By Nikita Tolokonnikov - February 21, 2023
Squad Busters: HIT OR BUST?
Disclaimer: As I delve deeper into this industry, I am increasingly convinced that nobody truly knows the recipe for success. Instead, it's a combination of excellent people, hard work, a sizeable dose of luck, and an immense amount of product optimization. With this in mind, I offer my personal thoughts, including praise and criticism, but acknowledge that no one can predict the success of Squad Busters, the latest offering from Supercell.
Overview
A few weeks ago, Supercell released a closed beta test of their new game, Squad Busters, which was only available to invited players in Canada. The test lasted for around ten days and is currently finished. During that window, I had the chance to peek at the game, and I wanted to share my thoughts on it and the challenge of creating a new game that can succeed in today's market.
We all know Supercell, and in this industry, it's common to keep a close eye on their every move. They are one of the few companies that have managed to release five successful games, some of which are still going strong, such as Clash of Clans, which has generated over 10 billion in revenue. However, this launch went relatively unnoticed, as only a few people had access to it, and it wasn't widely discussed.
It seems that many people are skeptical about new games from Supercell as it has been over four years since their last release, Brawl Stars. However, those who work on new games understand just how challenging this is, especially as the company grows and shifts its focus to supporting live games rather than creating new ones.
Supercell does have an advantage in that they have relatively small, independent teams working on new games, and they have always been better at making new games than growing existing ones.
The new game, Squad Busters, is a joystick-controlled PvP game. At first glance, it might appear similar to Brawl Stars, but it's designed for a more casual audience. In Brawl Stars, you need to execute a lot of frequent actions using abilities and gadgets, whereas in Squad Busters, you can only move, and your squad will attack automatically when you stop moving.
Market Positioning
Market positioning is an intriguing aspect of Squad Busters. Supercell's two most recent successful games, Clash Royale and Brawl Stars have highlighted the company's ability to create PvP multiplayer games with a strong focus on moment-to-moment gameplay. While games like Clash of Clans and Boom Beach share real-time gameplay elements, they are much more strategic and don't require quick decision-making to the same extent.
The success of Clash Royale and Brawl Stars can be attributed to their ability to attract highly engaged young people who tend to spread the word around. People under 25 typically have ample time to play competitive games with their friends and enjoy creating fun situations, while also being able to progress and improve over time.
Squad Busters is positioning itself as a game that can appeal to this audience but with lower skill requirements to get good at it, making it accessible to a broader audience. However, this also means that the skill ceiling is lower, and after playing for a week, I don't see how you can progress significantly after months or years of playing.
This market positioning could attract people who usually avoid competitive games because they find them too difficult. However, it may also lead to those who seek more depth becoming bored after a few weeks or even days. Time will tell whether Squad Busters can attract and retain a loyal fanbase. As this is the first beta of the game, there is ample opportunity to add more complexity and depth to the game and create a desire for exploration and improvement over the long term. I will delve further into this issue in the gameplay section.
Branding
Another interesting decision that aligns well with Supercell's strategy is the inclusion of characters from all of their previous games: Clash universe, Brawl Stars, Boom Beach, and even Hay Day (yes, Chicken and Greg are playable characters in Squad Busters).
Supercell likes to draw inspiration for new characters and units from their other games, and so far, they have only done this within the Clash universe in games such as Clash of Clans, Clash Royale, Clash Mini, and the now-closed Clash Quest. This approach helps to build the branding of certain characters, and players are often excited to see familiar faces from other games they play. The Supercell teams put a lot of effort into ensuring that the stats and abilities of the characters are well-suited to the new game, while also preserving the core concept of the character.
Personally, I enjoy seeing familiar characters in Squad Busters and am curious to see how they were integrated into this "Supercell All-Stars" mash-up. However, I do feel that this takes away from the excitement of unlocking something new. When all the characters in the game are familiar faces, it just doesn't feel as fresh.
Although there are some creative ways that characters have been integrated into the game, particularly the Hay Day characters, Chicken and Greg are likely the weakest characters and are not worth including in your squad, especially when you unlock more powerful ones.
Gameplay
Let's discuss the gameplay of Squad Busters. First, let me explain how it works.
At the start of every match, players are given a choice of three characters to add to their squad. They must choose one that they think will be the strongest starter.
The map is divided into ten sections, with ten players in each game, and only one player will survive until the end. Everyone starts in their own corner and has enough room to grow before encountering other players, much like the Showdown game mode in Brawl Stars.
Once you have selected your first character, you can roam around the map to collect gold and defeat monsters that will also drop gold.
When you have collected enough gold, you can go to the nearest chest and purchase the next character to add to your squad, choosing from the three given options.
The more characters you have in your squad, the more expensive the chests become, making it harder and harder to purchase each consecutive one. However, killing another player will drop a key that will give you one free chest to open.
The win condition is either to kill everyone else or, more likely, to have the most gems when the timer runs out. Gems can be found in some places around the level, dropped by other players when they are defeated, and during the last minutes of gameplay, they start dropping in massive quantities from the mine in the center of the map, attracting all players to the middle to battle. There are also mini-bosses that can be found mostly in the center of the map that will drop large quantities of gold and gems.
Your goal is to explore the map, collect gold as quickly as possible to add more characters to your squad and attack weaker players to grab all the loot they have and a free chest. However, your squad members are mortal, and if you lose some of them, it can be difficult to recover in the middle of the match.
From my experience playing this game, I would say that it largely relies on finding the right strategy to position yourself to avoid fights with stronger players, get free gold from passing monsters, and open chests faster than other players.
It's interesting to note that I haven't spoken much about the characters. To facilitate casual gameplay, there are no active abilities, and the key differences are basically the amount of HP, whether the character is melee or ranged, and the mix between attack speed and damage. There are passive abilities that each character has, and of course, some unique ones, such as healing, summoning another unit, or providing a sustainable buff to all other ranged units in your party.
Overall, you build your party based on two criteria: finding a good combination between melee and ranged units so that your lower health ranged units don't get killed too quickly and selecting the strongest heroes with higher rarity and unique abilities that make a significant difference to your squad's damage output or survivability. Everything else blends together and loses its meaning, making every match feel very similar to each other. Additionally, since you're always pursuing the same goal of collecting gems, the best strategy is often to avoid other players if you didn't perform well in the first minute of a match. As a result, players may start experiencing repetition early on in their journey.
Since this beta is primarily focused on gameplay, with not much progression, I believe there is a lot of room for improvement. For example, Supercell could make characters more unique, and add randomness and differences between matches through game modes or different landscapes and mini-bosses. However, the most significant issue is that I don't see enough depth in the game, even with these changes. It's unclear in which ways a player can improve over time, and they will likely reach their skill ceiling within a few days of playing the game.
Progression & Economy
Let's take a closer look at the game's progression and economy. While there isn't much to discuss, if you've played Supercell's previous games, such as Brawl Stars, Clash Royale, or Clash Mini, you'll be familiar with about 90% of it.
There are four main ways to obtain rewards in Squad Busters:
Main progression, which is a battle pass-like visualization where you can unlock new characters and obtain the currencies needed to unlock and upgrade characters.
Gems bar, where you can claim a reward of various currencies once you collect enough gems by playing matches.
Daily chest in the middle of the home screen, which I initially perceived as a visual background rather than a functional UI space and didn’t open during two first days.
Playing matches, which give you gold rewards, battle pass points, and gems to fill the gems bar.
The currencies in the game include:
Battle Pass Points - used, well, to progress in your Battle pass.
Unlock Points - used to unlock any hero, with different costs based on rarity.
Elixir - used to upgrade characters, which is personal per character and sometimes randomly distributed or given as a choice to the player.
Gold - used to level up your characters and upgrade their abilities once you have enough elixir.
Tickets - solely a customization currency, which can be spent on purchasing skins for your characters and buying emotes. The daily chest is the only source of tickets that I discovered.
The Battle Pass is worth an additional note because, besides giving out rewards, it unlocks new locations to play at and new characters along with it. However, once you graduate from a previous location, you can no longer play on it. It’s a strange choice in my opinion as locations make a gameplay difference and thus provide variety.
When it comes to character progression, you unlock them, collect elixir to level them up, and then pay with gold to make them stronger. Only unlocked characters appear to choose inside a match, and higher-level characters have higher stats, making it easier to win.
I'm not sure about the matchmaking rules at this stage to balance the fairness of the gameplay based on your characters' levels, but there weren't many due to the low number of players in the beta.
In conclusion, the game's progression systems are straightforward and similar to Supercell's other gameplay-focused games. So far, the only desirable investment seems to be the battle pass. I expect the monetization and meta-progression systems to improve during the upcoming soft launch stage since the current state may not allow it to scale enough in the current market conditions.
Hit or Bust?
It is remarkable how Supercell continues to astound with its simplistic yet highly engaging gameplay. From the moment you start playing, you are instantly drawn in and find yourself returning to the game time and time again… for a few days.
As much as this game has potential, in its current state, it lacks the ability to retain players for extended periods of time. As Ilkka pointed out in his annual blog post, Supercell's goal is to create entertainment that players will enjoy for decades to come. Unfortunately, Squad Busters is not quite there yet and still has a long way to go.
I hope that the Supercell team recognizes the potential limitations of the game and focuses on adding more depth to the gameplay in order to increase its longevity. They should also pay attention to monetization and meta-progression, ensuring that these elements scale well for years to come. This will help the game avoid falling into the same trap as Clash Royale, which has struggled to create value for long-term players that they would be willing to pay for.
Overall, Squad Busters is a great game, but it will require time and effort to reach its full potential. I would love to see Supercell mature and, instead of making internal changes to the game without data to rely on, release the game on the market and start conducting A/B tests to determine the best options for growth and success. Best of luck to the team!