Earlier this month, Supercell announced 3 new games based on the Clash Franchise, which included the debut titles of their Shanghai Studio. And while fans like me were able to process what that meant, they already softlaunched one of them (Clash Quest).
Currently, I am working on a new big article (to be released soon) in which I’ll analyze in-depth everything we have seen so far about Clash Mini.
This will be the promised second part of the one where we analyzed the status and challenges of the Auto Chess as a genre.
But before that, I wanted to indulge providing my POV about the projects that were announced, as well as my conclusions after having played Clash Quest for a bunch of hours.
I will not be talking about the financial situation at Supercell or what this means for their company strategy, but rather analyze in a soft way the games themselves based on what has been revealed, and if I personally believe they can become hits.
If you haven’t checked it out yet, here’s the video. We recommend you to watch it before reading this. On it they present Clash Quest (Puzzle RPG), Clash Mini (Autochess) and Clash Heroes (Action RPG). The last two games will be the debut of Supercell’s new Shanghai studio.
If you’re interested in more details about these three games, I suggest you check their website and this newsletter by DoF, which provides great insights about what’s going on inside Supercell.
I also suggest you check this amazing post from early 2019 by Nan Duan (Game Lead at Supercell & exRiot Games), which I felt is quite revealing about Supercell’s strategy regarding China.
As always, keep in mind that I have no affiliation to Supercell. This article just represents my personal opinion, which may be misguided because I only have the info that has been released publicly, and – as a human being – I’m biased and prone to errors.
I have nothing but the deepest admiration for SC and their products.
WHAT DO I THINK ABOUT THE 3 NEW CLASH GAMES?
Clash Quest (Puzzle RPG)
Clash Quest is a Puzzle RPG that strongly resembles Legend of Solgard. You can check it out by yourself too. It’s currently being softlaunched in Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland.
I’ve just played it for a couple of hours, but this is what I’ve seen so far:
Contrary to Legend of Solgard or Might & Magic: Clash Heroes (the Nintendo DS game which popularized this type of Puzzle RPG mechanics), the player doesn’t move pieces to arrange combinations, but rather taps on them like in a blast game.
The tapped unit, as well as any adjacent one of the same kind, will then attack one after another. Each unit has a different behavior and even preference when attacking: For example, Archers avoid obstacles and shoot to the nearest enemy in the board, Princes attack on a straight line and damage the first thing they hit…).
There’s a damage bonus based on how many units were blasted, so the player has to carefully plan the blasts to create combinations to max out the damage output.
But blasts can’t be wasted, because the empty spaces are filled with units from a reinforcements storage, which gets increased as the player progresses in the game.
If those reinforcements are depleted, and there are no more friendly units on the board, the player loses the level.
Additionally, there are also useful spells, which have limited uses per level and can be casted during the match. They include things like an area damage bomb or a spell that allows to swap units.
Completing levels makes the player progress in a saga-like map, unlocking new troops & spells, amount of troops on the storage and grants resources for upgrading them.
Completing levels makes the player progress in a saga-like map, unlocking new troops & spells, amount of troops on the storage and grants resources for upgrading them.
CAN IT BECOME A HIT?
Overall, I am skeptical about the chances of Clash Quest.
Don’t get me wrong, the game is fun to play (I loved Legend of Solgard, and I’m enjoying this one too), but I feel it has the same problem as Solgard:
It’s game too hardcore for casual puzzle players (Candy Crush, Homescapes…), but too casual for hardcore puzzle players (Legendary, Empires&Puzzles…).
When it was announced, I expected something more in the direction of Might & Magic Clash of Heroes: a much more complex approach that would add more tactical depth than Legend of Solgard, and potentially even include a PVP competitive element.
But it seems kind of the other way around: Because of the lack of unit swapping, Clash Quest seems to have less depth than those games.
So far it’s entertaining to me and there is a degree of mastery (unit reinforcements management, blast strategy to control the board, orthogonal differences in the behavior of the troops…), but the system seems fairly limited on its pieces and with few mechanics that can generate emergent gameplay, so I’m concerned it will have the depth to keep me hooked for a long time.
Another of the problems is the lack of monetization: The game has no retries or boosters, and the player can only pay for progress acceleration (which helps unlocking & upgrading units).
While avoiding pay-to-win makes a lot of sense for competitive, multiplayer games, I’m unsure it’s the way to go for single player games, especially in the puzzle genre.
(Lack of monetization may be because it’s a soft launch, though).
Hopefully I’m wrong and this becomes a hit. And to be fair, perhaps as I unlock more troops and spells I’ll change my current impression.
But so far, I think this has many numbers to end up like other cancelled puzzle Supercell games like Smash Land or Spooky Pop (whose design approach is surprisingly similar): Really fun and well done games but which ultimately failed to find a suitable market spot.
RIP Smash Land, RIP Spooky Pop: Both fun puzzle-like games with saga maps but which ultimately didn’t live up to the standards and were canned by Supercell. Alas, quality is worth killing for.
RIP Smash Land, RIP Spooky Pop: Both fun puzzle-like games with saga maps but which ultimately didn’t live up to the standards and were canned by Supercell. Alas, quality is worth killing for.
In my humble opinion, in order to become really successful in the puzzle genre, Supercell should consider:
Target either puzzle casual audience or hardcore puzzle audience.
Casual audience (Homescapes, Candy Crush…) requires approachable mechanics, contained complexity, themes and narrative appealing for older, non-gamer profiles…
Hardcore casual audience (more tactical depth, competitiveness, deeper upgrading systems, emergent gameplay…).Integrate a meaningful metagame, not focus exclusively on the gameplay.
For example, puzzle games oriented to hardcore audiences integrate multiple upgrade systems, RPG mechanics, 4X mechanics, etc.
And when it comes to puzzle games oriented to casual audiences, the current trend is having a meta layer based on decoration and/or narrative…Reinforce monetization through the monetization practices that are standard on the puzzle genre (retries, boosters…), instead of applying the no-pay-to-win monetization model of a competitive game.
Unless the plan is to add PVP, in which case it should be on the softlaunch…Acquire a company with expertise on puzzle games (like Scopely did with Genjoy), instead of building that knowledge from scratch.
Clash Heroes (ACTION RPG)
Clash Heroes is an Action RPG / Marvel Strike type of game which (based on the videos) could be described as Brawl Stars meets Diablo. Check it out:
