Characters stop texting back and instead film a scene: IF Drama pushed into the US and UK entertainment top-grossing charts with 60k installs

A small Seoul company started by 5 people turned "AI character chat" into "you say a line, and the character acts it out as a video", sold clip by clip with coins, the most expensive coin pack at $299.99. Three months after launch it had only 62k installs on Google Play, yet it was on the entertainment top-grossing charts in the UK, US and Australia. Below: what it sells, where the traffic comes from, why the money is so good, what it hasn't done well, and where you could cut in.

A one-star review and the developer's reply the next day

In 2026 Sep 6, a user named Matt Thompson gave IF Drama Chat one star on Google Play: "No trial. You can't even see whether it works without paying first. Ridiculously expensive, scammers! And the app froze so badly I couldn't even delete my account." 38 people marked it helpful, and in Nov 6 the review is still among the ones shown by default on the Play listing.

The developer replied the next day: "We're a very small early-stage team working to lower the cost of AI video and fix these issues." Another review from August said the video "generates very slowly and fails around 5 seconds", and the developer replied "We're working nights, and over the next month we'll make real improvements."

Two months later, in Nov 5, the app had 62,020 installs on Play, up 22,305 over the last 7 days, ranking #120 on the UK entertainment top-grossing chart and #164 in the US (Google Play, 11-06). On iOS US it had 343 ratings averaging 4.7 stars (App Store, 11-06). The price hadn't changed. In Oct 24 an iOS user wrote: "The only complaint is the price. One 30-second video costs 20 coins, and it adds up fast."

What it is

A branching-story character chat app. The difference is in the reply format: you pick a suggested action or type your own "what I'm going to do", and the AI generates a cinematic video with dialogue, action and sound, with the character reacting on camera, then you decide the next step. The first line of the store page reads "YOUR WORDS BECOME VIDEO", followed by a very accurate line: "You don't only read the response. You watch it happen."

The genres are romance, mystery and secrets, rated 13+. The developer is AboveTech (어보브테크) from South Korea. It launched on Play in Aug 10 and on iOS in Sep 16. The Japan store has a localized name, "IF Drama:AI動画チャット".

Compared with other products, the difference is in the unit of each reply:

Both "text roleplay" and "AI short drama" are crowded. The middle ground, a mobile product that generates a story video for every turn and actually takes money, is currently rare.

Where the users come from: Meta ads, with text-chat rivals as the villain in the creative

Its Facebook page "IF Drama Chat" is full of ad-style short videos, all titled "Start AI Video Chat." The copy runs the same play, mocking text chat first:

Still staring at text boxes? In IF Drama, characters show up on video… Try IF Drama on iPhone.

Another ad says "Stop settling for text-only AI character chats. Mizuki and Rin answer in video", and one link slug is literally "start-ai-video-chat-with-asian-girls"; an Instagram Reel reads "Stop AI chatting. This is insane." Third-party ad tracker Peekly shows about 59 of its ads running on Meta, across 5 countries (estimated, not verified). User feedback lines up too: an iOS review from Oct 4 opens with "I saw its ad on Instagram and decided to try it."

The install curve looks like paid acquisition too: flat for days, then one day jumps by thousands to ten thousand. Oct 8 +11,225, Oct 31 +9,401, Nov 2 +9,761, with the days in between at 0 (Google Play installs, third-party estimates and daily scrapes). Organic word of mouth doesn't grow in this shape. It looks more like batches of spend (inferred).

Beyond ads, there are only two other signs: on Reddit, the r/JanitorAI_Refuges subreddit, where Janitor AI "defectors" gather, has a post "Your choices turn into video scenes in IF Drama" written like the developer posted it; and the app runs in-app "complete tasks for free coins" (Play update notes 10-27). On TikTok I found no official account or creator content, X has had no mentions in nearly 60 days, and English media hasn't covered it. Very few people know about it.

Where the money comes from: a 30-second scene that sells for a few dollars

Coin packs listed on the App Store (11-06):

Play lists $2.99–$299.99. Going by users' "30-second video for 20 coins," one scene sells for between $2 (first-purchase price) and $8 (smallest pack) (estimated). At public video-model API prices, generating 30 seconds of video with sound costs roughly one to a few dollars (estimated; depends on the model and clip length). Gross margin isn't fat, but it's positive, and users pay again for every extra plot step they push.

This is why 60k installs can chart in the US, UK, and Australian top-grossing lists: few people pay, but the ones who do pay heavily. Reviews almost unanimously say it's expensive: "Ridiculously expensive, and you have to write extremely detailed prompts or it misreads you and wastes a pile of coins" (10-27), "Expensive, but fun, you get what you pay for" (11-03), "Costs a lot, but worth it" (10-25). Nobody says it's not fun, everyone says it's pricey, and that's a good early signal.

Who built it

AboveTech was founded in Seoul in 2023 November. It started as a blockchain outsourcing shop and, after ChatGPT came out, shrank from 23 people to 5 and pivoted to AI. Its first two products were both in Korea: Zendi, an AI four-pillars tarot app that hit nearly ₩200M in monthly revenue within 6 months; and IF, a character chat themed on K-pop idols, launched in 2025 August. The company says IF reached #1 in App Store AI character chat within 4 days, using an "AI director" system to control plot pacing (byline.network, aitimes, 2025-09). In 2025 July it raised a seed round, with Delightroom, the maker of the Alarmy alarm clock, among the investors.

So IF Drama didn't start from zero: its plot-scripting came over from IF in Korea, and the ad money was raised. Anyone following this has to build both of those themselves.

Where it falls short

The complaints that keep recurring in reviews are the gaps left for latecomers:

• Too expensive, and there's no monthly plan. Sep 10 a review: "If you launch an unlimited monthly subscription, I'll subscribe long-term and recommend it to everyone." October: "The cheapest coins are still $9.99. You need to fix this."
• You can't try it without paying. That's the one-star review at the top. Now there's a half-price first purchase and coins for completing tasks, but the first impression has already stuck.
• It doesn't follow instructions, and the camera is monotonous. "Spent about $20, most of my choices were ignored, the shots all look the same, and it always ends in a close-up for no reason" (iOS, 10-04).
• It only serves one kind of user. The ads push "Asian female characters"; one female user wrote: "I'm supposed to fall for these AI men, so why does my character's visible hand look like a man's hand?" (iOS, 10-04). On the other side, some users say outright that it's "all porn" and want adult content "more explicit." A product like this is naturally pulled toward adult content, and app stores are very strict about that.
• The ratings are padded. On Sep 26 a five-star review read: "I only gave five stars because they said I'd get 100 free coins." The gap between the iOS score of 4.7 and the Play score of 4.1 may partly come from this (inference).

If it were you

Verdict: A. An interactive plot where "every turn is a video" is still uncrowded and few people know it, and monetization is proven. But you're betting on two things: whether you can cut the cost of each video to under half its sale price, and whether your Meta creative can pull heavy text-chat users in the way its does.

Who it suits: a 2–4 person team, with someone who has run Meta or TikTok short-video ads and can calculate payback periods, and someone who can write plots and personas. You need tens of thousands of dollars you can lose on ads up front. It helps to know a group or language it hasn't seriously worked on.

Who it doesn't suit: people who only wire up model APIs and can't write stories. The users' complaints about "ignored choices" and "same shots" are plot-scripting problems, not model problems. Anyone without an ad budget who wants to rely on organic traffic, since it has none either. Anyone who wants to build adult content, because stores and payment processors will block you.

How to do it: don't copy it, go after what it does badly. The two clearest directions: ① Female-oriented: male characters, otome and romance-fantasy themes, letting users define who "I" am. Its ads and characters clearly aim at male users. ② Japanese: Japanese people already pay for otome games and visual novels, and it only has a Japanese name, with no Japanese-language ads in sight (Korea is its home turf, so stay out). On the product side: let new users watch a full scene free before paying; add a weekly or monthly card alongside coins (users are asking for it); use cheap models for short scenes (5–10 seconds) and expensive ones for key plot points, and cost out each turn separately.

How to get users: make comparison creative in its formula: on the left a text-chat box, on the right a character answering you on camera, one persona and one hook per ad. Start paid tests in places like the UK and Australia, where it has already shown people will pay, or in the language you've chosen. Test 20–30 creatives on a small budget, and only add spend to ones that pay back within 7 days (inferred). At the same time, post real scene clips in Character.AI and Janitor user communities on Reddit and Discord. These people are the most dissatisfied with text chat.

When to move: launch and start testing ads before the first quarter of 2027. Prelulu was just on Product Hunt in November and PING just listed in October, so this format is being noticed by more people. In six months the gap will probably be filled.

What would show you were wrong: ① Character.AI or Talkie makes "generate a video every turn" a feature anyone on a standard membership can use. Big companies have existing users, and the gap is gone. ② IF Drama's Play installs stop growing over the next month and it drops out of the top-grossing chart by 200. That would mean it stopped spending on ads, which means ads weren't paying back. ③ Video-model prices don't fall over three months, while "too expensive" stays the top complaint. That would mean the margins can't support paid acquisition. ④ The reverse: if you see a female-oriented or Japanese-language competitor start running ads on Meta continuously, the gap is real and you need to move fast.