GG’s 2025 Game of the Year: Pudgy Party

Pudgy Social gathering delivers a premium cell gaming expertise that the Pudgy Penguins workforce intends to make one of many franchise’s core pillars shifting ahead—and it’s GG’s 2025 Sport of the 12 months.

Legendary Video games, the studio behind Pudgy Social gathering and different crypto video games like NFL Rivals and FIFA Rivals, mentioned that Pudgy Social gathering has reached 1 million installs since its September launch, whereas sustaining a 4.9-star score on the Apple App Retailer.

In doing this, Pudgy Penguins CEO Luca Netz informed Decrypt that the sport has acted as an onboarding software for the favored crypto-native IP that began as an Ethereum NFT assortment. In reality, he even believes a latest enhance in toy gross sales may be attributed to the sport’s launch.

However these statistical and monetary wins solely floor if the sport is genuinely good—and it truly is. Pudgy Social gathering takes the favored informal battle royale idea from hit recreation Fall Guys, squishes it down right into a cell format, and evolves its gameplay components. This creates a well-known, but expanded gameplay expertise that’s good for informal cell gaming.

Because the cherry on prime, Pudgy Social gathering gracefully interacts with third-party IPs, together with the Italian Brainrot universe, as a method to each interact its core fanbase and produce new gamers into the ecosystem. And that is just the start—or so its creators declare.

“It’s introduced extra folks into the huddle, and it is created a product that extra of our followers can take pleasure in and share with their household,” Netz informed Decrypt. “[Once] we begin scaling, the aim is that Pudgy Social gathering lives and exists as one in all our core franchise merchandise that hopefully has 100 million plus downloads.”

The sport

Pudgy Social gathering is a free-to-play recreation during which as much as 20 gamers compete towards one another in mini-games, weave their approach by impediment programs, and race to the end line in every contemporary problem. Every spherical, gamers are eradicated till one Pudgy Penguin is left standing and topped the victor.

The place Pudgy Social gathering evolves on the tried-and-true Fall Guys idea is by giving characters distinctive skills that may be unlocked over time. Not solely does this give the title a much-needed feeling of development, nevertheless it additionally creates room for creativity and ability expression in an in any other case hyper-casual setting.

“We’ve stored the core loop intentionally approachable, however not shallow. The trick has been layering strategic depth with out scaring newcomers off,” John Linden, CEO of Legendary Video games, informed Decrypt. “The talents system has change into the stealth MVP right here—it provides veterans room to flex and experiment with out breaking the pick-up-and-play appeal that drew folks in.”

To maintain that steadiness between informal and aggressive, the sport launched skill-based matchmaking so each match feels winnable, but difficult sufficient to maintain you queuing up. Plus, Pudgy Social gathering retains the gameplay contemporary with common drops of latest costumes and maps.

Linden informed Decrypt that its “play with associates” characteristic has been a significant key to its success.

“It adjustments your complete emotional geometry of the sport—matches get louder, extra chaotic, and extra alive,” he mentioned. “It’s been one of many largest drivers of long-term retention, and actually, one of many clearest home windows into how gamers need to expertise Pudgy Social gathering: collectively, laughing, trash-talking, and chasing the following win as a squad.”

Partially, this characteristic has helped contribute to the sport’s virality, with Linden claiming that nearly 20% of its over 1 million installs have come instantly from buddy invitations.

Because of this, Netz believes the sport has had “the identical community impact” for model consciousness as the sooner launch of Pudgy Penguins toys in Walmart. The one distinction is that the toys price shoppers cash, whereas the sport doesn’t—in reality, it hopes to make it potential for gamers to receives a commission to play.

Concentrating on ‘infinite scale’

Beneath its hyper-casual floor, Pudgy Social gathering continues to be a crypto recreation. Gamers naturally unlock a wide range of wacky and enjoyable costumes just by enjoying the sport. These costumes will also be leveled up, once more just by enjoying the sport. A few of these characters can then be became NFTs as soon as they’ve hit degree 3, after which bought on the Legendary market.

One legendary Energy Pudgy NFT costume bought for $1,400 in September, whereas others go for a lot much less.

As of now, this a part of the sport is being tempered by the Pudgy Penguins workforce, out of worry that overpromotion of crypto components might scare informal gamers away.

“We do not need to pour gasoline on it from a advertising perspective. As a result of the world isn’t prepared for NFTs or crypto, and even blockchain en masse but,” Steve Starobinsky, head of partnerships at Pudgy Penguins, informed Decrypt. “However quickly, very, very quickly, we’re going to make use of Pudgy Social gathering because the glue between Web3 and Web2.”

Upon launch, Pudgy Social gathering had characters from the Italian Brainrot universe—one of many hottest meme developments of the 12 months. This was solely made potential, Starobinsky mentioned, due to Pudgy Penguins’ finger-on-the-pulse strategy to rising tradition, signing licensing offers with three entities that personal the Tung Tung Tung Sahur, Tim Cheese, and Ballerina Cappuccina IPs. He added that these offers have been penned roughly 5 months earlier than the sport rolled out, when the meme was nonetheless in its infancy.

The Pudgy workforce even helped set up the “first ever Italian Brainrot Broadway present,” with the NFT assortment’s mascot, Pengu, that includes within the play.

Going ahead, Starobinsky desires to proceed partnering with “very on-trend” and even “trend-setting” IPs whereas including legacy manufacturers into the combination. As such, he’s lining up a cope with the traditional slush model Icee, as a result of its synergy with the chilly really feel of Pudgy Penguins, to implement branded costumes into the sport.

That mentioned, Pudgy Social gathering’s makers aren’t going all-out on the costume collectibles entrance.

Netz informed Decrypt that the sport is engaged on enhancing retention, in addition to the lifetime worth of a person. As he mentioned, “the mathematics on the income stuff” doesn’t work but to scale the sport additional. He believes that is simply regular rising pains for a free-to-play title.

“I actually desire a world the place, for those who performed this recreation—and you really liked it, and also you spent your time on it—that you would really make a minimal wage,” Netz informed Decrypt.

This echoes the imaginative and prescient set out by play-to-earn titles of outdated. Axie Infinity was essentially the most impactful instance of this, attracting a significant participant base from the Philippines, the place some folks performed the sport to earn a residing in 2021 and early 2022. However the recreation’s crypto financial system crashed, gamers misplaced their livelihoods, and the minimal wage gamer dream was left in ruins.

Nonetheless, the Pudgy Penguins CEO thinks he can nonetheless make the dream a actuality.

“The explanation why that is by no means labored in crypto—or when it has labored, it is labored just for a few months—is as a result of issues had by no means reached infinite scale,” Netz defined. “However we’ve a plan that if and when this factor has 50 million, 100 million downloads, we’ve levers that we have mentioned and mapped out on learn how to pull and make one thing actually thrilling.”