 4 this period.

Solitaire Associations Journey, a hybrid “Solitaire + Word Puzzle” title that we highlighted in our September rankings, recorded nearly 17% MoM download growth in December, placing it at No. 7.

Paper.io 2, published by French studio Voodoo, introduced a new winter-themed icon and achieved approximately 18% MoM download growth in December.

Even more striking was the explosive growth observed at the lower end of the rankings. Arrows – Puzzle Escape, a puzzle title released by German studio Lessmore under Miniclip, saw downloads surge by 130% MoM in December. The game jumped 80 positions in the rankings, breaking directly into No. 11.

With an icon composed solely of black-and-white arrows and an extremely restrained visual style, how this title rapidly captured global player attention has become one of the most compelling phenomena to dissect in this month’s rankings.

Top 15 Global Mobile Games by Revenue

On the revenue side, stability among top-performing titles became even more pronounced. Within the Top 9, only Pokémon TCG Pocket and Garena RoV swapped positions; all other rankings remained unchanged from the previous period. This underscores the strong monetization resilience of mature products.

In the latter half of the rankings, the classic puzzle title Sudoku stood out. Its estimated December revenue increased by 187% MoM, climbing 25 positions to reach No. 12, demonstrating that traditional puzzle genres still hold meaningful monetization potential during holiday periods.

Top Mobile Game UA Strategy Analysis

01 Arrows – Puzzle Escape

Arrows was launched by Lessmore in August 2025 and has steadily remained within the Top 20 of the U.S. App Store free games chart since December, peaking at Top 3.

In terms of gameplay, Arrows is built around a single core mechanic: moving arrows. Players must identify arrows that can slide in a straight line along their pointing direction without being blocked by others, clearing all arrows or fulfilling specific level objectives.

This design combines extremely simple rules with high reasoning density, achieving a balance between low learning friction and sufficient challenge.

From an advertising intensity perspective, Insightrackr data shows a steady rise in Arrows’ daily active ad creatives, increasing from approximately 400 creatives per day in mid-November to 700+ per day by the end of December. This reflects a gradual scaling of UA spend following initial product validation.

At the media channel level (excluding ad library data), Arrows primarily acquired traffic through programmatic platforms such as AppLovin (52.66%), AdMob (31.72%), and Mintegral (11.96%). Sub-channels were largely focused on casual games, aligning with typical acquisition paths for puzzle titles.

Regionally, the United States, Japan, and Mexico received the highest volume of ad creatives. However, even the U.S.—the top region—accounted for only 4.99% of total creatives, indicating a highly diversified and globally balanced distribution strategy.

Insightrackr estimates that Arrows surpassed 10 million downloads in December, with the United States (15.38%), India (13.42%), and Mexico (5.19%) as the top download markets.

On the revenue side, the United States contributed 52.39% of total revenue, followed by Japan (5.58%) and Canada (4.29%).

From a creative execution standpoint, Arrows adopts the common casual strategy of combining video ads + playable ads. Video creatives quickly communicate gameplay logic, while playable ads offer an authentic hands-on experience.

Notably, the video creatives visually replicate the game’s minimalist style almost entirely, featuring little more than arrows and guiding gestures. In playable ads, users can experience up to nine full levels consecutively, rather than being redirected to a download CTA after a single interaction—significantly increasing engagement depth and audience filtering efficiency.

02 Where Winds Meet

Over the past two months, NetEase has consecutively rolled out two martial arts MMORPG titles to the global market.

First, Sword of Justice launched on November 7, 2025, across 129 countries and regions. Shortly after, Where Winds Meet debuted on Steam, PlayStation, and Epic on November 15, followed by its official mobile release on December 12 across multiple global markets.

In terms of advertising cadence, Insightrackr data indicates that Where Winds Meet began limited advertising activity in late November, with fewer than 50 daily active ad creatives during the initial phase.

One day before the mobile launch, ad creative volume surged sharply, peaking at over 600 creatives per day, before stabilizing at around 200 per day. This reflects a classic launch-driven burst strategy centered around key release milestones.

In channel selection (excluding ad library data), Where Winds Meet primarily acquired users through platforms such as AdMob, Mintegral, and Moloco.

From a regional targeting perspective, while the United States ranked second with an 8.05% share, ad creatives were clearly skewed toward Southeast Asia as well as Japan and South Korea—markets with generally higher acceptance of martial arts themes and Eastern fantasy worldviews.

In terms of results, the top three download sources were the United States (16.59%), Thailand (9.15%), and the Philippines (6.59%). Revenue was primarily driven by the United States (23.33%), followed by South Korea (8.89%) and Thailand (8.17%).

Creatively, Where Winds Meet centers on real in-game footage, emphasizing high-end visual quality, character modeling, combat animations, and the freedom of interaction within its open world.

At the same time, the title makes extensive use of influencer-driven video content, featuring streamers’ gameplay sessions, character customization showcases, combat demonstrations, and exaggerated reaction clips. These elements amplify emotional impact and enhance overall content appeal.

03 Paper.io 2

Paper.io 2 is a hyper-casual title launched by French publisher Voodoo in 2018. Despite more than seven years of live operation, it remains a frequent presence on free app store charts across regions. Data shows that during the Christmas holiday period, it once entered the Top 20 of the U.S. App Store free games ranking.

In terms of advertising intensity, Insightrackr data indicates that Paper.io 2 maintained a stable level of approximately 450 daily active ad creatives throughout December, with minimal fluctuation—reflecting the highly consistent media pacing typical of mature products.

From a channel perspective (excluding ad library data), December traffic primarily came from Unity, Mintegral, and AdMob, with sub-channels still largely centered on casual games.

In regional strategy, Paper.io 2 adopts a broad global distribution approach characteristic of the maturity phase. The top three target regions by ad creative volume were Mexico (5.41%), the Philippines (4.85%), and Brazil (4.28%).

From an outcome standpoint, downloads were primarily driven by emerging markets, with India contributing 17.73% of total downloads, followed by Brazil (9.03%) and the United States (8.71%).

In contrast, revenue was highly concentrated in mature markets. The United States accounted for 42.62% of total revenue, making it the dominant contributor, followed by the United Kingdom (7.08%) and Russia (4.87%). This structure aligns closely with the typical monetization profile of hyper-casual titles in the mature stage.

On the creative side, as a hyper-casual game with over seven years of operation, Paper.io 2 no longer relies on ad creatives to simply explain gameplay. Instead, in-game video creatives primarily serve to quickly trigger player recall and reduce decision-making friction.

Building on this foundation, Voodoo has introduced short narrative skits and cute pet elements, leveraging storytelling formats native to short-video platforms to establish emotional resonance before naturally embedding the game itself.

These creatives de-emphasize rule explanations in favor of amplifying a relaxed, humorous, and stress-relieving atmosphere—making them particularly effective for capturing attention and driving conversion within high-density information feeds.

This concludes the analysis of December 2025 global Mobile Game downloads, revenue, and advertising activities.

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