Puzzle & Dragons, developed by Tokyo-based GungHo, continues to do well. The title is the first mega-hit in the Japanese social game market (on smartphones) that’s not using the Mobage, GREE, or Mixi networks.
Puzzle & Dragons was released in the Japanese App Store on February 20 this year and started up racking downloads rapidly: the 500,000 mark was reached in April, after just 53 days.
In the same month, GungHo released an iPad-friendly version of the game, which is essentially a clever mix between RPG (a dungeon crawler, really) and Bejeweled. Needless to say, it’s a freemium title.
And today, after 146 days, Puzzle & Dragons hit 1 million downloads: on iOS and in the Japanese App Store only (an Android version is in the works, however).
The interesting bullet point here, apart from this very solid number and the platform-free distribution, is that the game has been the top grossing app on both the iPad and iPhone rankings (almost) all the way through (it’s on No. 1 in both rankings in Japan right now, too).
To celebrate the occasion, GungHo will organize a whole set of special in-game campaigns and events, mostly related to gacha, over the next few days.
The game can be downloaded here (again, Japanese iTunes only).
Trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4AdHFqVs58