Yet another team has copied an overseas game that "no one plays" and pushed it onto the bestseller charts

The beauty of the mini-game industry lies in the fact that just when everyone thinks the market has reached its peak and small and medium-sized teams can’t break through, there’s always a team that brings new surprises to the industry. Recently, *Buddhist-Style Match-3*, developed by Xiamen Xingshang Network, has gone viral on the Douyin mini-game platform, becoming a hot new release.

According to statistics from Gravity Engine, since first appearing on the charts in mid-February of this year, *Buddhist-Style Match-3* has steadily climbed the rankings, reaching the top 3 on Douyin’s Trending Games chart by early March. To date, the game has remained in the top 3 of Douyin’s Trending chart and the top 10 of its Top Grossing chart for over a week, injecting new vitality into the IAA mini-games market.

The gameplay is similar to Sudoku. Each level consists of an N x N grid with multiple colors, and each grid hides N calves. The player’s goal is to find all the calves within three attempts.

The placement of the calves follows these rules: there is exactly one calf of each color in the grid; there is exactly one calf in each row and each column; and no two calves can be adjacent. By applying these rules, players can gradually deduce the positions of all the calves.

In terms of core gameplay, this game is a simple logic-based puzzle game; however, as the number of grids increases and color combinations change, the game offers significant scope for increased difficulty. Nevertheless, since each level has a unique solution and the main story levels have no time limit, players with enough patience can potentially clear levels continuously without using any power-ups.

Therefore, in terms of monetization design, to fully tap into the game’s revenue potential, the developers have added numerous pop-up ad placements in addition to the in-game item shop ads—for example, a pop-up ad appears every time a level is successfully completed.Additionally, a strict stamina system has been implemented: players consume 15 stamina points each time they enter a new level. Once stamina is depleted, players who wish to continue must watch ads or share the game with friends to earn more stamina.

Ad placements in the game

From a player’s perspective, this high-density monetization design inevitably affects the game’s immersion and the flow of gameplay. Therefore, to balance player experience with monetization goals, the game has added two additional modes—Daily Challenges and Survival Mode—beyond the main storyline, allowing players to earn extra stamina through these modes.

In Survival Mode, players get two free attempts each day. Each attempt is time-limited; finding a cow extends the time, while making a mistake deducts more time. The game ends when the time runs out.

The Daily Challenge features a new level every day that everyone can tackle together. It’s also time-limited and more difficult, with each level typically requiring players to find 12 calves.

Daily Challenges and Survival Mode

In addition, the game recently added a "Friend Challenge" mode, allowing players to invite friends to join them for head-to-head battles. The Friend Challenge mode features two variants: Speed Run and Hell Mode. In Speed Run, the player who finds all the calves first wins, while in Hell Mode, the player who finds the most calves wins.

Thanks to its mind-bending gameplay, the game has already garnered over 470 million views on Douyin, with a flood of viral videos racking up over 10,000 likes each, easily igniting a surge in popularity. Now, with the launch of the "Challenge a Friend" feature, which unlocks social sharing channels, we believe it will drive even more growth for the game.

However, if we trace its origins, the game’s mechanics aren’t entirely original; it was inspired by *Bullpen*, a game released in February 2025 by Australian indie developer David Williams. Unlike *Buddhist-Style Match-3*, *Bullpen* builds upon its simple core mechanics by introducing a hard mode where each row and column contains two cows, and each color has two cows.

However, this prototype game did not perform particularly well; unlike *Buddhist-Style Match-3*, which topped the "Most Played" chart for several consecutive weeks, the original game didn’t even make it onto the list. According to DianDian Data, *Bullpen* has garnered only slightly over 400,000 downloads in the more than one year since its launch.

Domestic developers not only identified this highly promising gameplay concept but also transformed it into a lightweight, highly shareable, and user-retentive mass-market product tailored to the TikTok ecosystem through adjustments to visual colors, optimizations to motion effects, and localized gameplay packaging. Combined with a mature monetization system and social virality design, this ultimately enabled the game to make the leap from a “niche prototype” to a “viral hit.”

According to information from Tianyancha, the game’s publisher, Xiamen Xingshang Network, was founded in April 2025. It is a small startup team that had not released any popular products prior to this. This serves as further proof that even this year, small and medium-sized teams still have the opportunity to break through with sharp insight and efficient execution.