The analytical company Playliner has released a study on the types of battles and character development in mobile games of the battler genre. We publish part of this study with the permission of the authors.

We have studied the Top 300 box office games in the USA. According to the results of our research, buttler is one of the most popular and profitable mobile genres. In the gaming box office Top 300 of Google Play USA, 18% belong to this genre, in the similar top of the US App Store – 15%. The share of buttlers in the tops has remained significant for two years now.

The gameplay in battlers revolves around the goal of creating the strongest possible squad for victories in battles and tournaments, achieving first places in the game rankings.

The two main components of the battler are combat and character development.

Distribution of battle types in battlers

At the moment, there has not yet been a unified classification system for various types of combat systems in battlers. This is due to the rapidly changing market trends and the rethinking of old client and browser genres on the mobile platform. Therefore, for mechanics for which there is no generally accepted terminology, we will use our own, giving explanations.

We classified the battlers by type of combat without reference to the meta-mechanics of the game. The diagram shows the types of combat in the studied games.

Heroes Charge (25%)

Games that are more or less analogs of Heroes Charge belong to this type. These games are very similar to each other. A characteristic feature is the automatic character combat, in which the player uses special abilities of the heroes when they accumulate energy. Most often, such games have a bright cartoon 2D style. The emphasis in such games is on choosing the right moment to use the ability.

Dragon Soul and Dragon Blaze Chapter 2

Note that Heroes Charge, released in August 2014, is far from the first game released with this type of battle. For example, the game Seven Knights was released in March 2014. In December 2012, the Knights & Dragons game was released, which is still in the top, and the fight in which can be called the progenitor of the fight in Heroes Charge. But these games have slightly different meta-mechanics.

Seven Knights and Knights & Dragons Action RPG

As a rule, all games with this type of combat were released in late 2014, early 2015. New games with similar mechanics almost do not get into the top. This probably means that you should not blindly copy the Heroes Charge combat system.

Some developers in their projects experiment with borrowed mechanics, slightly complicating the battle. For example, in the game Super Evolution (released in January 2016), the ability to move heroes along horizontal “tracks” has been added. In Light: FellowShip of Loux (released in April 2016), special abilities can be used when total mana has accumulated.

Super Evolution and Light: FellowShip of Loux

Step-by-step (12%)

Fights of this type are quieter than in Heroes Charge, they have time to think. The characters of the player and the enemy take turns. The tactic is to correctly choose the type of attack, the opponent and who the player attacks on his turn. These elements can be cut down in different games, for example, you are given a choice only of your character, but not an opponent.

The Walking Dead –Road To Survival and Summoners’ War

As a rule, games with this type of combat are developed according to franchises – Marvel: Avengers Alliance 2, Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes, The Walking Dead –Road To Survival, etc. Indirectly, this indicates a small chance of getting into the top games with turn-based combat, without having a big brand behind them.

“Japanese” fight (12%)

We singled out this group due to the obvious Asian style of fighting, paying less attention to the mechanics of combat itself.

Firstly, these games have a vertical orientation of the screen, secondly, there are anime characters in it, and thirdly, there are clever combat control systems with chains and combos. For example, in the game One Piece Treasure Cruise, after the hero hits the enemy, inscriptions like BOOM appear above the latter, which begin to gather at one point. As soon as they have gathered, it is necessary to use the ability of another character in time to create a combo. In the Unison League game, the indicator of the Unison button fills up, when you press it, the screen darkens, everything starts to flicker and explode, the characters hit at the same time.

One Piece Treasure Cruise and Unison League

Games of this type are worth paying close attention to, because they often contain interesting ideas. Maybe the next trend is the adaptation and simplification of some of these Asian games.

Autoboy (12%)

A variant of the battle in which the player can’t do anything at all, the maximum is to tap on the screen or press the “beat” button. The most useful button in these games is “skip the fight”.

Dark Summoner and Underworld Empire

Now there are no games with such a “fight”. Developers of old projects with similar mechanics are trying, by introducing new functionality, to add more diverse and tactically interesting fights for the player. In the same Dark Summoner, there are several modes with turn-based battles.

Card cards (17%)

This type is characterized by the fact that cards act as units/heroes here. Combat mechanics can be different, but most often they are turn-based battles with additional rules /mechanics.

Deck Heroes and Valkyrie Crusade

Note that the newest game of this kind, which is in the top – SpellStone – was released in May 2015.

Puzzle (6%)

The combat mechanics in such games are puzzles (match-3, slots, and so on).

Battle Camp and Puzzle And Dragons

There are very few of these games in the top. All of them are very old (2012-2013’s). Match-3 battlers were popular before and mainly in Asia. Among the successful games in the West, Best Fiends is the most noticeable.

Old School (4%)

In games of this type, the combat mechanics are the same as in Heroes Charge games: often turn-based, with the activation of special abilities, abilities and the like. But they look so out of date that we decided to single them out separately. Their appearance and logic are often copied from popular browser and social games in Asia. Sometimes these are even direct ports. For example, Wartune.

FallenSouls and Wartune Hall of Heroes

Original (12%)

Such fights are found in the only copies in the top. At the same time, they look quite interesting.

Blood Brothers 2

It would seem to be a card game, but with a lot of innovations. Plus, there are very interesting animations of troops made here. It is unlikely that the developers would do such an unusual battle in their first game.

Dragon Ball Z Dokkan Battle

In this game, the combat mechanics are a cross between puzzle combat and standard “Japanese” combat.

Dungeon Link

Puzzle is a battle in which instead of circles, diamonds or candies there are monsters right on the playing field. To strike a combo blow, thanks to which powerful damage will be inflicted, you need to run the heroes through all the cells of the playing field. This makes you think at the start of each level. If the problem was solved, the player gets satisfaction.

Neo Monsters

A paid project with in-game purchases, which is in the top box office games. At the same time, step-by-step combat looks very inexpensive. We doubt that the success of this game is precisely in the action, but we pay attention to the possible budget of the project.

Heroes Tactics

This project uses combat mechanics, visually reminiscent of a similar one from the Heroes of Might & Magic series.

The Walking Dead – No Man’s Land

When developing a game based on a popular franchise, developers can afford to experiment with tactical turn-based battles in a heavy, but very beautiful 3D design.

What to expect from the mechanics of battles in the future?

It is impossible to call the combat mechanics of the first mobile battlers interesting. In Rage of Bahamut (spring 2012), the first world-famous battler, the gameplay boils down to taps. Released six months later, Puzzle & Dragons gave a powerful new impetus to the genre, giving players the illusion that their actions in battle affect the outcome of the battle.

The next major step in the development of the genre was the release of Heroes Charge (2014), which perfected the control scheme of special abilities in combat. Now modern buttler hits, as a rule, use this mechanic.

It seems to us that the next evolutionary leap of combat in battlers will be the evolution of special abilities towards combo strikes and combinations of character skills. For example, one character has a special ability – shooting a magic bow, the other – throwing fireballs. If the arrow was fired immediately after the fireball was thrown, then it flies into this ball, it splits into several small ones and hits a larger number of enemies.

There is a huge scope for implementing ideas that can be gleaned from Asian and puzzle games. It makes no sense to release another clone of Heroes Charge without unique interesting features of the battle.

The second important component of the butlers is the development scheme of the player’s characters. You can find out about this component in the full version of the study here.