Hopeless: The Dark Cave
54
Quality Score
Solid
Hopeless: The Dark Cave
High confidence
✍️ bumetric analysis
“
Hopeless: The Dark Cave is an Android app from Upopa Games in the Action category, currently rated 2.2★ across 278,004 ratings. Initial signal reads as mixed reviews: supporters praise core features while critics cite stability and value gaps.
Quality Score is 54: Solid (established niche player). For a Action app, that means established niche player. The full BU Investment Matrix below scores 8 dimensions including monetisation, growth, and operational risk.
Track changes month-over-month in the Performance section below: live snapshot history and revenue forecast included.
💰 Monthly revenue · now vs forecast
● Right now
$700K
per month
→
12-mo forecast
$741K – $1141K
per month
→
24-mo forecast
$886K – $1645K
per month
BIG tier
💡 Grow this revenue
Free AI audit of this app’s store listing
- Title & subtitle keyword fit
- Description hook & conversion structure
- Screenshots, ratings, reviews strategy
Typical impact: +2-5× organic installs
📊 Performance Tracking LIVE
Loading…
Rating
—
Reviews
—
Forecast Revenue / mo
—
Snapshots tracked
0
since first record
ONE-TIME · BUILD
💰 Estimated build cost
$205K
↳ What it cost to build · not monthly revenue
Likely range $155K – $275K
$25K · MVP floor
$100K · indie scale
$500K+ · studio build
📈
Slow ROI — current MRR is well below build cost
Synthetic estimate. Inputs: category complexity, file size, screen count, monetization layer, platform reach, age × team-size proxy. Calibrated against 2024-2026 indie-agency rate surveys. Full math + source list on /methodology.
Where the money goes
| 🧱 MVP baseline (design + 1-store ship) | +$28K |
| 📱 5 unique screens × $4.5K | +$22K |
| 💎 In-app purchase plumbing | +$9K |
| ⚙ Action complexity ×2.20 | +$71K |
| 🌐 Cross-platform reach (iOS + Android) | +$71K |
Total estimate
$205K
ONE-TIME · EXIT VALUE
💵 Estimated acquisition value
$50K
↳ What it would sell for · not monthly revenue
Marketplace range $40K – $75K · 20× MRR multiple
💸
~0.2× build cost (under-water)
Synthetic estimate. Multiple band derived from iap / freemium model + age, rating quality, category demand, and user-base maturity. Calibrated against 2024-2026 indie-app-marketplace closed-deal medians. Full math + comparable deal list on /methodology.
How the multiple was built
| 💎 IAP / freemium model base | 28× MRR |
| ⭐ ★ rating < 3.5 (weak) | -18% |
| 🏷 Action category multiple | -15% |
| ⭐ Mature user base (100K+ ratings) | +5% |
Final multiple
20× MRR
👥 Estimated audience size
41.5M
Lifetime downloads (US-equivalent)
Monthly active
4.2M
Daily active
1.4M
Synthetic estimate from ratings × category benchmarks. Calibrated against 2024-2026 mobile-attribution retention + DAU/MAU reports. Numbers are US-storefront-equivalent — true global audience can be 5-10× larger for international apps. Full math + source list on /methodology.
How we sized it
| 📲 Action engagement | ~150 installs / rating |
| 🔁 Action D30 retention | 10% |
| 📍 DAU / MAU stickiness | 0.35 |
DAU / MAU
35% sticky
🛠 Estimated tech stack
🤖
Native Android (Kotlin)
Medium confidence · 55%
Also possible
Flutter
Heuristic guess from app bundle size, category, store description signals, and release-date stack era. Bumetric does not disassemble binaries — for binary-level certainty you would need an SDK intelligence tool or the manifest itself. Reasoning chain on the right. Full ruleset on /methodology.
Signals we read
| 🏷 Category context | Action |
| 📦 Tiny game bundle | → Native 2D engine |
🔬
How we forecast this revenue
MEDIUM CONFIDENCEBaseline
$700K/mo · ML-estimated from 234 triggers
Growth rate
+2.5% MoM · BIG tier baseline (compound monthly)
6 months
$690K – $933K
12 months
$741K – $1.1M
24 months
$886K – $1.6M
Compound growth at +2.5% MoM (tier baseline for BIG). Range widens with horizon — typical noise band ±15% at 6mo.. Ranges widen with horizon — distant futures carry more uncertainty.
📊
BU Investment Matrix
Concerning · 53/100BIG TIERbelow benchmarksGrowth Velocity
5.0
Founder Strength
5.6
Product Quality
4.4
Revenue Strength
5.8
Monetization Maturity
5.0
Defensibility
8.5
Market Position
0.0
Operational Safety
8.0
- 💰 Revenue: Healthy — $280K - $1540K/mo · BIG tier · medium-low confidence, trajectory unclear.
- ⭐ Quality: 2.19★ across 278,004 reviews — weak — significant quality concerns.
- 📍 Market: Not yet charting in any of the 9 monitored markets.
- 📈 Growth: Insufficient signal to assess trajectory.
- ⚠️ Risk: Moderate — no material risk signals detected.
🎯 For competitors: Mixed picture. Worth competing if you have a clear UX or pricing edge — otherwise crowded segment.
💵 For acquirers: Estimated asking range 18-32× monthly = $12.6M-$22.4M.
Composite of 8 dimensions computed deterministically from public signals — no LLM, every score traces back to a measurable input. Default weights shown; "compete" / "acquire" / "invest" lenses re-weight without re-fetching.
Range:
💰 Forecast Revenue / mo
MODELRevenue forecast computed from BU's 234 trigger model on each snapshot. Calibrated against ground-truth from 58 verified-revenue apps.
🔬Forecast Breakdown — Why This Estimate?Top 4 of 4 triggers
Our ML model uses 200+ signals from public data. These are the most influential for this app:
| High install base (278,004 ratings)METRIC | +$12,000 | |
| Below-average rating (2.2★)METRIC | −$1,500 | |
| Mature app (12y old)METRIC | +$1,500 | |
| Ad-supported / freemiumMETRIC | +$600 |
METRIC = structural app data · REVIEW = mined from user reviews · ✓ VERIFIED = Stripe-verified anchor (TrustMRR)
📈 Reviews Growth
LIVECumulative review count from first BU snapshot. Each point = a tracked update.
⭐ Rating Trend
LIVEAverage rating evolution. Updates with each new review batch.
Profile & Insights
Everything we know — and don't — about this app and its company.
Identification
- App name
- Hopeless: The Dark Cave
- Developer
- Upopa Games
- Bundle ID
- com.upopa.hopeless
- App Store URL
- Open in App Store
- Category
- Action
- Content rating
- Not found
- Languages
- Not found
Company
- Website
- upopa.com
- Tagline
- Not found
- Description
- Not found
- Founded
- Not found
- HQ / Address
- Not found
- Employees
- Not found
- Logo
- Not found
Revenue
- Verified revenue / mo
- Not found
- AI revenue estimate / mo
- Not found
- AI annual estimate
- Not found
- ML model estimate / mo
- $2.5K/mo
- Top-grossing rank
- Not found
- All-time revenue
- Not found
- Pricing
- $0.99 - $49.99 per item
Founder
Founder data not yet collected for this app.
Funding
Funding data not yet collected for this app.
Press & Links
Press & Links data not yet collected for this app.
Contacts & Socials
Contacts & Socials data not yet collected for this app.
📈Ratings growth278,004 ratings+29% lifetimeShow 3-year history estimate ▾
Tracked (2 weeks) Pre-tracking estimate (37 weeks) · model-based, ±5% noise · anchored to release date and current value
🚀Version Release Timeline2 releases tracked
Profile is built from iTunes Lookup + developer site scrape + ML revenue model. Empty fields show "Not found" — additional sources (Crunchbase, X, IndieHackers, Acquire.com) coming.
📝 About this app
The blobs are back with a vengeance!
Stranded in the dark, a single blob must fight to survive the waves of blob-eating monsters, and save the other blobs!.
Hopeless is a game of sharp reflexes. Trust your instincts, shoot the monsters, but be careful - don’t shoot the other blobs!
Guns, Lasers, Fairy Dust? Shoot everything in your arsenal to overcome the monsters’ attack, and rescue the Hopeless blobs from the dark cave!
Get some guns and get your hopes up to the land from incoming enemies.
FOLLOW US:
www.upopa.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/UpopaGames… View full description on the official store →
Stranded in the dark, a single blob must fight to survive the waves of blob-eating monsters, and save the other blobs!.
Hopeless is a game of sharp reflexes. Trust your instincts, shoot the monsters, but be careful - don’t shoot the other blobs!
Guns, Lasers, Fairy Dust? Shoot everything in your arsenal to overcome the monsters’ attack, and rescue the Hopeless blobs from the dark cave!
Get some guns and get your hopes up to the land from incoming enemies.
FOLLOW US:
www.upopa.com
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/UpopaGames… View full description on the official store →
App Specs
🔐 Own this app? Claim & verify MRR →🔖 v4.5.0🔄 updated 0d ago📂 Action💰 Free📺 Ad-supported💎 IAP $0.99 - $49.99 per item
📅
What Worked™ · Development Pipeline
3 EVENTS TRACKEDDetected changes in this app over its tracked lifetime — each event links cause (what changed) to effect (what moved). Sorted newest first.See full history →Version history →
2026-06
📸
Refreshed store screenshots — 5 of 5 updated
2026-06
🔧
Shipped update — v4.2.0 → v4.5.0
→ 30 days after: rating +0.05★ · reviews −158 low · multiple changes
2026-05
🚀
First tracked snapshot — initial data captured
→ 30 days after: rating +0.05★ · reviews −158 high confidence
📸
Store Page History
5 SCREENSHOT CHANGESEvery time a developer swaps a store screenshot we archive both versions. Compare side-by-side to see what messaging / visuals changed.
iPhone screenshots
Slot 1
2 ver.
2 ver.
2026-05-08
2026-06-12
Slot 2
2 ver.
2 ver.
2026-05-08
2026-06-12
Slot 3
2 ver.
2 ver.
2026-05-08
2026-06-12
Slot 4
2 ver.
2 ver.
2026-05-08
2026-06-12
Slot 5
2 ver.
2 ver.
2026-05-08
2026-06-12
🔔
Track this app’s revenue
FREEGet an email when revenue moves by your threshold. No spam, unsubscribe in one click.
📝 Description
95
BU Score · Transcendent
Full revenue analysis
Read the article-style breakdown for Hopeless: The Dark Cave: category rank, percentile, growth signal, comparable apps, and how the forecast is calibrated against verified-MRR anchors in this niche.
More by Upopa Games
View all →📦 Portfolio summaryINDIE studio
4apps·$8K/mocombined
✓ Diversified — top app contributes 30%; risk spread across portfolio
About this analysis
Why high confidence: 278,004 ratings · no founder-verified revenue (model estimate only).
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
4 answers · auto-generated from this app's public dataHow much does Hopeless make per month?▴
Based on our ML-calibrated revenue forecast, Hopeless earns approximately $2.5K/mo. This is a US-storefront-equivalent estimate; global revenue can be several times larger for internationally-distributed apps. See the methodology page for the full formula and confidence bands.
What apps are like Hopeless?▴
Browse the full Action category catalog to find similar apps with revenue, build cost, audience and tech stack data. Each /p/{slug} page also shows a Compare side-by-side widget with three peer apps from the same niche.
Who makes Hopeless?▴
Hopeless is published by Upopa Games on the Google Play Store. See the full publisher portfolio (other apps by the same developer) via the More by developer block on the product page above.
What is Hopeless's BU Score?▴
Hopeless has a BU Score of 54/100 (Solid). The score combines App Store rating, ratings count, monetization model and revenue signals calibrated against founder-verified MRR anchors. See the BU Score formula.