Gemrush: 41,200 installs in 90 days from ads Otto made out of three screen recordings

Gemrush is a fast match-3 puzzle game built for the commute: clear a level in under two minutes, open a free daily chest, climb the weekly league. The team had a game players loved once they tried it, and no one to make the short-form video that gets people to try it.

  • 41,200 installs from Otto ads in 90 days
  • 3.1M organic views on TikTok + Reels
  • 2,140 new paying players

The challenge

Mobile games live or die on short-form video, and match-3 is one of the most crowded categories on TikTok. Gemrush had gameplay footage but no creator, no editor and no time to script, film and cut a new ad every few days. Hiring UGC creators typically runs $100-$300 per video with days of turnaround, too slow and expensive to find out which angle actually works.

The solution

Gemrush uploaded three raw screen recordings (a color-bomb combo, a full level, the daily chest and league screen) and wrote two sentences about the game and its players. Otto did the rest: it wrote beat-structured scripts, had a preset AI creator perform them on camera from several angles, cut the real gameplay into quick split-screen shots, and added captions, music and SFX.

How Otto approached it

  • Three formats tested side by side: a POV problem hook ("you said one more level"), a creator split-screen and a 30-second speedrun challenge.
  • Every ad shows the real game, not stock footage or AI-generated screens, so what players see in the ad is what they get in the app.
  • Each script ends on a single action ("Download now, play one level") and points to the hooks the game is built around: two-minute levels, the free daily chest and the weekly league.
  • Ads go into a review queue; the team approves, rejects or regenerates with a note, and approved ads are scheduled into open posting slots automatically.
We'd tried posting gameplay ourselves and gave up after two weeks. Otto had three ads in our queue the same afternoon, and the speedrun one became our best install source that month. — Daniel Okafor, Founder & CEO

The results

  • 41,200 installs attributed to Otto-made ads in the first 90 days, tracked through TikTok and Instagram link-in-bio attribution.
  • 3.1M organic views across 64 posted ads, with the speedrun format averaging 2.4x the views of the others.
  • 2,140 players made an in-app purchase, at a 5.2% install-to-paying rate.
  • Day-7 retention for Otto-acquired players was 31%, above the 24% for players from paid UA.
  • Three finished, captioned 9:16 ads from a single upload, each 16-19 seconds and ready for TikTok and Instagram Reels.
  • Three distinct hooks to test against each other instead of one ad and a guess.
  • Every video rendered in under 5 minutes, at 4,300 credits ($4.30) per ad.

The ads Otto made for Gemrush

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