Boom Beach - Developing the Next Big Thing
It’s been well over a year since Supercell last launched a game globally.
Boom Beach
, company’s likely new global title has been crushing it in the Canadian App Store for 2 months now and its safe to say that fans and the game industry are waiting for the game’s global launch.
In many blogs and posts Boom Beach has been mistakenly
described as Supercell’s own Clash of Clans clone. But despite several similarities at the core Boom Beach is a very unique game, which creates some unique hurdles.
In this post I will deconstruct the game and pointing out the key core differences between Clash of Clans and Boom Beach. As the game is still in soft launch phase during writing of this post, I'll also pay attention to elements in the game that will most likely be addressed before global launch. Finally I will discuss opportunities, which Boom Beach has not yet seized.
1. Battle Mechanics – the Unexpected Hurdle
Personally I love Boom Beach’s battle mechanics. They give players just enough control to make the battle tactical, but keep the gameplay at large enough scale so players don’t need to micromanage the battle. I also enjoy how unlike in Clash of Clans, attacking doesn’t consume your deployed troops unless your troops fall during the battle. But, despite looking and feeling great, the design for battle is actually the most troublesome element of the game leading to many unexpected issues.
The main issue with the game’s battle is that the only way to win is by destroying the enemy HQ. So, instead of tower defense, the battle actually follows game design of capture-the-flag games. This leads to a situation where failed attacks result in purely negative consequence as a player loses his troops and doesn’t get any loot in return. A design intensified by the fact that
attacks from other players can come only from single direction.
Battle design also restricts creative home base design, as the HQ is the only building players needs to guard. Because of all these factors, designing defenses of your base tends to be quite unimaginative.
Despite destroying enemy’s Vault, Gold and Wood Storages player won’t get any loot and will lose the battle. Only the destruction of HQ matters in Boom Beach.
Because of the very harsh win conditions and the inability to raid enemy bases, the PvP battles are quite unrewarding. In order to tackle the issues created by the battle mechanics, it seems that the team behind Boom Beach has taken an approach of expanding the PvE game. But instead of fixing the problem, I’m concerned that they might have created another hurdle.
There has been surprisingly little amount of updates during soft launch of
Boom Beach and the main focus seems to still be around PvE instead of PvP.
Because the AI bases are relatively easy to destroy and the player has in-consumable troops, even an unskilled player can win half a dozen battles during one session. This leads to players avoiding the punishing PvP and instead concentrating on the rewarding PvE. This turns Boom Beach currently into an awesome single player game with a lagging social game.
2. Adding Meaningful Social Gameplay
Perhaps the most interesting missing component in Boom Beach’s current version is that it lacks almost any social gameplay elements typical for the genre. There are no guild structures, no interaction between friends, no collaboration features, and no means to communicate with other players.
I believe that, again, due to the redesigned battle mechanics, adding social gameplay elements typical for the genre isn't that straightforward
.
Social elements are crucial for success of a freemium simulation game. The main goal for a player in these type of games should be to progress as fast as possible. But the speed of progress is very player-specific metric and hard to measure.
To solve the issue of progress measurability we use social mechanics. When players collaborate with each other in a game, they are bound to compare each other’s progress. Comparing progress leads to two kinds of feelings. Firstly, those players who are clearly lagging behind will want to progress and catch up with those ahead of them. On the other hand, advanced players will feel good about themselves and won’t want to lose the feeling of being ahead and above.
Redesigned battle mechanics create an unexpected hurdle for Boom Beach's future social elements. Since players don’t lose their attacking troops with every battle and there’s no defensive squad on a player’s island the demand for troop reinforcements compared to other social tower defense games is significantly lowered. And as we all know, the primary function of guilds in these types of games is unit donation between guild members. Currently Boom Beach does not only lack guild structure, but it also lacks the demand to drive collaboration between guild members if a guild structure is implemented.
Meaningful social layers creates communities. Currently it remains to be seen what
Boom Beach's social gameplay will look like.
Currently the first two weeks are pretty much nailed in Boom Beach but the lack of a social gameplay is something that yet cripples the long-term retention and monetization of progressed players. I'm very curious to see how the social element will be implemented in the game and positive that it will raise the game to a new level.
Of course troop donation the only way to drive functionality of guilds. I think what would work with Boom Beach is the same social mechanic that is used in Puzzle & Dragons (
deconstruction of Puzzle & Dragons
). Allowing players to lend landing crafts of other players for a single attack would add that missing element of collaboration.
3. Balancing Game Economy
A game’s economy is something you tweak the most during soft launch. A good game economy allows fast initial progress, which then starts slowing down, as the game economy exponentially demands more play to progress to the next level. Tweaking a game’s economy takes a lot of time, as the goal is to find the perfect balance between retention and monetization.
What I don't like as a player in Clash of Clans is that I lose all the deployed attack troops regardless of the battle outcome. I still think this is frustrating and unintuitive. I mean why should I lose my units, which have clearly won and survived a battle? Well, in Boom Beach players lose units only if they fall in the battle, which feels great, but results in game economy issues.
The combination of relatively easy AI levels, significant resource rewards for winning AI battles, and low consumption of troops all result in still rather loose game economy. Often a good way to offset surplus in the economy is to create more demand points, but this is also something where Boom Beach currently
stumbles
. The amount of buildings and especially building levels is quite low, which results in a situation where players often have enough resources for the next upgrade once the previous one is done. Working around the inter-dependable economy seems by adding upgradable buildings and building levels as well as tightening free supply of premium currency are steps that will most likely be taken.
There are four in-game resources in Boom Beach:
Gold, Wood, Stone
and
Iron
, which are gradually unlocked through in-game progress. In my opinion the game economy is broken for Gold, weak for Wood, pretty solid with Stone and great for Iron. The economies of Stone and Iron are functioning mainly because players can’t produce a lot of them. The Stone and Iron storages are small and all of the high level buildings demand these resources. This results in players attacking AI and each other to get more of these precious and scarce resources. But, because of the extremely generous supply of premium currency,
Diamonds
, players can constantly purchase the missing resources, which again wounds the economy.
Currently Boom Beach's game economy is rather loose and players seldom find themselves missing
extensive amount of resources. And when they do, often the surplus in premium currency supply off-sets the
urge to pay.
But as said before, tweaking game economy is one of the main challenges during the soft launch. Personally I'm just a big fan of economy designs and looking forward to seeing how the team behind Boom Beach will iron the game's economy on its march towards global launch.
4. Increasing Visual Progress
Boom Beach is a visually stunning game. The home island is simply gorgeous with waves striking the beach and palm trees swaying in the wind. The same applies for the very approachable yet distinctive looking characters. The problem, however, is that the game doesn’t seem to yet evolve visually. After a month of gameplay player’s island will look pretty much the same as when they started the game, with just a few more buildings and a little less trees.
Lack of visual progress is clear in this comparison between player's island after
a few days of playing and a current #1 ranked Boom Beach player in the world.
When the game is all about getting more resources and upgrading your buildings and troops there should be very clear visual feedback for these activities. Clash of Clans is a great example as with progress the puny village of the first sessions will slowly but surely transform into a massive fortress. Even the color palette in Clash of Clans changes from happy green and orange to black and purple. Besides, seeing
the home bases of more advanced players is also extremely motivating for entry-level players.
Clash of Clans is a great example of strong visual progress as over the time spent
playing the game player's small village turns into a massive fortress
Sadly the lack of visual progress in Boom Beach applies to the units as well at the moment, which look the same after upgrades. Because of this and the lack of a social layer there’s not much incentive to rush the unit upgrades. It’s not like my opponents can feel the power of my level 3 Zookas when they can’t even tell which level my units are based on their appearance.. Also, the fact that there are only five different units at the moment is seems very low to me. Even Clash of Clans launched with 10 units.
The Opportunities
When you
start playing Boom Beach
,
the first thing you say is “Wow! This is the next big thing!” The graphics, the theme, the unrivaled smoothness and the reworked battle mechanics just feel right. Yet after a good while your daily sessions start declining hand to hand with you in-game goals.
I believe that this game has the potential to be the #1 game in App Store. Yet it first has to clear out the obstacles around battle mechanics, social gameplay, game economy and visual progress as well as seize the opportunities, which the current game design allows.
The Battle Map
Progression from single player to PvP is done beautifully via map-based progression. As a player unlocks new map pieces his map is gradually populated with other players, as well as additional AI islands. Map-based PvP is also a step forward from Clash of Clans' “Find a Match” button.
While map-based progression is beautifully done, it’s also one of the biggest underperforming features. With a map populated by resource bases, conquerable islands, and a dozen of active players you’d be expecting heated battles over scarce resources driven by channels of communication, which allow chatting with other players on the map. Really, what could be more fun than forming packs, coordinating attacks and betraying your newly formed alliances to start new ones?
With all its beauty and functionality Boom Beach's map is still the most
underperforming feature and thus the biggest opportunity.
Sadly enough, Boom Beach doesn’t currently offer any interactive elements within its map feature. It's simply a tool to match players at the same level and encourage players to conquer and re-conquer AI islands.
The Gatcha
Once in a while freeing a village will grant a player a Gem. These gems can then be used to create a statue in the sculptor building. Each statue will give a player a random permanent boost to troops, defenses or resources. This could be an extremely powerful gatcha feature but at the moment it simply fails to deliver because of four main reasons: 1) the boost from a statue is insignificant, 2) all the statues look the same, 3) you can’t rob gems from other players, and 4) the amount of (inconsumable) statues, which a player can build is very limited.
Gems is a small step towards the gatcha. The feature fails yet to deliver because four reasons: 1) insignificant reward 2) lack of distinction between statues 3) players can't be robbed of construction pieces 4) in-consumable statues
Imagine the same statue feature done following benchmark gatcha mechanics. First of all, statues would be consumable allowing players to combine different statues with one another in order to create massive and rare boosts. Secondly, the main source to get Gems, which are used to construct statues, would be from other players instead of AI. Thirdly, players could be robbed of Gems in their possession. This would allow players to target each other based on missing Gems. Fourthly and finally, there would be timed events, during which players could hunt for unique gems from AI and each other.
*Correction: Boom Beach has introduced events to the game, which are a source for rare Gems
Events
There are a three key elements that tend to characterize successful in-game events. First, the event is limited in time. Second, there’s an event-specific in-consumable reward, which players receive if they are able to complete the event during given period of time. The uniqueness of the reward is important for engagement, while the in-consumable nature of the reward turns the completion reward into a status symbol. Third, giving a reward for completing an event after the actual event has ended is a way to boost retention.
I was initially thrilled to see that Boom Beach had in-game events as Supercell has been notoriously lagging in this aspect of game design with both Hay Day and Clash of Clans. The in-game event started by the introduction of Dr. Terror who prompted me to attack his island over and over again. Yet the event just didn't click. There was no promise for a reward that I’d get for beating Dr. Terror multiple of times, the attack intervals were very short at the time, and Dr. Terror’s island got exponentially tougher and in fact impossible for me to beat - emphasizing skill over time, which is something you should never do in F2P games. Finally when I ran out of time, the event ended with no notification.
Apart from balancing the event correctly I’d also suggest moving the emphasis from skill to time. This way players won’t quit the event because it’s just way too hard and actually monetize through unit training speedups in order to beat the AI opponent in given time.
Risk Well Worth Taking
Supercell’s winning recipe in game development hasn't been a secret. First you take an existing successful social game theme. Then you benchmark and reverse engineer the best titles in that genre in order to create a strong and natural core loop. You follow up by building the game around the solid core loop. Sprinkle some new and improved gameplay twists and dress it up with stunning graphics. Finally, you polish the game to perfection via soft launch in Canada. Once the game is polished and the KPIs look solid, it's time to come out with a bang and take app charts by storm.
and Boom Beach didn’t follow the winning formula. Where Hay Day imitated the best practices in farming games and Clash of Clans did the same with social tower defense titles, Boom Beach follows the beat of its own drum.
I personally think Boom Beach has the potential to be the greatest game out there, but with no clear benchmark, the task is much more harder compared to previous success titles. Luckily the team has all the time and resources they need to make it happen. I know I'll be rooting for them.
For more reading about Boom Beach:
Boom Beach Beta Deconstruction
Anil Das-Gupta (Senior Producer
@ Mind Candy)
by Matthias Hansen (CPO @ GameAnalytics)