Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans

Game logo
Developer(s) Supercell
Publisher(s) Supercell
Platform(s) iOS
Android
Release date(s) iOS
August 2, 2012 (2012-08-02)[1]
Android
October 7, 2013 (2013-10-07)[2]
Genre(s) Strategy
Mode(s) Massively multiplayer online game

Clash of Clans is a freemium mobile MMO strategy video game developed and published by Supercell.[3]

The game was released for iOS platforms on 2 August, 2012,[1] and on Google Play for Android on 7 October, 2013.[2]

Gameplay

Clash of Clans is an online multiplayer game in which players build a community, train troops, and attack other players to earn gold and elixir, and Dark Elixir, which can be used to build defenses that protect the player from other players' attacks, and to train and upgrade troops.[4] The game also features a pseudo-single player campaign in which the player must attack a series of fortified goblin villages.[4]

Buildings

Gameplay in Clash of Clans. A player is attacking another player's village. The amount of resources available for capture are on the top left. The troops available for deployment are along the bottom of the screen.

To earn and store gold and elixir, players must build gold mines and gold storages and elixir collectors and elixir storages, respectively. Elixir is used to train new troops, carry out research in the laboratory to upgrade troops, to re-load X-Bows (available from Town Hall 9) and to build and upgrade certain buildings, mostly pertaining to buildings used in attacking another player's base. Gold is used to build defensive buildings[5] and to upgrade the town hall, which allows access to more buildings and higher levels for existing buildings. At higher levels, dark elixir becomes available; this type of elixir is used to train and upgrade dark elixir troops and heroes, create dark spells, and fuel the Inferno Tower, a defensive building that is available only at Town Hall 10. To earn and store dark elixir, players must build dark elixir drills and dark elixir storages.[6]

There are a number of buildings available to the player to defend their village, including cannons, mortars, bombs, traps, archer towers, and wizard towers. Players can also build walls, which can be upgraded as they increase in level.[6][7]

Gems

Aside from gold and elixir, the game also uses gems as a currency. Gems are awarded for reaching certain milestones, completing achievements. One to six gems can be earned from clearing and obstacle such as a tree or a mushroom from your base though the algorithm for this is highly random. Players can also gain 25 gems from clearing a gem box, which costs 1000 elixir. Gem boxes spawn randomly about every week or so. However, the main way to acquire gems is through in-app purchases using real world money. Gems can be used to "boost" building and heroes. Usually for a small sum 10 to 20 gems a player can boost and thus speed up their building to give a times faster output for roughly two hours. Barracks and spell factories are commonly boosted on higher levels of play[4]

Clan wars

Clans are groups of players who join together to support each other, either materially (donating troops) or verbally (giving advice). Players can join clans once they rebuild the special Clan Castle building early on. A major component of the gameplay of Clash of Clans is clans facing off against one another. Clan leaders and co-leaders can begin wars against other clans. Each clan is then given one "preparation day" and one "war day." When a player attacks a member of the opposing clan, they receive stars based upon the amount of destruction they cause to the opponent's community. Each player is limited to two attacks per war, and the team with the most stars at the end of the war day is declared victorious. If the two clans' amount of stars are equal, then the victorious clan is the one that has a greater percent destruction, with players receiving bonus war loot if he/she use their attacks in the war and a one more war win record in the clan description.[8]

Marketing

In February 2015, Supercell released their Clash of Clans Super Bowl XLIX commercial, featuring Liam Neeson parodying his character from Taken.[9] On February 2, Business Insider reported the ad as the 5th most watched Super Bowl ad,[10] though on February 6, VentureBeat reported the ad was the most viewed of those that appeared on the Super Bowl.[11] YouTube users later voted the advertisement the second best Super Bowl ad, behind Nissan's "With Dad" ad.[12]

On September 23, 2015, Taiwanese singers JJ Lin and Jimmy Lin released the game's theme song "全面开战" ("Start a war totally" in English) which was sung in Mandarin.[13]

Critical reception

Clash of Clans
(iOS version)
Aggregate scores
AggregatorScore
GameRankings80%[14]
Metacritic74/100[15]
Review scores
PublicationScore
148 Apps[7]
Gamezebo[4]
Modojo3/5[16]
Pocket Gamer9/10[6]

Clash of Clans has received generally positive reviews. The iOS version holds an aggregate score of 74 out of 100 on Metacritic,[15] and 80% on GameRankings.[14]

Gamezebo's Leif Johnson was impressed, scoring the game 4.5 out of 5. Although he felt the gameplay was heavily skewed to encourage the player to purchase gems, he praised the addition of a single-player campaign. He concluded that "Clash of Clans is a simple game, but that's more of a strength than a weakness. It's simple enough to provide quick, painless matches on an iPhone in an idle moment, and there are enough different units to choose from in the battle mode to make playing against other players endlessly rewarding. Best of all, the option to fight against NPC goblins gives Clash of Clans a small edge over similar strategy games that rely almost entirely on player-versus-player combat."[4]

Pocket Gamer's Peter Willington was equally impressed, scoring the game 9 out of 10 and giving it a "Gold Award". Reviewing the game several months after it was released for iOS devices, Willington praised the game for requiring real strategy to play. He wrote that the gameplay was built on the progression of "requiring more and more sophisticated units, asking you to strategise and really think about which elements you should focus on building within your camp." He concluded that "Clash of Clans is a superb game, freemium or otherwise, with more nuance than most give it credit for. That's why it's passed the test of time since its launch and still has an active community devotedly constructing elaborate fortresses in the hope of becoming invincible."[6]

148App's Rob Rich scored the game 3.5 out of 5, writing "It's great to play an online freemium game that doesn't shy away from the single-player experience but also offers up some honest-to-goodness direct interaction, which is a very rare combination these days. It probably won't warm the hearts of any haters out there, but it does give genre fans something with a bit more action and strategy than they might be used to."[7]

Modojo's John Bedford was less impressed, scoring the game 3 out of 5. He was critical of freemium gaming in general, writing "The novelty hasn't just worn off this particular style of greedy gaming, it's shriveled up and condensed itself into an infinitely dense singularity of self-loathing." Of the game itself, he concluded "This is a game that follows in the footsteps of no small number of titles that have made feverish demands on our wallets in exchange for just a slightly thicker slice of the gameplay. It's possible you have an unending appetite for these micromanagement titles, in which case we recommend getting heartily stuck into Supercell's latest game. While Clash of Clans brings something new to accompany its competent but unexceptional empire gameplay, for most of us it'll be a case of too little, too late."[16]

Commercial reception

Clash of Clans became an App Store top 5 download between December 2012 and May 2013,[17] and this success has been described as helping to usher in a new era in conjoint gaming on mobile devices.[18][19] In 2013, Clash of Clans was the third highest game in revenue generated on the App Store and no 1 on Google Play.[20] In 2015, the game was the top grossing app on both the App Store and Google Play, with an estimated revenue of 1.5 million dollars per day.[21][22]

References

  1. 1 2 "Clash of Clans". Slide to Play. Retrieved June 8, 2014.
  2. 1 2 Koueider, Adam (October 8, 2013). "Clash of Clans finally hits the Google Play Store". Androidauthority. Retrieved November 20, 2013.
  3. ↑ Grundberg, Sven; Rossi, Juhana (March 8, 2013). "Finland's Newest Hit Maker: Supercell". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 Johnson, Leif (August 7, 2012). "Clash of Clans Review". Gamezebo. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  5. ↑ "Clash of Clans buildings". Clashofclanstuts.com. Retrieved April 21, 2015.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Willington, Peter (December 18, 2012). "Clash of Clans Review". Pocket Gamer. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  7. 1 2 3 Rich, Rob (August 3, 2012). "Clash of Clans Review". 148Apps. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  8. ↑ "Clan Wars FAQ". Supercell. April 4, 2014. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  9. ↑ Chitwood, Adam (February 2, 2015). "Watch This Year's Best Super Bowl Commercials". Collider.com. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
  10. ↑ D'Onfro, Jillian. "The 10 most-watched Super Bowl commercials on YouTube". BusinessInsider.com. Retrieved August 2, 2015.
  11. ↑ Gruff, Jeff (February 6, 2015). "Liam Neeson's Clash of Clan's spot is the most viewed Super Bowl ad on YouTube". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
  12. ↑ Grubb, Jeff (February 13, 2015). "YouTube viewers voted Liam Neeson's Clash of Clans spot the No. 2 Super Bowl ad". VentureBeat. Retrieved February 28, 2015.
  13. ↑ "林俊傑林志穎遊戲結緣 合唱《全面開戰》". Sina. September 23, 2015. Retrieved December 2, 2015.
  14. 1 2 "Clash of Clans for iOS". GameRankings. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  15. 1 2 "Clash of Clans (iOS)". Metacritic. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  16. 1 2 Bedford, John. "Clash of Clans Review". Modojo. Retrieved June 9, 2014.
  17. ↑ Warner, Bernhard (May 2, 2013). "Finland's Supercell mobile games with megaprofits". Bloomberg Businessweek. Retrieved June 7, 2014.
  18. ↑ Schade, Michael (September 20, 2013). "Commanding troops on touch devices - Why mobile is the perfect platform for strategy". Gamasutra. Retrieved June 7, 2014.
  19. ↑ Dredge, Stuart (July 10, 2013). "Apple's App Store at 5: 10 key moments on the road to 50bn downloads". The Guardian. Retrieved October 20, 2013.
  20. ↑ Mirani, Leo (January 30, 2014). "Why free games are increasingly the most profitable apps". qz.com. Retrieved July 7, 2014.
  21. ↑ "The top-grossing iPhone app makes a whopping $1.5 million a day". Business Insider. Retrieved 2016-02-04.
  22. ↑ "Clash of Clans - Revenue estimates, app rankings & installs". thinkgaming.com. Retrieved 2016-02-04.

External links

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