Written by Javier Barnes, a product management , game economy and monetization specialist.

Maybe it’s the proximity of the summer coming to Helsinki, but as of lately, Supercell is on a streak of releasing betas for their upcoming games.

On May 29th, during the Squad Busters beta’s final hours (we’re working on a deconstruction of that one), Supercell started another for a new game called Floodrush. It was available in Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, the UK, and the US.

The proximity with the highly anticipated Squad Busters has caused many analysts and fans to miss out on Floodrush. So here we want to give a quick look at it.

But before you continue, I’d like to make a disclaimer: As you know, I always try to offer an exhaustive and impartial assessment of the games I write about.

Be warned that this time it will be more superficial than the usual, I only had a limited amount of time to play. Because of that, I’m more influenced by my personal bias since I’m likely not the target of the game. In other words, I didn’t enjoy Floodrush, and I will try to explain to you why.

Floodrush versus Squad Busters?

The timing of the Floodrush beta is puzzling because playing Squad Busters just before Floodrush remarks the weaknesses in the latter.

I find the comparison unavoidable: They share many similarities and core concepts. Both games offer a Battle Royale-esque experience, where players have indirect control over a mob of troops that is built with resources collected during the match, and leading to a final clash in a small area.

When comparing Floodrush and Squad Busters they don’t feel like two distinct games. Instead, they feel more like witnessing different outcomes of a game jam around the same idea. This raises the question: Are they perhaps competing internally against each other?

At first glance, it might seem that the close timing of the betas might be deliberate: It would allow comparing engagement metrics to better assess which one has more chances to become a hit.

I’m a bit skeptical about that being the intention, though: For starters, what are they comparing exactly? Squad Busters is highly polished right now, while Floodrush is in a much more rough state.

And the country mix is completely different: Squad Busters ran their latest beta in an atypical group formed by Canada, Spain, and Mexico, while Floodrush is in a more classic ‘Anglo markets + Singapore’. This is confusing because those country mixes don’t seem to be comparable with each other.

So ultimately, despite the undeniable similarities and timing of the beta, my POV is that there’s no master plan behind it. Just a weird coincidence.

Brief description of Floodrush’s gameplay

Note: This description is based on the Survival mode, which AFAIK was the only one available in the beta. It was hinted that there might be others in the future, but I suspect that the basics won’t change much.

Floodrush is a Battle Royale with short matches (~4 minutes), where 8 players compete to be the last survivor. To do so, they need to collect resources and build an army during the match.

Matches happen on a map shaped like a rounded island, where the player is supposed to move to the sides collecting resources to build their teams and fight opponents, and progressively move to the inner circles as the match progresses.

In regular intervals (ranging from 30 to 60 seconds), the flood rises and the outer circle of the map becomes unavailable (instant death), forcing the surviving players to eventually meet in the central area for the final clash:

The ‘resources area’ of the map seems to vary between matches, with obstacles located in different positions (although perhaps I was just spawning in different zones). And the location of chests, PvE enemies, and interactable seems randomized as well.

These small elements of randomness pursue two objectives: To avoid making the game feel repetitive by adding a variation on every match and to allow the player to blame poor luck rather than their lack of skills for failing. But overall, in my opinion, the variations are too small, don’t translate into meaningful changes in the gameplay, and don't attain any of the goals.

The main twist on the BR formula is that the player character (Seeker) cannot attack. What it does is summon friendly units that are the ones fighting. These minions follow the Seeker, but have a mind of their own, deciding how and when to engage enemies, and only disengage from combat when the Seeker moves quite far away from them, which is challenging because the playable character is very slow.

To contribute to combat more directly, each Seeker has a unique skill with a long cooldown (30s to 60s). And during the match, the player can find consumable items, like a bomb that does area damage. This consumable item mechanic is the same in Squad Busters, which speaks of knowledge sharing between the teams.

There’s an element of interaction as well in players collecting resources and summoning new troops while combat is ongoing, which can be a bit challenging because it’s hard to understand what’s going on in the battle.

But even with that, the combat feels very passive because the minions fight automatically and players can’t control their positioning, formations, or targets, nor activate special skills on them.

Same as in Squad Busters, a big part of the gameplay is based on collecting resources and building the team: Players start with a single summonable unit of their choice. And during the match, players find randomly distributed chests that grant ‘cards’ of different quality depending on the chest, which allows the summoning of different units.

So again, same as in Squad Busters, players don’t go into the match with a pre-selected team, and instead they must adapt to what they randomly roll during the match.

In both games, that is a great incentive for players to diversify their upgrades across the whole roster of units. This seems to be Supercell's solution to avoid gacha mechanics in upcoming games. Instead of charging players to roll boxes until they get the character they wanted while they ignore the rest, they unlock the characters with progression but require players to upgrade them all.

In Floodrush, units are summoned using a matching currency called Taika (which I’ve been told means “magic” in Finnish). Taika is collected in Chests, by defeating PvE enemies and through some map interactable like plants or oysters. These also grant gold coins, the soft currency of the game that allows buying character upgrades outside of the match.

Overall, the minions follow basic and well-known gameplay archetypes such as slow tank, ranged, shotgun, zerg rush melee, etc. These meat and potato units are less surprising, complex, or unique than in Squad Busters, and do not alter the player’s strategy as much.

One final point in terms of gameplay worth highlighting is the strange choice of controls. Instead of using a joystick, which would be the logical choice since the player controls a single character, Floodrush uses a “tap to move” system as if it was an RTS (real-time strategy game). This provides no obvious benefit for the player, as the player can’t control multiple units. Tap-to-move also creates an awkward and unnatural movement system on mobile. It could feel better on a tablet, but given that the tablet market is tiny compared to mobile, this choice of controls seems off.

Outside combat, there are basic upgrade systems for the troops and Seekers, likely there as a placeholder. Similarly to Clash Royale, upgrades grant XP that unlocks new content and increases the HP of the hero.

And in a very placeholder state as well, there’s also a Quest System that generates progression in a Reward Road, which has a couple of extra subsystems like timer rewards. The reward road has minimal UI which makes the navigation a bit confusing, at least for me.

The Verdict: Stick to Squad Busters for now

Frankly, I didn’t enjoy the Floodrush beta that much.

I felt it was a forgettable experience, and I’m not too excited about its future updates. There are some interesting ideas in Floodrush. But I believe most of them - if not all - are currently executed way better in Squad Busters.

I’m aware that what we’ve seen is a very early and rough version of Floodrush. But in my opinion, many of its issues are at the prototype level. Even more, solving its immediate issues risks making Floodrush even more similar to Squad Busters, which has already tackled those problems.

What could have been better:

PVP combat is too passive and lacks enough skill factor. There are few things to do other than watch the combat unfold. Troops cannot be individually directed, arranged in different formations, or cast special skills, which limits the tactical depth. And the actions available (summon more troops, skills…) are limited and don’t seem to have the capacity to turn the tide. All of this makes combat feel boring and removes the skill factor. Whoever had the bigger army won the battle.
In Squad Busters, despite the fact that combat is also automatic, there is skill around repositioning troops, and disengaging doesn’t cost you the match thanks to the option to sprint. Design choices in Squad Busters made the combat feel way more dynamic and it offered a bigger skill component for players to master.
The team building just wasn’t exciting. Firstly, in Floodrush, players don’t make meaningful choices when building the team, since unit choices happen less often and are less impactful to gameplay than in Squad Busters. Secondly, because Seekers move so slowly, players don't find each other early in the match, which removes the element of danger while gathering resources. In Squad Busters, you’re constantly exposed to the risk of finding other players, making it a more intense experience. As a consequence, in Floodrush the early match feels long and boring.
The match structure is too simple and repetitive. In Squad Busters, there are many things going on on the map, such as bosses, the Gem Bank in the center, etc. All these elements add a layer of mastery and timing. Additionally, Squad Buster’s troops are very unique. So depending on the squad you’re building, your gameplay will be completely different. There are also gameplay modifiers (Mods) in every match. In contrast, in Floodrush the match structure lacks secondary goals and has no variations, and different troops do not change the gameplay. The only randomizing element is the spawn of chests and their content, which is not enough to make matches feel truly different and interesting.
There’s no rubberbanding. If you begin to fall behind, you’re guaranteed to lose the match. Disengaging from unsuccessful combat takes a lot of time because the Seeker is very slow. So few troops will survive, and there will be no time to gather resources. This removes the possibility for players to make a comeback. In Squad Busters, this is solved by making troop costs increase based on how many you have, which makes losing players be able to catch up fast and keeps things interesting. But since in Floodrush costs are fixed, players that get an early advantage just keep snowballing until they win.
The ‘tap to move’ is a poor way to play the game. As previously mentioned, the ‘tap to move’ approach doesn’t make sense since the player only controls a single character, and feels less intuitive and immersive than a joystick.

Ultimately, I think in its current state Floodrush lacks enough gameplay intensity to be mass appeal and competes too directly with Squad Busters to shine on its own. I just don’t see how it can become a billion-dollar game.

In my opinion, succeeding would require Floodrush to return back to the drawing board and find what is truly needed to fulfill its promise of delivering mobile-friendly RTS.

But again that’s just my opinion as a player and a game developer. I’m fully aware that I may not be the target audience and that there are for sure many people who truly enjoyed their experience with the game.

Last but not least, I’m painfully aware of how uncool it is to criticize a new game whose team has put in their best effort and goodwill. My goal is not to demotivate anyone In fact, I look forward to eating my words in the next Floodrush beta! Are you still curious and want more Floodrush analysis content?

Then I suggest you check out the two & half-gamers’ session about it, where our friends Matej, Jakub, and Felix dissect the game in-depth while playing it.