It only took Brain Dots one month to become an international hit game

Lightning has struck twice for Tokyo-based mobile game developer Translimit. After its debut title BrainWars racked up 10 million downloads earlier this year, sophomore title Brain Dots has managed to pass the same milestone – in one month’s time. It took international hit BrainWars eight months to accomplish the same.

Brain Dots, released on July 6, is available for smartphones and tablets running iOS or Android. Like its predecessor, the game falls into the “brain training” genre, but with an added puzzle element and a focus on single-player level progression instead of head-to-head battles. Players are presented with two balls – one blue, one pink – and the goal is to get them to bump into each other. To achieve this, you must draw lines and shapes with your finger that trigger gravity-based events. For example, if the two balls are suspended in the middle of the screen, drawing a “U”-shape beneath them will cause them to fall and roll together.

Also like BrainWars, Brain Dots has succeeded in going truly global: non-Japanese users currently make up more than 96 percent of the total user base. The game’s top markets are South Korea with 11.4 percent of users, the US with 10.9 percent, and Russia with 9.1 percent.

Android makes up 65 percent of the app’s install base, while iOS accounts for the remaining 35 percent.

“Based on our experience with BrainWars, we focused on three things: simple rules, be nonverbal as much as possible, and localize even when there are just [a] few words,” Hiroki Takaba, Translimit’s CEO, tells Tech in Asia. “For all three points, Brain Dots is greater than BrainWars.”

Takaba says that Brain Dots was developed to have more mass appeal than the startup’s first title, but that he didn’t expect to reach 10 million downloads so quickly. It’s unclear how many of those are active users.

According to the startup, players currently spend an average of 30 minutes on the app each day. Including retries, users generate more than 100 million daily plays across all of the games 420 stages. An update, expected in the next few days, will add a time-attack mode where players can race to complete a certain number of levels. The update will also add more stages to the core single-player experience.

BrainWars has amassed 13 million total downloads since launching in May 2014. Takaba says it currently has 2 million monthly active users. While BrainWars hit the 10 million download milestone faster than domestic chart-toppers Puzzle & Dragons and Monster Strike, it’s dwarfed by the former’s 42-million-plus userbase (as of January) and the latter’s more than 30 million.

The startup plans to release another game before the end of the year, which Takaba says will be released on the Line messaging platform. He wouldn’t specify the genre, but adds that “it might not be a game for brain training.”

Translimit, founded in January 2014, has raised a total of US$2.9 million in funding from Genuine Startups, Skyland Ventures, East Ventures, UNITED Inc., and Line Ventures.