two & a half gamers – Acecraft review: Retro Cartoons + Hardcore Gacha. Collectible Albums just hit Midcore!

Summary

We dive into AceCraft, Moonton’s new Tom & Jerry–themed midcore gacha shooter that mixes Cuphead-style 1930s cartoon art with Habi-inspired systems and miHoYo-style monetization depth.

Key insights:

Gameplay & Core Loop: Vertical shoot-’em-up with roguelite progression. One-button dodge/absorb mechanic lets players “vacuum” enemy bullets and counterattack, adding innovation to a familiar loop.

Systems & Meta: Built on the Habi gacha template but expanded with:

Gacha depth: Dual banners (Tom & Jerry separately) with pity timers, skewed rates, and duplicate scaling.

Weapons-as-gacha: Each major character has a signature weapon requiring rolls.

Collectible album (Royal Match / Monopoly Go style) with trade functionality, now ported into midcore — a first.

Co-op synchronous mode (rare in this space) with revive mechanics.

Three-layer skill trees, elemental affinities, wingman companions.

Monetization:

~$330K/day IAP revenue post-launch (peaking with Tom/Jerry banner).

Minimal ads (~10–15%), mostly revival videos.

Battle Pass upsell trick: Free track animations make it look like you’re getting paid rewards, nudging purchases.

Webshop presence: Linked via dev page, offering 5% bonus, but hidden in-game. Powered by TopOn mediation (Mobvista) instead of MAX/AdMob.

Market & UA:

Downloads ~300K/day at launch, half from China.

Scaling across 17+ networks: TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, Unity, AppLovin, IronSource, Mintegral, etc.

UA creatives lean on retro cartoon surrealism, dancing ads, Tom & Jerry music, plus street interview trend (borrowed from Raid Rush).

Prediction:

Strong in China/Asia due to IP and difficulty.

Likely to fade in Western markets (art style too niche, monetization too punishing).

Moonton may line up other WB/Looney Tunes IPs (Sylvester, Tweety, Popeye, Roadrunner) for similar launches.

Takeaway: AceCraft is one of the deepest midcore gacha launches in 2025 — but built for Asia, not the West.

Get our MERCH NOW: 25gamers.com/shop
————————————–
PVX Partners offers non-dilutive funding for game developers.
Go to: https://pvxpartners.com/
They can help you access the most effective form of growth capital once you have the metrics to back it.
Scale fast
Keep your shares
Drawdown only as needed
Have PvX take downside risk alongside you
Work with a team entirely made up of ex-gaming operators and investors
—————————————
For an ever-growing number of game developers, this means that now is the perfect time to invest in monetizing direct-to-consumer at scale.
Our sponsor FastSpring:
Has delivered D2C at scale for over 20 years
They power top mobile publishers around the world
Launch a new webstore, replace an existing D2C vendor, or add a redundant D2C vendor at fastspring.gg.
—————————————
This is no BS gaming podcast 2.5 gamers session. Sharing actionable insights, dropping knowledge from our day-to-day User Acquisition, Game Design, and Ad monetization jobs. We are definitely not discussing the latest industry news, but having so much fun! Let’s not forget this is a 4 a.m. conference discussion vibe, so let’s not take it too seriously.
Panelists: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jakub Remia⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠r,⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Felix Braberg, Matej Lancaric⁠