Chart watch, May: Arrows Puzzle Escape tops downloads and 84% of installs are ad-supported

May's biggest download-chart move was a genuine changeover rather than a reshuffle. Arrows Puzzle Escape overtook Block Blast! for top global downloads, according to data reported by Sensor Tower in early June covering the month. Block Blast! had held the download lead through the early part of the year, so a puzzle title displacing another puzzle title at the top is less a genre shift than a reminder that the format's audience will move to whichever mechanic feels freshest.

Revenue tells a different story

Revenue told a different story. Honor of Kings led the month on the back of a Ne Zha 2 crossover, a reminder that live-service content drops still move more revenue than any UA campaign on their own for an established title. Crossovers work because they reactivate lapsed players and pull incremental spend from an existing base rather than competing purely on new-user acquisition, which is a different job than most UA budgets are built to do.

What the ad-supported install share means

The number that should matter most to buyers is the one describing the whole market rather than a single title: ad-supported titles accounted for 84.1% of downloads in May. That is a high enough share to say plainly that the free, ad-monetised end of the market is still where most installs are happening, even as the industry's stated strategic direction, per Sensor Tower's earlier State of Mobile and State of Gaming reports, is toward lifetime value and away from raw volume. Those two facts are not in conflict. A studio can chase LTV per user while still operating in a download market dominated by ad-supported titles, but it does mean CPI benchmarks for ad-supported and IAP-first titles should not be read against each other without adjusting for that split.

For a puzzle team watching Arrows Puzzle Escape's rise, the practical takeaway is to treat mechanic novelty as a real UA variable, not just a product one. A new twist on a familiar format is still winning the download race in a genre most people assumed was fully mapped.

Related archive reading

• Chart Watch, March: Survival Titles Hold the Spend Line
• Chart watch, March