200k installs and #38 on Germany's Top Grossing chart: Dulci's store page says "interactive fiction", its ads say "characters who make your heart race"

Dulci is an AI interactive story app from a Singapore-based going-global team, listed on Google Play in Sep 18. By Nov 6 it had roughly 219k installs, ranking #38 on Germany's overall Top Grossing chart and #83 in the US. The product is about the same as its predecessors Character.AI and Tipsy. What it does differently: the store page reads "write a novel with characters", which passed review, and it recruits through micro-creators in BookTok, dark romance, and K-pop fanfic circles, each given a redemption code. The category is already crowded, but few people are talking about this playbook. Copying it, switching languages, or switching communities still leaves room.

A BookTok video with 300k views

In Oct 28, TikTok user veive.vex posted a video with one line of text: "use our code E4X45WFG for a week of full membership on @Dulci", tagged #darkromance #maskedmen #BookTok. By Nov 6 the video had 305k views.

That same week, similar videos kept appearing: tam_ugc_contentcreator (the account name is literally "UGC content creator") 10-24 posted "Create your own story, meet interesting characters… Use my code QG7AENEV to get 1 week of free subscription", 127k views; scarlannie 10-23 posted "Your next obsession is waiting… unlock your chapter with dulci", 52k; fayliahh in Mexico wrote "mi nueva gran obsesión" and gave away gems; and a German BL character creator, jaden_skzboy97, posted "JADENVERSE IST JETZT AUCH AUF DULCI!", moving a whole set of Korean-style BL characters over (TikTok search, 11-06).

Every video tags @Dulci, and every creator has a different code. The code handles two things: payout (which creator brought in how many people) and conversion (one free week of membership, then auto-renewal).

These videos started clustering around late October 20. Dulci's installs went from 10-29k to 126k on 11-06 to 219k, adding 92k in 9 days, with daily gains of +11k and +17k over the last two days, and still accelerating (public Google Play install counts).

What it actually is

On the Google Play store page, Dulci presents itself as an app where you "write stories with original characters": pick an opening from the library (fantasy, mystery, gothic, slice of life) or build your own character and write the first scene. Characters remember names and choices from earlier chapters, any passage can be rewritten, and key scenes can be illustrated. "A quiet, cinematic reading interface." The word "romance" never appears.

But the store rating is Mature 17+, with "Violence, Sexual Themes, Users Interact", and the description says it's for ages 18 and up. Related Instagram reels say "meet characters who fall for you". Creator videos are tagged #darkromance, #airomance, #maskedmen.

Put plainly: it's an AI romance companion chat wearing the costume of "interactive fiction". The costume works. Its iOS version was called "Dulci: AI Character Chat", listed in September, and has since disappeared from the App Store (AppBrain shows "No longer on the App Store" with only 8 ratings left). The old Play name "Dulci: Chat with AI Friends" still shows up on download pages at softonic and CNET, before it was renamed to the current "AI Interactive Story". The reason for the iOS removal hasn't been disclosed; the most likely cause is review policy (inference).

Where the money comes from: 200k installs, grossing higher than many peers with millions of installs

Free to download. Every character reply and every generated illustration costs gems. There are free daily check-in gems, plus gem packs and Dulci PRO monthly/annual subscriptions. Individual in-app purchases range from $0.99 to $299.99 (store page, 11-06).

Top Grossing chart movement over the past week (Google Play overall Top Grossing):

It ranks in the top-grossing Entertainment category: #12 in Germany, France, and Spain, #29 in the US. The number of countries where it charts overall went from 8 to 14. 200k installs was enough to reach the top 40 in Germany's overall chart, which shows how deeply paying users are being monetized. That's an old pattern for AI romance companions: a small group of heavy users spends a lot each month. The German, French, and Spanish rankings are much better than the US, consistent with the high share of German and Spanish-language creators in the videos.

Reviews show how the money is collected. In Oct 16, a user named Erika Ramirez wrote: "The subscription gives 5k or 16k gems a month, but if you chat a bit longer it's still not enough, and you end up buying gems anyway, so what's the point of the subscription?" The developer replied that the subscription includes a monthly gem allowance, not unlimited use, and that switching to a lighter model in story settings makes gems last longer. In other words, the subscription is the entry ticket, gems are the main revenue, and model tier is directly tied to price.

Where users come from

The main engine is the videos at the top: mid-tier micro-creators who already play on Character.AI-style products, from BookTok, dark romance, K-pop fanfic, and BL character creators, each with one code. There's also a user-to-user referral loop: "Join me on Dulci and we'll both get 300 gems" (theonegurl85, 10-20).

Its official TikTok account, dulci.app, has only 97 followers and 13 videos, so its own content isn't driving reach. Whether it has run large-scale paid ads on Meta, Google, or TikTok can't be confirmed from public ad libraries. But a user commenting on 10-18 said "compared to the ads, this feels like a pre-beta version", suggesting she first saw it through ads (likely the creator videos, unverified). Going-global teams often buy through agency accounts, so the absence in the libraries doesn't mean there was no spend.

On r/CharacterAI_No_Filter on Reddit, people praise it for proactively suggesting plot directions and adding twists. The subreddit's name already says something about the audience: people who find Character.AI too restrictive.

What users say

Rating 4.5, from roughly 4,800 ratings, but very few of them have written reviews, and most of the ratings likely come from in-app prompts. The most-liked reviews:

• "I thought it was another low-quality AI, but it's actually good, on par with the high-quality ones, maybe better. They give 100 gems a day while others give 50, and you can set how many gems each reply costs." (Kira Yun, 10-18, 78 people found it helpful)
• "It's only static anime images, and character replies first repeat what you said before moving to the preset plot. Everything costs gems, even just to hear it reply one line. Compared to the ads, this feels like pre-beta. A book and your own imagination are much cheaper." (Kara Donkle, 10-18, 45 people found it helpful)

In short: users are comparing it to similar apps on how generous the gems are and whether the spending is worth it. Nobody says it has anything the others don't.

Who it's competing with

Plenty. 11-06 on the same Entertainment top-grossing chart (public Google Play data):

Dulci is itself a follower, and several others copied the same template in the same month. This isn't an empty market. It's a category where willingness to pay has been proven over and over, along with an acquisition playbook that hasn't been overused yet.

Who's behind it

The developer is ORIGO Game, legal entity ORIGO ENTERTAINMENT PTE. LTD., registered in Singapore in June 2022. Its earlier products were AI tools: the AI photo editor Hype AI (about 3M installs on Play) and the AI video app MOVA (about 550k), and its website claims "30M users in 160 countries". This is a going-global team that builds and then buys traffic, and Dulci applies the same operating playbook to the AI character niche. No revenue has been disclosed, there's been no press coverage, and almost nobody talks about it on X. Few people know it exists.

If it were you

Verdict: worth a try, but don't expect the product to win it. This is a business where category willingness-to-pay is already proven and whoever runs creator distribution gets the traffic. Dulci showed that 200k installs from a month of creator campaigns can push into the top 50 grossing in small European language markets.

Good fit for: small teams that have run TikTok or Instagram creator campaigns and can calculate ROI from code-based payouts; ideally someone who speaks a European language beyond German, French, and Spanish, or who already moves in BookTok, BL, or K-pop fanfic circles and knows which micro-creators play on Character.AI; and teams that can front LLM costs.

Bad fit for: anyone hoping to differentiate on features like "long memory" or illustrations (every competitor has them, and one or two versions will close the gap); anyone aiming to win the English market first (home turf of Character.AI and Tipsy); anyone unwilling to touch 17+ content or unable to absorb takedown risk; anyone without budget to pay creators who is counting on organic store traffic.

How to do it: Launch on Google Play first. Go to iOS later and more carefully (Dulci's iOS version is already gone). Write the store page as "interactive story / writing," and rate it honestly 17+. Copy the monetization: daily check-in gives gems, gem packs, monthly/annual subscriptions with a gem allowance, and high-priced big bundles. Tier the models: light models cost fewer gems, heavy models cost more, so the inference cost goes straight to the user. Pick one niche community as the core content, like dark romance or BL. That's easier to push than generic "all kinds of stories."

How to get users: In each language, find 20–30 small to mid-tier creators. Give each one a unique code and offer a free week of membership. Settle payment by code, and after two weeks cut the ones that don't convert. Add two-sided invites (both sides get gems). Get character creators to "move" their characters over, since they bring their own fans. For languages, German, French, and Spanish already have Dulci and Tipsy. You could look first at Italian, Dutch, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese (inference, I haven't verified how much competitors are spending on each).

When to move: Get the first batch of creator data in one language by the end of 2027 January. At least four or five copycats have appeared since September. If you wait longer, the good small creators will get priced up round by round.

Signs you've got it wrong: ① Dulci's German overall grossing rank drops back to outside #100 by the end of November. That would mean creators bring one-time trials and renewals can't hold. ② Google Play delists it or forces a rating change. That would mean the "story wrapper" route has been blocked. ③ Character.AI or Tipsy start mass-distributing creator codes in the same languages. That means the big players have entered, and small teams' creator costs get pushed up.

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Data and sources: Google Play store pages and public install, rating-count, and chart data (10-29 to 11-06); store reviews (October); TikTok videos and view counts (11-06 search); historical pages on AppBrain, Softonic, and CNET; the ORIGO website and Singapore company registration; Reddit r/CharacterAI_No_Filter. Anything marked "inference" or "unverified" is my inference.