Analysis of the Boom Beach gameplay

Boom Beach is Supercell's fifth worldwide release. And the third one is successful. The game is currently in the Top 10 box office apps in more than 80 countries, including the USA. A detailed analysis of the gameplay is in our material.

The reaction of many users who saw Boom Beach! for the first time is as follows: “and the Clash of Clans developers made a clone of their own game.”

Rajeev Nagpal, former product director at Digital Chocolate, Zynga and TinyCo, completely disagrees with this.”Boom Beach is unlike Clash of Clans. It is unlike, mainly due to serious differences in combat mechanics. Supercell has done an amazing job of preserving the part that basically generated money (construction and improvements) and seriously changed the battles.”

Mikhail Katkoff, who currently holds the position of executive producer at Zynga, agrees with him: “Despite several similarities, Boom Beach is inherently a new, unique game.”

Nagpal also notes that once again Supercell's inspiration came from the creations of the American studio Kixeye: "Boom Beach is the most simplified version of two Kixeye projects at once — War Commander and Battle Pirates. Clash of Clans was a casual version of their other title, Backyard Monsters."

Reference: Kixeye develops and publishes hardcore browser strategies. It was established in 2007. I started with the development of Flash games. The company released the first hardcore title Backyard Monsters in May 2010. Today, the company employs more than 400 employees. Kixeye operates five free-to-play games, whose total MAU is more than 5 million.

And indeed, with close acquaintance with War Commander and Battle Pirates, the question of where the Finns drew inspiration from is removed.

Another funny thing is that in 2011, Kixeye stated that it aims to make time managers for real gamers, games that the company itself would be interested in developing. This policy has borne fruit. The company has occupied a certain niche, regularly generating income for Kixeye. But the company that decided not to turn away from a wide audience was able to make really good money on the solutions it implemented.

Returning to Boom Beach.

Our analysis of the latest Supercell game is structured as follows: we go from a brief concept of the project to a description of its game cycle, through the prism of which we consider the main components of the game.

Content:

1. A brief concept
2. Game cycle
3. Consumables
4. Price dynamics
5. The construction part of the game
6. Macrochast
7. Battles

1. A brief concept of the game

In Boom Beach, the player acts as the commander of a military base located on one of the many islands of the archipelago somewhere in the ocean. The player rebuilds the base (erects resource and defensive structures), forms a fleet (builds landing ships, puts mercenaries on them), attacks the bases of other players (he opens access to them by removing the "fog of war" from the map), receives experience and resources for this, which go to further improve the base. Victory points earned for battles affect the ranking position.

2. The game cycle

According to the founder of GameAnalytics, Matthias Hansen, the game can be reduced to one game cycle, which is divided, as in Clash of Clans, into three components: resource collection, construction and improvement, and war.

You collect resources, build buildings by spending resources, then attack, earn money from it, collect resources and build something again.

The scheme is accurate and, importantly, demonstrates the variety of consumables, which we will talk about later, as well as the presence of a single game cycle.

At the same time, we cannot but cite another gameplay scheme of the game – from ANIL DG, producer and designer of Mind Candy. He breaks the Boom Beach game cycle into two components: construction and combat.

DJI considers awards (resources) to be the central component uniting the construction and combat units.

In my opinion, it is less obvious, so we settled on Hansen's scheme, decided to consider each stage of the game cycle using its example.

3. Consumables

Consumables are all game variables that the user can somehow earn or spend in the game.

There are five types of consumables in the game.

Hard currency

Diamonds are a familiar free–to-play consumable. There are several sources of diamonds in the game.

• They can be bought for real money;
• They are awarded for completing achievements in the game;
• every day a small number of them are generated on the world map;
• In case of an attack on your settlement, you also get diamonds.

Important: crystals are the only resource that can be purchased for real money.

Hard currency is spent on:

• Accelerating the production of anything;
• replacement of the soft currency necessary for the production of something.

Soft currency

Soft currency is also a familiar aspect of such games. It is extracted in different ways:

• It is generated automatically in the corresponding buildings;
• Generated on captured islands;
• It is given as a bonus for battles;
• Wood and stone can also be obtained by cutting down trees and breaking stones, respectively, at your base.

Unlike a hard currency, it has a storage limit (depending on the storage level of the corresponding resource).

Its surpluses are lost.

Important: soft currency cannot be bought with real money at all. If you do not have enough resources to build / buy / improve anything, the game suggests adding several crystals according to the course set by the developers.

There are four types of soft currency in the game:

• Gold is spent on buying troops, upgrading them, upgrading the gunboat, opening new zones and attacking.
• The tree is used in the improvement and construction of all buildings in the game.
• Stone is used in the improvement and construction of all buildings in the game at a relatively high level of development.
• Iron is used in the improvement and construction of all buildings in the game at the highest level of development.

Social consumables

As a rule, they are not considered consumables, however, the fact that a player's actions in Boom Beach can lead to both an increase and a decrease in them allowed us to talk about game victory points as a kind of consumables.

Victory points are awarded for exploring territories and winning battles. They affect the position in the top. They are taken away if the battle is lost (including in the case of looting of your base and capture by another player of one of your villages).

Consumables for the Builder building

It is a rare case when, within the framework of the gaming ecosystem, another chain operates around one of the gaming buildings, and even operates with almost 13 types of resources.

So, there is a “Builder” building in the game. With its help, statues are erected that work as permanent passive game bonuses. Statues are being erected for crystals. Crystals are given out in case of an attack on other settlements (but not always).

Crystals are divided by size into three types (a fragment of a crystal, a piece of a crystal and a whole crystal), each of which is further divided by color into four types. To build a small statue of a certain color, you need to collect several fragments of the same color to build a larger statue, several pieces of crystals, and so on.

• Green statues (life) give bonuses in construction and production;
• Red statues (magma) increase the strength and health of troops;
• Purple statues (darkness) increase the possible reward for battles, ship energy;
• Blue statues (ice) increase the power of combat structures.

The performance of the statues is also affected by the power powder. This is a resource that the player receives for upgrading statues. The Power Powder temporarily doubles the bonus given by the statues.

Crystal hunting is not the main, but a pleasant component that stimulates the combat part of the game.

Military supplies

Another consumable, which is rather a property of one of the units. We put it in the consumables, because the player can increase its number during the battle.

A military resource is the charges that are spent by a gunboat during an attack on an enemy settlement. The maximum number of them at the beginning of the attack depends on the level of the gunboat. During the battle, the number of charges can be replenished if soldiers destroy buildings. Replenished instantly with every battle.

Six possible attacking bonuses are purchased for charges during combat.

Total resources

On paper, you can get lost in all this diversity. The great advantage of Boom Beach is that, despite, in fact, 22 game consumables (!), even a casual player can easily figure it all out.

There are three secrets.

The first secret: at the beginning of the game, the user is presented with only three types of resources (diamonds, gold and wood), over time (after a couple of hours of play) they also have to think about two more (stone and gold).

The second secret: consumables are divided into logical groups (this one is for money, these are resources, it's generally necessary to save for bonuses, and this is a gunboat clip, and so on).

The third secret: roughly speaking, the user needs to think only about resources. Yes, the player can draw, conditionally, diagrams of which attack strategy will be most effective if there are three types of gunboat attack and with the number of charges equal to 22, but this is not necessary to enjoy the game.

On the reasons for the diversity of the soft currency (+ on price dynamics)

As many as three building resources (wood, stone and iron) were introduced into the game, of course, for a reason. There are a lot of moments in Boom Beach, whose task, mainly, is to prevent content from burning out quickly. Two additional, at first glance, unnecessary resources are just from this "opera".

A large number of resource types forces the player to repeatedly go through cycles of accumulation and spending throughout the game (first you need a little wood, then more, then even more, and then a stone appeared, which you need a little bit first, then a little more, and so on).

The player is being twisted more and more, forced to do more and more actions in the game, as well as wait more and save more. But, it is important, this is not done immediately (they do not give a butt to the head, forcing them to accumulate all kinds of resources at once), but gradually.

What else do the main resources provide?

• New buildings (mines and storages) that slow down the development of the base, because they need to be built and improved (slow burnout of content);
• Slowing down the passage of the main game cycle (slow burnout of content);
• An additional incentive to attack enemy bases (rare resources can be collected faster by attacking, rather than waiting for the "farm" at the home base to generate them);
• Increased spending of hard currency on buildings (there are always not enough additional resources, it is easier to replace a thousand stones with a dozen collected diamonds).

The problem with the diversity of resources is the same: developers need to take into account the importance of each building, each update in the price plan, parallelize this value into three streams, and also play with the diamond rate in relation to each resource.

It's difficult, it takes months of testing.

Yes, another reason why so many construction resources could have been introduced is to solve the problem of slow progress at high levels.

If there was only one resource, developers would have to choose either to make the price curve for buildings and upgrades such that the content would not burn out (for this, each new improvement would have to cost a lot), but then the dynamics would suffer. Or, accordingly, leave the curve less steep, but churn out more content.

Resources have solved this problem by laying down several not very steep price curves at once, generally repeating each other.

I have built two graphs of the price dynamics for the upgrade of two different buildings to demonstrate this.

The first graph: Price dynamics of the improvement of the "Gold Vault" (level 1 -10)

In a particular case, it is important to understand that the 10 level of the gold vault is currently the maximum, but, in general, it is clear that in Boom Beach additional resources play the role of a "sinker", they add complexity to accumulation, and their dynamics of value formation, in general, is similar between all types

Second graph: Price dynamics of the Gunboat upgrade (level 1-10)

It may seem that the gunboat has a completely different price dynamics, but it is important to understand that level 10 is not the maximum for it. If all 20 levels are taken into account, then the dynamics will not differ much.

Price dynamics of Gunboat improvements (level 1 — 20)

Of course, with one correction – the cost in hardware remains the same when reaching the 1 million mark with the next upgrade. But the dynamics of price growth of wood and stone are very similar.

Construction

An important difference between Boom Beach and Clash of Clans (and another point that makes the game related to hardcore games like those made by Kabam) is that at a certain point in time, only one building can be built/improved.

This decision was most likely also made in connection with the desire to slow down the burning of content, since, obviously, the inability to build several buildings at the same time greatly slows down progress.

Plus, as you know, the main thing that time managers earn is human impatience. With the abandonment of the opportunity to erect a larger number of builders' gatehouses, Supercell has increased the efficiency of monetization points. If earlier it was possible to persuade yourself to wait, because up to five construction sites could work at the same time, now you always need to wait.

In the construction part, the player builds three types of buildings:

• Responsible for the economy (production and storage of resources);
• Responsible for protection (they are, in fact, designed to protect accumulated resources from other players);
• Responsible for support (buildings, building troops, improving them).

Every building can and should be improved. The main building is the "Headquarters". The higher its level, the more types of buildings and more of them can be built.

Simply put: almost every type of building has two types of binding to the headquarters level: the maximum possible number of buildings and their maximum level.

The first example

The "Residence" building, which generates gold, can be erected if there is a first-level headquarters. A second residence only after upgrading the headquarters to the second level. The fourth one will be allowed to be rebuilt only if you have built a seventh-level headquarters.

Improvements follow a similar pattern. You will be allowed to upgrade the residence to the second level at the headquarters of the first. For the third level of the residence, however, it will be necessary to upgrade the headquarters to the second level and so on.

It is clear that each subsequent upgrade requires an increasing number and, importantly, the number of resources.

Example two

To produce a level 1 tank, a level 11 headquarters is needed in the armory. But for the production of a level 3 tank, a level 10 armory is required, for the construction of which a level 12 headquarters is needed, and so on.

There is no direct connection between the secondary buildings. That is, if you want a cool gun, you don't need to build, for example, any guild of builders/architects. This is a plus, because it deprives the game of a complex hierarchy.

However, there is still a certain connection (cycle) between them. It's simple:

A cool new building

Requires

New headquarters

Requires

Higher player level

Requires

Construction and upgrade of all other buildings

So it turns out that in order to build something cool, you first need to build everything that can be built. The cycle turned out to be a bit rough, there are more specific bundles, of course, but the scheme works like this.

Macro level

In addition to the base, there is also a map of the archipelago. As already mentioned, she initially drowns in the “fog of war". The fog of war is revealed in small pieces for money. To be able to open a couple of extra pieces for money, it is necessary to build and then constantly improve the radar at the base.

The map of the archipelago is something like the map from the single Clash of Clans. An important difference: it has bases and villages not of virtual opponents, but of real players. Villages, upon successful attack, pass to you, after which they generate gold. The following happens to the bases of real players: for you, they turn into ordinary villages.

In other words, there is essentially no PvC in Boom Beach. There is an asynchronous PvP that pretends to be PvC.

There are also resource bases on the map that generate not gold, but one or another type of resource and may also belong to other players. Unlike villages, buildings and military guns can be rearranged in them, as well as at the main base.

With regard to the map, it should be noted that: if Clash of Clans had the opportunity to scroll through dozens of databases in search of "meat", then Boom Beach does not have such an opportunity. Instead, when dispelling the "fog of war", the player is selected by those rivals who are closest to him in medals, and, attention, whom he most likely will not be able to defeat the first time.

Another interesting point is the constant "tug of war". There is a constant war going on for villages (not bases). Such villages are captured relatively easily, so this, conditionally, component is more dynamic than the one in which there is an attempt to capture enemy bases.

So that life does not seem like honey, after each "flag change" the villages rise in level (this means that the number and level of protective weapons in the village or resource base increases).

A small addition: in fact, there is still some minimal PvC, these are events, as well as rare “plot” bases, for which delicious buns are given. But PvC is kept to a minimum.

The archipelago map plays an important but “bonus” role in the economy of the game (generates resources) and stimulates the military component (was the village taken away from the player? he went to return it).

Battles

In order to attack another village or base, it is enough to tap on the enemy's fortification on the map of the archipelago. This displays a window that offers to look at the base, attack (gold is spent on the attack, the amount required for the attack depends on the player's level).

The battles are very similar to those in Clash of Clans. That is: you land troops with a tap in the right place and wait for what it will lead to.

But there are nuances.

• The landing of troops can only take place from one side of the enemy base;
• Units now have no "preferences", they shoot at what they see;
• The player is now more immersed in the action, as a gunboat support vessel has appeared. You can decide which type of projectile to use (medpack, shock shell, smoke screen, flyer indicating to the troops what to attack). This has greatly changed the combat unit. The battles began to resemble Majesty with its indirect control;
• Any battle ends in either complete victory or defeat. There are no stars for destroying 50% of the base. The player must destroy the enemy headquarters to win. This has impaled the warhead;
• The surviving troops are preserved rather than disappearing after the battles. The latter also had a very serious impact on the dynamics, but at the same time, most likely, it affected spending on hard currency. The fact is that now you can carry out an unlimited number of attacks in a row, if each battle is successful. The scheme “won, ordered troops, paid for instant spawn, went on the attack” now does not always work.

Battles, like the archipelago map, bring resources to the player.

They take us back to the beginning of the cycle. And to an important component called gaming “experience". It depends on him:

• The maximum possible level of staff;
• The amount spent on an attack.

It increases in only one way — by building new buildings and upgrading them.

Because of this, experience turns out to be an extremely important component of the gaming economy. In a way, it is a replacement for the hierarchy of buildings and one of the important points that increases the consumption of gold, whose consumption in the game is the slowest.

Actually, that's it.

Instead of a conclusion

The game is still at a very early stage of development. The pricing in the game is complicated and is still being corrected, as are the dynamics of the battles and the visual appearance of the units. The game lacks clans, the construction part, sorry, is not as pleasing as in "clashes". But all this does not mean that getting to know the game should be postponed further.

Yes, if you find that we forgot something when describing the project, write.

One more conclusion

Initially, we planned to publish a translation of an article about Boom Beach, but in the end it turned out that none of them satisfied us. But we did use some things when writing:

• Boom Beach, Is Supercell Set To Eat Kixeye’s Lunch All Over Again?
• Boom Beach – Beta Deconstruction
• Can Supercell do it again? Boom Beach analyzed
• What is Supercell’s strategy with Boom Beach?
• Boom Beach — Developing the Next Big Thing
• The Unofficial Guide: Boom Beach application (in general, such things are a storehouse of knowledge, saves a lot of time on data collection and analysis).