Gameplay analysis of Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans has been at the top of the App Store box office for several months now. Kevin Oke, lead designer of Adrian Crook & Associates, an autosource game mechanic company, in an article on Inside Mobile Apps examines in detail why the Supercell project is so successful. 

In builders and farms, one of the main problems is that the player has nothing to do during the “carrot growing”. The user logged in, clicked on the bed, and then left, because he has nothing to do in the game between making decisions. In principle, he can swap a couple of beds, but this is where the interaction with the project ends. 

At first glance, Clash of Clans has not gone far from this. But the game has a “second bottom”: the location of buildings, walls, traps and fortifications depends on whether the enemy can steal your resources or not. Therefore, the user is forced to build buildings based not on abstract ideas about the beautiful, but trying to minimize future losses. 

The advantages of this approach are obvious:

• the game becomes more meaningful
• the game increases the duration of the session (a level 20 player can easily spend half an hour rebuilding the defense)
• gameplay organically stimulates IAP (“I could defend the southern side of my base with just two guns if they were improved, but I don’t have enough funds for this, however, if I don’t improve them, the base will be vulnerable“, such a train of thought, not uncommon for players in Clash of Clans, leads to IAP)
• the layout of each individual village is unique. Uniqueness leads to a gamer’s attachment to the village. This, in turn, leads to long-term involvement in the project.  

Optimization of the game cycle

In fact, the optimization task is to ensure that the player returns to the game as often as possible and spends as much time in it as possible. Its classic example in social games a la Farmville looks like this: the player is searching for seeds with the best coin/experience ratio. In this case, optimization helps in terms of long-term involvement of players and increasing its complexity (it is necessary to make calculations, taking into account numerous parameters – the price of seeds, growth time, amount of experience). In projects of a competitive plan, this also encourages users to play more aggressively. 

Optimization of the game cycle in Clash of Clans is concentrated around the accumulation of resources and raids. 

The first part is standard. As in other farms, in order to achieve the greatest efficiency, the user must return to the game every time the warehouses reach the capacity limit. Didn’t come back on time? I lost the resources that could have accumulated if the harvest had been harvested at the right time.

The PvP component is much more interesting here. Mountains of collected gold and liters of elixir make you a desirable prey in the eyes of other users. This forces players to return to the game as often as possible, to their base for several reasons:

• to collect resources from mines to storage facilities, which are usually much better protected
• to spend the collected resources as quickly as possible

Important clarification: the player can build a strictly limited number of defensive structures (the number of available guns, towers, walls depends on the level of the municipality). For this reason, it is not possible to protect all buildings well. We have to make compromises. 

More precisely, a compromise is to strengthen the protection of storage facilities by taking out mines and drilling rigs outside the walls of the base.  The last step, in turn, forces, as already mentioned above, to appear in the game as often as possible in order to transfer resources to fortified storages. 

Yes, the process of accumulation itself becomes risky in such conditions. The more time you spent collecting resources, the higher the risk of losing your savings during an enemy raid on your base. To prevent this from happening, after each defeat, the base is automatically put on defense against an attack for some time. Plus, the player can buy such protection himself for real money. 

Replay

The replay was not added immediately, but now Clash of Clans is hard to imagine without this feature. Thanks to it, the player can observe how the enemy led the siege of the base. This allows you not only to understand the weaknesses in your defense, but also to find out how you can attack other people’s bases more effectively in the future.

Pushy

Notifications in Clash of Clans are useful, carry important information, and also return the player back to the project. Push notifications that the base has been attacked are very effective both in terms of retention and monetization. Stolen resources force the player to accumulate resources again. This, in turn, leads to the IAP of those players who are tired of waiting and want to finally “knock off that huge cannon“. 

Total

Clash of Clans earns a lot, and besides, it is an excellent project optimized in terms of gameplay, deserving the attention of every self-respecting game designer.

P.S. anyone interested in App2Top is also recommended to visit the Clash Of Clans Wiki. Here you can find detailed information about how much, for example, the vault holds gold from the first to the eleventh level.