Rush Wars

Supercell is back with another game, after the somewhat acceptable but not platform defining Brawl Stars. The company as a lot to live up to with both Clash of Clans and Clash Royale being some of the best and more popular mobile games. Their latest here seems like an attempt to combine elements of both Clans and Royale, but overall it lacks the general excitement there is to play those games.

The game consists of attacking enemy's gold mines, which contains 3 buildings where the gold is stored. The maps are rather small, and you drop your troops on the left side and they will march up to the right side where the enemy's defense is situated to protect the gold buildings. The troops follow an automatic pattern like in Clash of Clans, each having favorite targets and whatnot. As you win battles you will acquire the gold that is required to upgrade your troops, which are done by collecting cards exactly like the system in Clash Royale. Each gold building destroyed grants you a star, and after 5 stars you get to unlock a Chest which also requires a chest key to open (those refresh every few hours, with a maximum of 5 stored). There are also free chests that show up every few hours which will incite you to log in every now and then.

On the defense side you get a new map to defend every 24 hours, where you must set up your defensive troops and if successful you gain gold and stars for ranking. I guess this is one of the most interesting sides of the game as the alternating maps will require you to have a different defensive strategy and you just can't have the "perfect" layout that you copied from the internet and sit on that forever. There's also a "Clan Wars" called Domination, you have to set up multiple bases with pre-set defensive troops and get a few attacks on the opposing clan the next day.

Having played Clash of Clans and Royale for many years, I'm wondering what exactly is the company trying to do here? The game is not void of strategy, but it doesn't have the depth and complexity of Clash of Clans and everything is so simplified with the small map. While it has the same card collecting aspect of Royale, it doesn't have the intense PvP active battles that made the game so fun, you are just facing defenses setup by your opponents and not actively playing against them. For me it seems like they were trying to combine a little bit of both, but it just ends up being uninteresting combination and I'd rather just stick with the originals. Plus this is another game where you'll have to grind for years to get ahead... which is something I don't mind if the gameplay is addicting and fun but after a few days it already feels like a chore to do your dailies and whatnot. There was a point where Supercell would reject so many games in development because they wanted to be seen as the best in their field (sort of like the Blizzard of mobile gaming), but now it just feels that this is released because they needed to release a new game. This isn't awful but I feel like I've already played better versions of this, and I don't think it's worth sticking around. I'm left wondering that perhaps Supercell is not the giant it once was, and they seem to be really looking for themselves trying to relive past glories.