Javier Barnes analyses Supercell’s Clash Mini, one of the three Clash franchise extensions Supercell announced back in April of 2021.

We first reviewed the title right after the Soft Launch began. And although there’s no official confirmation yet, recent hiring and community buzz points out that Mini is getting closer to a global launch.

Since the announcement much has happened. Clash Quest failed in soft launch (read: Clash Quest, the Unofficial Postmortem), the revenues of Clash Royale took a nose dive and Supercell announced their strategic initiatives (read: The 8 Things Supercell is Doing to Level Up) that focus on fixing the fact that the company hasn’t been able to launch a new game since 2018.

In other words, the pressure for Clash Mini to succeed is high. Especially since it’s the first game from the Supercell Shanghai studio established back in 2018…

It’s been more than 16 months since Supercell’s Clash Mini soft launched. And although there’s no official confirmation yet, recent hiring and community buzz points out that the game is getting ready for a global launch.

If Clash Mini achieves a hit status comparable to every other Supercell global launch before, the relevance for the company would be hard to overstate:

First, it would mean the validation of their ‘new studios’ strategy (let’s remember that Clash Mini would be the first game ever released by the Supercell Shanghai studio). 

And more importantly, it would mark the end of the 6 years long hit drought that Supercell has been suffering ever since the release of Brawl Stars in 2017, single-handedly setting the company back on the path of growth.

But are we putting too much weight on the tiny shoulders of the Minis…?
A deep analysis doesn’t show a clear path to success. Kind of the contrary.

So in this piece, we will answer two questions:

1. What has changed in Clash Mini since the beginning of the soft launch?

2. Does it currently look like it could be a hit?

Prediction: Clash Mini global launch isn’t imminent

Before jumping into those questions, it’s worth clarifying that I believe Clash Mini is still many months away from an actual global launch. My estimation is that - if it happens at all - it would happen somewhere in 2024 at the earliest.

The main reasons are (1) that the open positions are for systems & LiveOps design, and multiple artists; and (2) that the game RPD looks flat, which points out a lack of content and endgame systems.
In my opinion, this looks like they need the designers to work on the long-term systems, and the artists are to generate the extra volume of content (characters, skins…).

Integrating those newcomers into the team will take some time (potentially quite a bit if any of them relocates to Shanghai from overseas, which I doubt), and designing, implementing, and validating that the new systems improve the game ARPU will take even longer.

IMHO, a global release before the end of 2023 would be possible, but only if the expectations for Mini are to be a mediocre revenue game in the West but a powerhouse in China -- which is the situation with the autochess genre leader, Riot Games's TFT.

If that was the intention, perhaps it could make sense to launch globally early on and use the learnings to continue building a deeper meta, LiveOps capacity, and additional content while waiting for the approval to release in China. That was Riot Games’ playbook with TFT and Wild Rift.
But to be fair, it sounds like a long shot because even though the Clash of Clans IP is known among Chinese players, it’s unlikely to have anything close to the attraction power of League of Legends…

What has changed since the early soft launch?

During this year in soft launch, Clash Mini has had a more-or-less active update schedule, with a significant update being released every ~2-3 months. Each of these major updates added multiple changes, in particular, the latest one last November was quite big, overhauling many elements of the economy and game visuals.

Interestingly, updates stopped on November 22, right after that big one. There have been about 4 months without any update, which means that the team is monitoring the variations introduced or that they’re working on another massive revamp.

But have the updates been ambitious enough? Most of the changes have been related to progression and side mechanics (new upgrade systems, clans…), with just one being clearly impactful on gameplay (Gizmos).
Ultimately, it seems that the strategy has been around completing the game with side mechanics and not touching the core. That is intriguing because our original expectation was that the changes during the soft launch would include big impactful modifications of the core gameplay (new rules, game modes…), and not only out-of-action-phase additions. There has been nothing as radical and core as the screen orientation change on Brawl Stars.

Interestingly, the release of new Seasons has been linked to these major updates, meaning that the seasonal cycle of Clash Mini is 60 to 90 days. This seems very low frequency for a mobile game, particularly a new one that should be trying to maintain player engagement with new content.
For comparison, that’s a similar seasonal pace as TFT, a more established title with tons of content and higher degree of mastery depth. By choosing such a low cadence, Clash Mini seems to not be exploiting what could be one of its core advantages: to be a mobile-first game that could have a content tempo much better suited to the platform.

On top of these major updates, Clash Mini features a monthly ‘Balance Update’ (not requiring client update) that doesn’t introduce any new content or mechanics but just rebalances Minis and Heroes. This forces players to rethink their previous strategy and rotates the decks and units dominating the meta.

This type of regular soft meta rotation is a standard practice in many competitive PVP games, but is particularly important in the autochess genre because the amount of time required to max out and master each deck is short in comparison to mastering content in other genres like MOBAs or FPS.

Here are a few more details of what I believe have been the major changes:

• Art Quality. The game has had a significant upgrade when it comes to visuals (especially in the last update), both during the match and in all of the menus. Originally it looked quite rough, but now it’s beautiful.

• Gizmos is a new gameplay mechanic that consists of static units with powerful unique effects. During the match, the player unlocks the ability to place 1 out of a random selection of 3 gizmos after performing some Mini upgrades. 

While not being a dramatic game changer, gizmos add a (much-needed) small extra layer of decision-making and gameplay depth to the matches, and they also create an important incentive to upgrade units during the match instead of focusing on deploying different units (an issue that doesn’t happen in other autochess games because of the synergy mechanics, which Clash Mini lacks).

• Revamped Hero & Mini upgrade systems. Both Heroes and Minis have had a significant expansion of their upgrade systems.

Originally, Heroes had a single line of upgrades that required a single currency and character shards. Passive skills were automatically unlocked when the Hero reached specific levels. This incentivized players to not upgrade multiple Heroes, as they would save the currency for their favorite one, and overall didn’t provide a lot of progression depth.

Shards have been removed, and Heroes require 3 different currencies depending on the level (one currency for levels 1-5, another for 6 to 10, and another for 11 to 15). This is a better incentive for players to upgrade multiple heroes; otherwise, they’ve no use for the lower currencies. Although it is a bit messy to have that many currencies, and possibly there could’ve been a more elegant solution.
Additionally, each of the passives can now independently be upgraded after being unlocked, requiring a new currency, which provides more depth to the Hero upgrading system.

Mini upgrade systems have also changed: Now they require no more character-specific shards to unlock; instead, Minis are upgraded through a single shared currency (Star Shards). Additionally, the number of levels has been reduced to only 3 levels per Mini, making them more relevant (each level increases stats and unlocks a perk).

Nevertheless, in my opinion, the biggest change when it comes to Mini upgrade systems is related to UX. In the original release, there was a hidden feature: players could choose which perk to apply to the Mini when upgrading it during a match.

This was an extra layer of decision-making and gameplay depth, and more critically it incentivizes players to upgrade their minis outside of the match so that they have more perks to choose from right away in the match.

But because it required an awkward interaction to trigger (players had to tap & hold a mini to display it), it was missed by many players -- me included.
The UX of that feature has now been reworked, and the perk selection menu appears when tapping into a Mini (something that happens naturally when the player aims to drag it to the battlefield), making it impossible to miss.

• Multiple Quest Systems. Originally Clash Mini featured only a daily quest system and another permanent one based on each mini. 

Currently, the game features multiple periodicity quest systems (daily, weekly, seasonal, and custom), and a permanent one that isn’t based on specific minis. This provides versatility to present players with challenges of variable difficulty that might require multiple days to complete.

Additionally, while it’s not a quest system, Clash Mini has added a Daily Login rewards system to give an additional incentive to players to show up.

• Expeditions (Single Player challenges). A side mechanic that presents players with predefined scenarios and decks that grant rewards when first completed. 

This seems primarily intended as an extended tutorial system, as it progressively teaches the unique dynamics of each Hero and mini. Clash of Clans has a similar feature, intended to help new players learn the basic mechanics of the game, and provide a few fun challenges to solve for advanced ones.

• Social Systems (Clans, Raid Bosses, Friendly Matches). Clash Mini features a rudimentary implementation of Clans.

It’s not very clear to me how relevant clans really are in their current form, and how much they encourage truly social play. For starters, Mini doesn’t feature any Clan vs Clan mechanics that one would expect from a competitive game.

The only activity that Clan players can engage in - other than friendly battles - are Raid Bosses, where the clan members attack a PvE boss to drain its HP progressively.
Raid bosses feel shallow and underdeveloped, more an excuse to have something to do with the clanmates more than anything. This is especially true if compared to features like Clan Wars in Clash Royale, or to the Clan Capital in Clash of Clans, which require true clan coordination and provide much deeper gameplay.

The fact that the Raid Bosses and the Clan feature have not received that many meaningful updates (after more than a year since its release, there’s still only one type of Raid Boss) hints that the team doesn’t see a lot of potential in them right now.

• Monetization (new Battle Pass, Emotes, Free Trial, etc). Clash Mini has integrated multiple changes and additions focused on improving its capacity for monetization.

An interesting topic is the changes done to the Battle Pass (Mini Pass):
Originally the Pass lasted for an entire season (~3 months), which meant few purchases and many situations where new or returning players would find the Pass with the time consumed.

This has now been changed to a monthly pass instead (so 3 passes to grind and buy per season), which encourages more regular spending and is better for retention.
They have also integrated the ability to pay to skip tiers, although this is just a minor sink unlikely to meaningfully contribute to the revenue.

ll these changes ultimately mean that the shop now seems well sorted with multiple products like direct unlock of troops, several currencies to upgrade, cosmetics, and loot boxes:

• Other minor changes relevant enough to be worth mentioning are the addition of Emotes (new collectible cosmetics that look so cute you could die), a Minis Free Trial system to encourage players to try out and potentially acquire or upgrade new Minis, and the removal of the unranked mode (now all matches are for trophies).

Does it look like Clash Mini could be a hit?

At this moment, the answer is ‘no’.

Despite a year of additions and changes of all sorts, Clash Mini’s Revenue per Download has remained flat, and in fact, decreased on iOS in several territories.

Even if Mini is not a game with big spending depth and capacity to make players spend regularly like Clash Royale or Snap, my expectation would be that RPD should increase through small jumps every time that a new season is released, like we can see in TFT.

This can either point to Mini having weak long-term retention (not being able to increase its active user base by accumulating older cohorts), or not being able to monetize them regularly, perhaps due to lack of content.

Although I’m doubtful about that last point since the game has had a more-or-less steady flow of new content and some products worth spending on, like the Pass.

The trend looks slightly better on Android, where RPD has achieved timid growth. But considering that iOS represents more than 60% of Mini’s downloads and almost 75% of the total revenue, it’s not particularly encouraging.

It’s worth mentioning that early cohorts have a massive weight in Clash Mini’s KPIs (on iOS Canada, ~54% of the total downloads and ~59% of the total revenue happened in the first 30 days). Many of them were likely tourists that came just to check the new thing by Supercell but didn’t remain for long.
Could this mean that perhaps the early cohorts greatly underperformed (an inverted golden cohort effect), but that more recent users perform much better performance yet we don’t see that in RPD numbers because the weight of older cohorts hides it?

To answer that question I’ve calculated Revenue per Download (RPD) but only taking into account data for D30 onwards (i.e. removing any downloads and revenue generated before D30). 

This should increase the weight of recent users in RPD because it will show the revenue they generate and any residual revenue coming from earlier players. So if their trend is growing, it should be more evident since it won’t be weighed down by a potentially underperforming earlier cohort.

But as you can see, the trend remains flat. There’s a meaningful spike after the 1st began (likely because there were still many players from the early cohorts), and then it becomes flat and new seasons show progressively less and less impact.

In fact, it seems that far from improving performance, the latest update that changed so many things on Season 5 actually damaged RPD, something that remembers the last hail mary update before Clash Quest cancellation.

So the problem is monetization or retention here?
While it is likely that the spending depth on upgrades is small (maybe very few players choose to reset upgrades at the end of a season), at the very least if the players are still there we should see big spikes on each new season when the new Battle Pass is released.

Instead, what we see is that each new Pass impacts less and less. In my opinion, this points out the fact that Clash Mini likely has very bad mid and long-term retention. RPD doesn’t increase because the players aren’t there.

OK, so that’s when it comes to the West.
But is it possible that similarly to Wild Rift or TFT, Clash Mini's true goal is to be successful in China, not in the West?

The Chinese mobile games market is challenging to analyze for those who - like me - aren’t specialized in it, so I wouldn’t discard entirely the possibility that Tencent does its magic and puts Clash Mini in a lot of devices.

But in my opinion, the opportunity it’s not obvious. On nearby territories, Clash Mini shows disappointing trends, and the results are way lower than other Supercell titles:

In conclusion

Although I believe in the potential of a more approachable autochess and think that Clash Mini got many things right on that, I’m confused about Supercell’s logic about this game:

The (externally available) metrics do not look promising, and more concerningly they have barely moved at all after a year of updates and revamps. So why is Mini riding toward global launch rather than to sunset? What are we missing?

There might be some ‘non-externally available’ metrics that may be giving them the confidence to keep investing. For example, perhaps Mini has a massive early engagement which they hope to eventually be able to extend through the side mechanics.
But could it be that that’s achieved by significant cuts in gameplay depth over other autochess games, which ultimately it’s too shallow to sustain long-term engagement?

In my humble opinion, the flatness of RPD points out that Mini doesn’t engage for long, and thus requires going back to the basics and doing a deeper review of the core gameplay and volume of content, rather than trying to patch the issue through side mechanics and progression revamps.

The latest additions released (events with a new draft game mode) seem to point out that the team is exploring providing deeper gameplay to generate engagement. It will be interesting where that road brings them. 

But ultimately, I am skeptical that Mini will be able to truly move KPIs without deeper changes on the core gameplay and the amount, depth, and flow of playable content.