How Clash Royale is so successful

Clash Royale is one of the best mobile games I have ever played. I have played it ever since its debut in Mar 2016, and it is still going strong with millions of players today.

What makes the game so successful? I believe the game creators, Supercell, have done a fantastic job in designing the game. I will be exploring what I believe to be the key reasons why the game is so successful (and addictive)

What is Clash Royale?

Clash Royale is best described as a hybrid of collectible card games, tower defense, and multiplayer online battle arena.

Without going into TOO much detail, the basic premise of the game is as such:

- Players build a deck of 8 cards, which they bring to battle other players.
- The aim of the game is to destroy your opponent's outer towers, and/or 'King' tower.
- Your opponent will be trying to stop you from doing that, and likewise is trying to destroy your outer towers and/or 'King' tower.
- You immediately win the game if you destroy your opponent's King tower.
- Upon winning a game, you are rewarded with a chest, which contains more cards.
- You collect more cards to upgrade them to become higher level and thus stronger.
- Rinse and repeat.

Why is this game so damn addictive and successful? There are a couple of reasons.

Clash Royale is a pretty darn fun game

You can't have a successful game if it isn't fun and has decent replayability value. With over 30 different cards at launch, there were endless permutations to build your 8-card deck to battle others. There's a simple ladder system using 'Trophies' - you win a game, you get some trophies, which accumulate. The game's matchmaking system pairs you up with opponents with similar trophy-levels as you. It's all about real-time tactics and improvisation as you decide how to best send your units across the battlefield to take down your opponent's towers.

Game sessions are well-managed

Every mobile-game developer knows that the 'average session time', or how long a player needs to spend playing the game to accomplish something of value, is extremely important. Too long, and you turn away casual gamers. Too short, and the experience is not sufficiently immersive. Supercell keeps the average game session at about 4-8 minutes, which is about 1-2 games. Perfect for the quick work break.

You are incentivised to return to the game

It wouldn't be sufficient to have players login once a day to play 1-2 games.There needs to be some 'hook', something to keep players coming back - and that's in the form of the 'Chests'.

In Clash Royale, every game you win grants you a Chest, which contains random cards. Certain chests give more cards than others, and the types of chests you get are on a fixed rotation. To get the cards within the chest, you have to 'unlock' the chest, which takes anywhere from 3 hours to 24 hours. You can only unlock one chest at a time, and you can store up to 4 chests.

This sets up a system where players are encouraged to return to the game every 3 hours or so to 'unlock' their next chest. And hey, since you are in the game, why not play another quick match? Brilliant.

There is also a 'Free Chest' that refreshes every 3 hours, as well as the ability to request for cards in your Clan, which has a cooldown of 8 hours. More time-triggered events to get you to return to the game.

Finally, there is also a daily 'Crown chest' where you have to get ten crowns (or take down ten towers) to unlock the Crown chest which gives you more cards. This forces players to play a little more than 1-2 games, yet seems so organic and natural that players just play the extra few games to earn the rewards.

Upgrades exponentially become harder to get

Your initial few upgrades are quick and cheap - after all, they need to give new players a sense of progression. As you get higher and higher in your card levels, it takes much more cards to upgrade your units, and thus correspondingly it takes more time to upgrade them as you collect the cards.

Enter monetisation

There are two main reasons to monetise in this game, in the form of in-game 'Gems'. First, if you spend real cash to buy some Gems, you can use the Gems to speed up the unlocking of your chests. More unlocked chests, more cards, more upgrades. Progress! You can also use Gems to buy unlocked Chests from the shop, though this is the more costly option.

Second, you can spend cash on the in-game currency 'Gold', which allows you to upgrade units, as well as buy cards off the shop, which shows a different batch of units/cards daily.

Basically, if you want your cards to be higher level quicker, you can spend some real-life cash to help yourself.


Social game is strong

The game's initial social element, the 'Clan' system, was slightly lacking. You could get into a clan of up to 50 people to donate / request cards, and chat and play friendly matches with your clan mates. However, there was no way to play with your real-life friends if they weren't in the same clan as you, nor was there a proper tournament system in place.

Over time, the game introduced more features, with the Tournament feature being an initial hit, but fizzing out quickly as many expected. Thankfully, Supercell eventually did add the ability to fight with your friends if you linked up your game to your Facebook account.

Keeping things fresh

Although the game is undoubtedly fun, it will get repetitive after a certain point, and the game makers know this well. Thus, they keep it fresh with regular card updates in the form of balance changes, and even adding in new cards every few months.

A recent addition was also special game modes, which add a twist to the way standard games were played. Together with these were 'Challenges', which played exactly like Hearthstone's Arena mode - pay a token sum to join the Arena, and you play to win as many games as you can. After you have lost 3 games, you are out of the Arena, and you are rewarded based on how many games you have won.

The cool thing about Challenge mode is that it is catered to the F2P players - cards are capped at 'tournament standards', which is well-achievable by someone who has played the game for a few months. This mode finally provided a level playing field, in which it is truly skill and deck-building skills that would allow players to triumph.

What next?

Supercell will have to keep things fresh and introduce new modes and features to keep players engaged. Some have speculated about future clan wars mode, and new and interesting twists to the game modes, so I'm excited to see what this behemoth of a game company has for us :D