Clash Royale is a multiplayer game with over 100 million downloads on the Google Play Store where players battle with cards in various arenas for rewards and trophies. Said rewards mostly consist of chests or straight-up resources (gold, gems, etc.) that give you the materials to obtain new cards and upgrade ones you already have. The game is constantly being updated to help ensure that the player base doesn’t grow bored of the game, and like War Robots, there are several, in fact I’d say a few couple, game modes that players can choose for the most enjoyable gaming experience. 1v1 is where you alone square off against another solitary player, 2v2 is where duos fight against one another, rage mode is where cards have enhanced abilities (mostly greater attack speed), and Legendaray’s 7x elixir is where the elixir that you spend to play cards on the arena recharges by 7x its normal speed. If that weren’t enough, the game has special events and challenges from which players can be handsomely rewarded for performing well. If the latter part of players receiving massively rewarded sounded too good to be true, that’s because it is true, to a certain extent. Many players are not able to do very well in the challenges or special events because more skilled players will dominate, although that doesn’t mean that you can’t eventually stack up the skills and techniques that will make you one of the top-tier players.
Gold is what you use to upgrade/level up cards once you’ve accumulated enough of the same card to be able to upgrade, and elixir is what allows you to play cards on the battlefield once you enter a match. Elixir is capped at 10 so you can’t just accumulate it forever and so that you’re pressured to play cards against your opponents. Cards are categorized and classified as common, rare, epic, legendary, and most recently, champion. Each card represents a unique attacker or defense troop/building that will help you defend your towers (of which there are three in every match) against the troops/buildings of your opponents. Each match is approximately 5 minutes, and there is a quite a bit to learn as you could probably tell about the game if you’re getting into it for the first time. However, the game is extremely well designed for new players to settle in and get started.
The reason why I enjoy Clash Royale so much is that it is essentially based on it being multiplayer (e.g. the clans that you can join for aid in developing your account) and reminds me a lot of chess but obviously in a very different way. Players can’t simply play cards wherever they please; timing and ideal placements of cards will be rewarded. Players can’t build random decks (assemblages of 8 cards each) to obtain higher trophies either. They need to build a deck that makes logical sense.
Some downsides to this game include that it does feel pay-to-win many times. There’s no denying that players who spend money and obtain many more resources than other players to level up their stuff have an inherent advantage in Clash Royale. Another downside is that it is a game that will make you feel quite angry if you’re deeply invested as you face off against higher-level opponents with their much higher-level (and hence more powerful) cards.
Despite these downsides, I believe that Clash Royale is a truly innovative game that many people can grow to enjoy, as supported by the sheer number of installs that this game has. I hope that you’ll be able to find some joy from this game as well if you haven’t already. Enjoy!
Review by ~ Andrew
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