Game Review
TAW Going Mobile: Clash of Clans Builder Hall Review
-QuinoaAOC
If there is one thing that was proven by the advent of console gaming divisions in TAW, it’s that our members don’t limit themselves to PC gaming alone. It certainly isn’t a stretch to imagine that they play single player games as well. In fact, in all likelihood, more than one TAW member has likely spent their lunch break at work or school tapping away on their phone or tablet, pursuing the hobby all gamers know and love. In that respect, while TAW will not have a mobile division anytime in the foreseeable future, NEWS felt it might be prudent to take a stab at reviewing those mobile distractions that help brighten those empty minutes between the more important events in our members lives. In the first Going Mobile review, the spotlight is on the SuperCell game that has been all but ubiquitous in the mobile gaming conversation: Clash of Clans. If every phone and tablet in TAW were scanned by the NSA, it wouldn’t be surprising to find this game on 90% of the devices. However, many have let it fall on the back burner because it was too much of the same or decided it was too late in its lifecycle to start. Now both of those problems have been addressed with the new Builder Hall mechanic.
A review of the good old fashioned vanilla Clash of Clans, will come later. While it’s old news for most, it is a classic that hosts more players than World of Warcraft by several orders of magnitude and certainly can’t go addressed. This article, however, will focus on the brand new Builder Hall mechanic launched May 22. To give a bit of scope on how big a deal this was, it had its own article in the highly respected financial publication Forbes where it was presented as an innovative way to launch a full fledged sequel to the main game without having to start over from scratch building a new player base that would cannibalize the 100 million strong player base that has Clash generating $640,000 per day. The move is genius. No new app to download. No searching to find old friends and clan mates. Just an update that gives everyone a new village with new rules and new resources to play with.
The builder base, commonly called “night mode” by the player base, is accessed by tapping a boat that sits on the shoreline of the main village in the game. It turns the atmosphere to nighttime and has a fresh village to build and manage. At its core, it is still what Clash of Clans always has been: a tower defense game with a more offense minded framework. A player places resource buildings, walls, and defenses in a strategic effort to thwart the attempts of other players who attack them. The player in turn develops his own troops to attack other players bases and the cycle repeats. The builder base differs in a few key areas, however. Where in the main game, players find random bases to raid or target specific enemies in clan vs. clan wars, in night mode, two players are paired in real time to attack each other with the victor determined by the superior performance. The builder hall also doesn’t transfer “loot” from the defender the the attacker and instead rewards whichever player wins. The game also limits the number of attacks a player can make a day and receive resources. These aspects combine to eliminate the kind of unbalanced bases and rushed offenses that almost ruined the vanilla game for many players. By restricting resources, it also has slowed down the advance of players who spend a lot of time on the game, which should lead to a greater parity between casual players and the more hardcore player base. It also means that new or returning players won’t face a two or three year grind to catch up to the rest of the community.
Overall, the night mode is worth a look. Clash of Clans has always been a well maintained game that is the best existing example of a how a microtransaction freemium game should be managed. The builder hall update gives everyone the chance to get in on the ground floor and grow with the community while still allowing them to experience the existing game and benefit from the established community. All in all, it’s a new way of doing things that many online game development giants could really learn from. So next time the power goes out and TAW is temporarily out of reach, check out the new Clash update. Whether real time strategy games are your thing or not, you won’t be disappointed.
-QuinoaAOC
If there is one thing that was proven by the advent of console gaming divisions in TAW, it’s that our members don’t limit themselves to PC gaming alone. It certainly isn’t a stretch to imagine that they play single player games as well. In fact, in all likelihood, more than one TAW member has likely spent their lunch break at work or school tapping away on their phone or tablet, pursuing the hobby all gamers know and love. In that respect, while TAW will not have a mobile division anytime in the foreseeable future, NEWS felt it might be prudent to take a stab at reviewing those mobile distractions that help brighten those empty minutes between the more important events in our members lives. In the first Going Mobile review, the spotlight is on the SuperCell game that has been all but ubiquitous in the mobile gaming conversation: Clash of Clans. If every phone and tablet in TAW were scanned by the NSA, it wouldn’t be surprising to find this game on 90% of the devices. However, many have let it fall on the back burner because it was too much of the same or decided it was too late in its lifecycle to start. Now both of those problems have been addressed with the new Builder Hall mechanic.
A review of the good old fashioned vanilla Clash of Clans, will come later. While it’s old news for most, it is a classic that hosts more players than World of Warcraft by several orders of magnitude and certainly can’t go addressed. This article, however, will focus on the brand new Builder Hall mechanic launched May 22. To give a bit of scope on how big a deal this was, it had its own article in the highly respected financial publication Forbes where it was presented as an innovative way to launch a full fledged sequel to the main game without having to start over from scratch building a new player base that would cannibalize the 100 million strong player base that has Clash generating $640,000 per day. The move is genius. No new app to download. No searching to find old friends and clan mates. Just an update that gives everyone a new village with new rules and new resources to play with.
The builder base, commonly called “night mode” by the player base, is accessed by tapping a boat that sits on the shoreline of the main village in the game. It turns the atmosphere to nighttime and has a fresh village to build and manage. At its core, it is still what Clash of Clans always has been: a tower defense game with a more offense minded framework. A player places resource buildings, walls, and defenses in a strategic effort to thwart the attempts of other players who attack them. The player in turn develops his own troops to attack other players bases and the cycle repeats. The builder base differs in a few key areas, however. Where in the main game, players find random bases to raid or target specific enemies in clan vs. clan wars, in night mode, two players are paired in real time to attack each other with the victor determined by the superior performance. The builder hall also doesn’t transfer “loot” from the defender the the attacker and instead rewards whichever player wins. The game also limits the number of attacks a player can make a day and receive resources. These aspects combine to eliminate the kind of unbalanced bases and rushed offenses that almost ruined the vanilla game for many players. By restricting resources, it also has slowed down the advance of players who spend a lot of time on the game, which should lead to a greater parity between casual players and the more hardcore player base. It also means that new or returning players won’t face a two or three year grind to catch up to the rest of the community.
Overall, the night mode is worth a look. Clash of Clans has always been a well maintained game that is the best existing example of a how a microtransaction freemium game should be managed. The builder hall update gives everyone the chance to get in on the ground floor and grow with the community while still allowing them to experience the existing game and benefit from the established community. All in all, it’s a new way of doing things that many online game development giants could really learn from. So next time the power goes out and TAW is temporarily out of reach, check out the new Clash update. Whether real time strategy games are your thing or not, you won’t be disappointed.