September's New Face in Korea's Mobile Game Top 10 Is a Number-Tile Board Game

Roblox Added 420,000 Users in a Month

Mobileindex GAME ranked mobile games by combining Android and iPhone users over the month of September. First was Roblox with 3.23 million, second Block Blast with 2.23 million, third Pokemon GO with 1.70 million, fourth Brawl Stars with 1.47 million and fifth Royal Match with 1.20 million. Those five sit in exactly the same order as in August.

The order held, but the numbers moved. Roblox went from 2.81 million in August to 3.23 million, and Block Blast from 2.02 million to 2.23 million. Brawl Stars fell from 1.54 million to 1.47 million, but the gap to fifth place was wide enough that it kept its spot.

Sixth to Tenth Got Reshuffled

Lower down, things were different. The game that was eighth in August grew from 870,000 to 900,000 users and climbed to sixth, while Teamfight Tactics stayed at 890,000 and held on to seventh.

Minecraft, sixth in August, dropped from 990,000 to 750,000 and landed in ninth. That is 240,000 fewer users in a single month. The CookieRun raising game that came in at tenth in August fell 18 places in the September top 50 and dropped out of the top ten.

Rummikub Is Really a Tabletop Game

Tenth-placed Rummikub is the one the report singles out as a board game. It is played by two to four people sitting around real tiles. The numbers 1 to 13 come in four colours, two of each, and with two jokers added there are 106 tiles in all.

Each player gets 14. You lay them down either as three or more tiles of the same number in different colours, or as three or more consecutive numbers in the same colour. Whoever gets rid of every tile in hand first wins.

The part that makes you think hardest is not your hand but the table. Sets already on the table can be pulled apart and rebuilt. Split and rejoin someone else's run just to fit one of your tiles in, and a single turn turns into a whole puzzle.

Two New Names in the Top 50

Widen the view to the top 50 and two games are new, at 22nd and 30th. Among the big climbers, Trickcal Revive rose 26 places to 44th.

If you want a feel for lining things up on a board, start with DoYouBox's Gomoku or Connect Four. In both you can play DoYou or a friend. If number puzzles are more your thing, there is Number Baseball, where you work out a hidden code from strike and ball hints alone.