Helsinki-based Gajatri Studios has now gotten their title, Yoga Retreat, out globally on iOS, meaning that anyone with an iPhone or iPad can start up their own yoga retreat in a free-to-play game. Most free-to-play games we cover outside the puzzle genre seem to lean towards the male demographic, which is the opening Gajatri Studios co-founder Tiina Zillacus saw when creating Yoga Retreat.
“Once I started to look around what mobile apps and games are available, I found the female games audience to be poorly understood and under catered with topics women are really interested in,” says Zilliacus. “Women account for majority of consumer purchase decisions and total online spending. Based on our soft launch player data in Canada, Netherlands and Finland, I expect Yoga Retreat to be highly profitable after its worldwide launch. Besides, the female audience deserves fun high-quality games that are made from the heart! That’s our passion.”
In the game, players manage a brightly colored tropical yoga retreat where players can open new services, like paddleboard yoga and smoothie bars, while also managing the flow of yoga poses taught at their retreat. The background music is calming and ambient, which is a little different from Clash of Clans.
Yoga retreat was first released back in 2012 on Facebook during the tail end of the Farmville hype, which was presumably where female players were. In a followup article in June of 2013 the Facebook game was seeing 50,000 monthly users, but it appears today Yoga Retreat on Facebook has 9,500+ monthly players. The Facebook game page gives a strong push towards iOS, so many of those users may have been pushed towards their iOS app.
The users on the iOS app seem to be active, according to their test users. “Over 20 % of the game’s daily active users complete at least five animated yoga instruction videos per day”, Founder and CEO Tiina Zilliacus reveals. “Our goal is to be the healthy choice for mobile gamers worldwide. This product will evolve both as fun simulation game and as a casual health experience inside of games mechanic”.
A look into Yoga Retreat can be found in the trailer below, and the game can be downloaded for free here.
–
