Squad Busters: First look! MOBA or hybrid casual? New Supercell game in Soft launch. (#66)

this is no [ __ ] gaming podcast 2 and a half Gamers sharing actionable insights dropping Knowledge from our day-to-day user acquisition game design and AD monetization jobs we are definitely not discussing the latest industry news but having so much fun let's not forget this is a 400 a.m. conference discussion Vibe so let's not take it too seriously hello hello hello welcome very special uh we are only two of us myself Mel and Yak because we are talking about one game and one game only which is now live in the closed beta probably not live this oh yeah true yeah yeah exactly yeah exactly not live any anymore yeah not life anymore uh we will have Felix next time

so we will go through all the all the Mau fun stuff but today we are only here to actually talk about Squad Busters so Squad Busters h i play the game and it's it's kind of fun but yeah let's let's look at there so what is actually Squad Busters because uh I think the last bet there was there were a lot of videos and so we couldn't very much tell like what the game is all about but so from all all the information out there um and from the from the actual gameplay it's the new game from supercell we can here so so it's a it's a game that it's combining characters from all the all their games including Heyday Clash of Clans Boom Beach and brawl star and the game you know has a couple of different modes uh with the premise of battling online against other players

I with your squad of characters in the game you can unlock new characters new game worlds spells and uh a lot more there is also a battle pass with rewards for leveling up in the game by playing and completing quests and you know you're unlocking new worlds as you progress through the levels so I'm going to play the game while we while we talk but before doing that so I started playing the game this is my my personal player experience I really sucked at the game from the beginning losing all all the [ __ ] time like who would guess that so a regular mate would already quit but the flame boy and MAV and M no and yes I'm talking talking about myself in third person but then I heard this weird voice at the back of my head saying like don't quit yet start crying you little flame boyant piece of [ __ ] you will get better and you will get unstuck afterwards

after you upgrade all all of your characters and heroes and I swear I also heard a like a a whisper ads are beautiful so if you play game for ads quit right away here because there are no ads in this every time you say are beautiful a supercell soft lunch game gets killed most probably most probably yes nevertheless as the second best game designer on the podcast sorry Felix I I didn't give up uh I pushed through the pain picked up my destroy ego and finally understood like what the [ __ ] I'm I I'm supposed to do and what what kind of strategy works the best I also found out character levels are really important so if I see yeah if I see very big three number three above the other characters versus my one I should run for my life with the new turbo which is also in the game so I I suppose there is an unfolding game playay um where did we

see that in some other games maybe we talked about it before so first 30 minutes of my gameplay wasn't really a good experience then I actually got it so it was it was hell of a right and I couldn't even put my phone away for for some time uh and Shop unlocked on level five there was a random chest appeared in the middle of the the plaza that gave me [ __ ] ton of resources and the special offer that also gave me [ __ ] tons of stuff so uh come on [ __ ] it was a game one immediately uh but thanks to the Mau conference that happened last week I couldn't get into the new Royal world that supercell introduced you know maybe next time if I get the chance to play he doesn't get from Super Cell yeah if it doesn't get killed I you know but uh we'll see it's still pretty early so I think uh well this is second close beta last one was three months ago second close bet three months ago mhm

this episode is brought to you by misplay I briefly want to mention them because thank you very much for the support and misplay is number one loyalty app for mobile Gamers and is the media source that leverages continuous rewarded engagement to drive retention LTV for advertisers so this time a few facts about misplay so as I mentioned number one app for mobile Gamers top five Entertainment app on Google Play for US Canada UK and Germany and top 10 for France and Korea so they have 30 million lifetime installs globally on Android and they misplay given a way over 51 million rewards today they also rank as top five media Source in a singular Roi index in 20123 so pretty good and I as I said I used it multiple times even before they had the roas campaigns uh that leverages their powerful AI models and that was like CPI based and before then it was

working quad ball so now it's working even better check it out misplay or ping me as you started doing since they well we are talking about them on the podcast I I received a lot of uh request for intro so thank you very much keep doing that yeah it really works there you go and now I know how all these uh uh YouTubers play play G Mobile YouTubers like what the [ __ ] mobile yeah because it look it's like the guy that guy like I watched one one video from like very popular YouTuber apparently works with a lot of super games and I was like how how can you play on the on your PC and then it's like ah well I guess uh you okay so let's uh let me just level up this character uh before I go because yeah it's really important to to the thing is that I I don't think that this game was so much talk about as

it deserves to be talk about I guess because nobody pretty much knows what it is by the first looks of it and even the name and what it is uh by the way super cell is currently hiring a licensing manager so I guess this is yes playing into their plan of cem man yeah they announced this um what was it uh uh a cooperation with Razer I think something like that okay so this important look so you you have these three characters oh and then uh you can actually roll the the choice of let's let's just watch mat getting slaughtered in a little bit and let let's let's talk some design stuff game game design okay so the thing is that uh by very very simplifying

terms this game is pretty much a very very simplified version of Battle Royale mechanic where you spawn into the map and then you have a choice to either attack new players which at the beginning you probably shouldn't or Farm monsters and get better yeah you found out usually the hard way so yeah you heard that the hard way uh but I usually try to attack the others anyway way and that's why I get killed all the other main main theme of the game is pretty much this kind of a snowball effect that people are probably familiar with games that they have IO at the end of them where you what do you mean snowball Snowball Effect means that you're farming resources and if you defeat an M player you get his resources therefore you get much bigger and here literally your army grows well the thing is no no that's not true so you get the resources but uh your army doesn't grow

but you get a key for a chest that can be like numerous gold true you have a key that's yeah it works like that it just m you're right because how the how the game how the game works currently is that you start you pick one character and you start pretty much defeating other monsters like a could seems like U some kind of a RPG uh and then they drop gold coins the which is not is is also a soft currency but in this sense it does in this context it doesn't use a soft currency it's pretty much like combat money that's being used near the chest going little B where you then select another character and then your army grows and grows and of course uh these gold coins are dropped either by monsters or chests or some special events on the map or by defeating enemy players and uh the the main point is that your army grows and grows get stronger and stronger the whole match

only lasts for 4 minutes this is fixed and by those four minutes people are pretty much trying to kill each other I'm getting Ked getting killed people are trying to kill each other and pretty much Farm each other's resources the other thing you're collecting is also gems which is pretty much a progression currency is not really like hard currency the gems that we know they also have that but those are Viet ones these is green ones and those are then taken don't know what's the conversion but pretty much you bring those into the main menu then with you and you get rewarded by collecting more and more of those from the game yeah you get elixir uh so if you you can also colle this so that that's there but it it's like as I said something like a mixed pubg or like Battle Royale game where you need to literally like Farm resources and then be able to PVP and

mixed with something like let's say whole iio or something like that which is kind of very very casual snowb Effect game where you this is definitely not casual at all I trying to survive always and don't you know the main point is to to be to have the the highest number of the of gems and I usually try to survive only because I really suck I mean I I was like few times first and then second as well but I mean now I I I made it to the new world what do you mean I was watching the I was watching the streamer you mentioned and he was pretty much winning every single game come on man that's what I say I suck suck so here so a special loot okay so I don't really understand like how how should I get these hammers I mean it's a special loot I it looks like it's my guess is you picked it up random in the level okay but I don't know like where never

it's kind of messy during the gaml because there's so much stuff going on but my guess is you pick it up in the level because you can also pick up piggy banks for gold coins additional ones and elixir yes but because you have those two buildings piggy banks you need yeah you need to this is the plaza upgrade so you need to yeah you need to collect more hammers whatever and here here so if you this is the piggy bank B basically so you need to build this so a little bit of like a met game build into is where you collect this kind of building currency and then you unlock either decorations or some kind of in-game functionality and the first two buildings that I think I saw even some people unlock those in the beta videos of course I mean I have only eight hammers so so how how they work is that if you collect them additional currency in form of upgrade material which is the Elixir or soft currency which is another upgrade material can be collected in the game and then brought back to to that building which pretty much rewards you

after the playing the game so just kind of more stuff so I I was looking into some Fe player feedback already because uh obviously you have read it uh you have a Discord for uh Squad Busters and you have twitch and YouTube and uh so battle modes are are something new uh because players were complaining that the game is really repetitive and it's just same thing all over again so they added battle mode does it remind you of something like a game we played in last six months man maybe which one but also which one was it Marvel snap well yes exactly because uh yeah you have these loc these the allocations that are changing almost all the time which is okay but I I was looking into loot Goblin Rush uh which reminded me Diablo because you have these little

goblins running around and you if when you kill them you know they're full of uh gems and coins so you have all these like different different things that should change how how you play obviously and you have spells I mean this is prettyy amazing it was one of the like very nice iteration throughout these two betas that they added directly because of player feedback which was that the mode was too repetitive and like didn't pretty much bring anything Cannon is [ __ ] go op really this is op but okay whatever uh and then what's really I mean as soon as you enter the desert world uh you can't go back uh because here you start in this green road until you reach level 15 so you unlock different things and obviously if you have battle pass then uh by the way their battle pass like the reward track is pretty much similar one

to brawl star but it's interesting that the the the bottom track of the reward track is Battle pass but segmented meaning that for each consecutive world you need to buy another battle pass it's not like one purchase Ah that's why this is here yeah exactly because every single World requires another purchase of the battle pass that's pretty pretty good interesting so this is 664 the first world and then I was wondering further there the Royal world price there should be but I'm not there yet it's unlocking at level 35 so there is so I guess like it's going to be what like eight 8 but doesn't make any you know difference because now it's still uh beta so you can't if you want yeah yeah you can uh but what it really means is every well they added this new royal royal world uh in this beta which wasn't in the in

the game before every every world uh is also kind of tied to new characters as well so you have more this which everybody is talking about on the the whole YouTube like this is the the goded of the all characters and if you have this you are [ __ ] like it's pretty much a necromancer that raises Minions that you killed recently I mean the oh Reves up to four busted monsters in Squad perfect big ones just the small ones but yeah but you know what is really uh it's op It's a combination of what these are queen so there's a combination of which so you she is summoning skeletons as allies and if you combine that with uh where is it where where did I find the the mods you know I don't have I don't know

I don't even know like what the [ __ ] where are the mods uh somewhere in the unlock Section which is not there I was just I was just there where are where are you where are you nevertheless ah here okay play so if yeah yeah so if you combine this with okay I didn't see the the mod yet so there is um multiple skeletons or whatever uh like like swarms so if you combine that then you have uh again like all the videos about how everybody broke the the game because there are like millions of skeletons running into you yeah which is I mean it's just perfect for creatives I love it already let's talk a little bit about the mechanics that are actually in the combat um what's what's really interesting is that some characters are pretty much directly tied to the environment meaning that if I understand they don't even have a use in different

world so there's a great example with this Greg character from Heyday that is the only one that can chop down trees meaning that yeah but the trees are here as trees are here as in desert world yeah but in the Royal World there are carrots ah yeah character from that can actually use those carrots so the question is does it mean that there are no trees therefore I cannot use the GRE character this was this this is the biggest mystery for me in the game is that can you affect the lineup of characters that you take into battle other than unlocking the lineup actually o yeah so I will I will if you go into the menu can you can you somehow change like what characters you can take into battle or not so the lineup changes apparently there is a look so if I go here and play there's the lineup timer so lineup changes apparently and this shell is just uh just got it from from the battle

pass or well not the battle pass but the experience and uh there's I mean you can roll the roll mechanic is good in itself but we'll talk about that's something no so the lineup yeah the lineup changes I don't have the the Greg over here so I can't use it I can't use it but I have uh but you cannot affect way pretty much no no no no you can so you I have Primo which I used a lot and saved my ass in the previous World here in this uh this lineup I don't I don't have I don't have him and I don't have uh other characters as well so you have basically nine from like the previous world I guess and so if I get it right you can use all six six World specific one stays the same on the left you can use is pretty much combined from your unlocked ones yes exactly and those are all pretty

much that's that's interesting because this kind of breaks their their whole like the deck building formula here it's more of like you need to upgrade pretty much everything by default otherwise there's like you cannot affect what you get other and the lineup is pretty much random all the time like every day really interesting is that also characters upgrade kind [Music] of the levels are not that uh let's say resour is demanding so it's only five levels for each character and that's it you cannot no seven okay unlock the dra so it was five before it was five exactly so now it's in the new exactly before it was five so by adding New World they also added new levels into the characters that's interesting yeah and also there is this Fusion mechanic so if you have three of L Primo there actually fuses into one like bigger in the game which look at look at the stats yeah yeah I know but

just you know four times more yeah yeah this is one of the other thing that like want to talk a little bit more into detail but for me this is like this is one of the let's say very interesting design to me design chins in a way that like you cannot really affect the characters like what you you roll what do you get in the game play itself I mean what you bring there uh they added the roll mechanic now now into the new beta because yeah it was one of the big complaints for players that a lot of games are decided by initial three choices characters which you can be lucky or not lucky and then it snowballs into you pretty much either losing or winning which the roll mechanic solve so that's excellent kind of problem solving there yeah but the thing is look so how can you even roll be when you have uh when you're in the in the battle in the battle it's just like you don't have time no no it's on the first can only on the first SP no it's it's during the

battle man it's during the battle as well no no I know it's doing but it's only on the first SP okay let's let's see let's see what you like first pound of like when I'm entering the game or your first choice of the character can be rerolled see you can do it pick one and keep the reroll and take a chest and you'll see you cannot have it L on the line well I pretty much rerolled multiple times during the uh look can I can roll you can roll even after okay well I I could roll now so but oh okay so if you are saying I can roll only one time per per match so you can roll even multiple times because now oh maybe maybe maybe I thought that like no it's only yeah you're right it's only one it's only once per per battle so it once per battle I can oh come here you my little [ __ ]

yeah because come here just by just by like going around like what's actually there in the game so there are chests that you pretty much pay these gold coins to get another character in there uh then the other things are you seen that blue chest SE your face blue chest which contain speed and boost and HP and some kind of let's say utility stuff then there are monsters that you settle through and pretty much get coins to upgrade more and more and then there are uh those special let's say character typ mechanics such just trees carrots or other things that that are there and and of course there are spells spells are kind of really was there spells before I think they they were there before yeah they were no I I think I saw them before they were they were there before you know what is really disappointing so I thought I could hide in these crops but they are slowly slowing down but some

characters actually change that so if you have yeah I know I think chicken or someone else as well because there's this turbo thing no chicken I think just just turbo I think a character actually affects the grass like a specific one oh yeah it's the the head the the hog rider yeah I think that one yeah the thing is that it's kind of very cleverly designed that these let's say let's call them interactables on the map you usually are affected or like interact with one specific character that you can then pick up and like makes a strategic Choice that's very good by adding the merging mechanic meaning that that pretty much they add a deck building like it's some kind of like Auto chest mechanic pretty much where if you collect three of the same what do you mean Alo Al CH works like this that if you collect three of the same it merges into one stronger one and you've seen that it's it's even though you collected three the HP bonus or let's say the overall HP was uh the same as four characters would have

therefore the fourth character is pretty much the bonus there ah y yeah but you are yes but you are then uh you have another slot in the in your uh Squad basically what do you mean because then you know it so this scales basic the the the coins you see and as as as I merged then um the requirement for gold decreased if you if you merge yes if you merge really good yeah because the more characters you have the more more exp expensive are the chests therefore it's exactly it's also a comeback mechanic if you pretty much get some of those characters killed only if you if like you your last character is killed you die oh give me those so so that that's kind of interesting because people can attack you and even though you escape with one character you can still get away with that if you are clever but there like The Comeback mechanic the other interesting thing is that I said uh by killing other players you get a

free key meaning that you can skip the gold costs actually so so that's that's kind of very good incentive there but honestly like this was one of the biggest complaints uh during when I was watching other people playing it and like seeing the gam playay that you don't really have that much incentive to fight other people because no yeah because why would you if you can keep the gens and you would just keep pretty much having them by you know continuing the the game until the timer runs out the other thing is that it's kind of hard to kill people anyway if they don't want to engage with you because you can only deal damage if you stand and if you move people can literally run away from you like you cannot do [ __ ] yeah but then if you yeah but if you just you know push someone in the corner then they can't escape happen to me the map is pretty big honestly like the only thing that I've seen that like can be really op as I would say say is the max character which have the 35%

movement speed bonus that Stacks so if you have multiple Maxes you you're pretty much fast as a formula so oh okay okay got it yeah I got it so yeah so now we have a now we have a bonus of multiple game mods nice yeah the game mod the game mod thing actually I think added a lot of value into the game because definitely just by looking at it before and after it it was much more stale now it's actually there's a lot more stuff to strategize around otherwise I guess it was the same build all the time now let's say if a heavy PVP mode comes in you you pretty much roll different characters for instance here you roll a PVE mode where like golems and stuff pretty much is currently added into the game so what you should do you should pick the bow character because the bow character has 115% more damage into monsters therefore you can Farm more gold get stronger blah blah blah and it completely changes your tactics yeah but

the thing is that's true uh that's true but also I I also suck in the game so that's you know how it is uh but what I wanted to say is that uh like you said there are different if you see different icons on each character so you have multiple classes basically or how how should I call it you have uh the ranged then you have Medics as well and healers that can heal you then they you have ranged that that's what I said I guess so and then you have I guess almost like a tank El Primo has a lot of the Barian tank he has like 2K HP in base base level or something like yeah but he's epic so you know you don't have epical epic Choice all the time and when you have when you start the game and you have all the common uh then you're kind of yeah I also I was also trying to save all the spells from the beginning but it's like no I I need to be able to actually Farm

as quick as I as possible actually the thing is that really bad most of the games that I've seen people were like the ones that were actually trying to win all the time they were just Farming Farming Farming Farming and only after they were stronger they pretty much were forced to go into the middle and fight some battles but even though they they sometimes they didn't even want to like as I said like the whole PVP of of the game is a little bit lacking I would say hey look if I have if I had Greg then I would be able to chop this tree and uh I don't yeah yeah uh let's talk a little bit about like what's the iterations behind it that that we talked about so before in the previous build uh the biggest one of the biggest problem was the lack factor with characters on your starter pick that's that's pretty much would snowball into you either losing or you winning too much then the incentive to fight in gem mold Hound was lacking I guess this one still isn't really solved no comic mechanics the

repe one mode and no friend component so that that's like the biggest things let's look at what they added and how they solve the problem so they added the roll mechanic uh that we talk about meaning that that's actually pretty much solved and I don't see any problem with it because you immediately can get another Pig of those characters and in the in the first pck it's kind of really important because your first character his speed on how much time it will taking to kill those first initial mobs to get your gold running and get you the second character and stuff like that can be kind of either too fast or too slow uh then they added the merging mechanics which adds as I said a lot of kind of strategy into it the next one is the MZ one which solves the repetitiveness so that's pretty much like the same thing as it works with Marvel snap uh yeah really nice mechanic that can be pretty much playing into liveop system where you change those different mods add new mods um as the game updates and so on so

forth so so that's great new bosses into PV pull six new characters that just pretty much scale the content into the Royal world and there's a party a battle button because that was also one of the bigger complaints where people were let's say they wanted to play with their friends but they couldn't so there's a party up battle button there yeah but it's guess I'm guessing it's pretty much they want us to see it because they wouldn't put it there long yeah so right now this is only this Gem Gem Rush or whatever it's it's called Uh the game mode uh but here you have you have ranked Play Turn expin and unlock ranked mode I have no idea like where is it actually unlocking because I don't see it in here if I scroll to the right the beta build currently okay uh but still I mean you have 19 levels so if I scroll to the

right the other interesting thing is if you go to the main plaza is also that look at the statues on the top that there are five slots for those meaning that there are probably five worlds because each totem is added when you progress true yeah oh yeah yeah so now I yeah you can build your elal Distillery no I can I can yes nice oo so they regarding the currencies uh they have the decoration meta mechanic as we talk so you have those hammers that you can find then you have the orbs which is the unlocking resource this is also kind of very interesting because usually in Clash Royale supercell Games characters are unlocked by you progressing here it's kind of different it's more of a everything is pretty much scripted so you get your stuff as you progress throughout the game when your level inre increases and then you can choose within

let's say an interval or some kind of a predefined semi- random pool so as you progress you unlock more characters that you can unlock and then you choose on which character you spend those orbs yeah for instance here well yeah of okay but you can only I can only unlock the battle healer yeah because that was the only one for the orbs but before you you were able to unload like multiple ones yeah I yeah I think so I think yeah the on are coming either from direct like events or let's say calendar based stuff that like the the quest one here and then the the last one is pretty much like directly from your level so the game assumes that you will have that character anyway as you progress so it's so it's all script because it's all scripted which which brings me to other point there's no gacha that's what I wanted to say so that's what they they changed in BR Star right it seems don't know if this is some kind of latest push in Supercell that they want to get rid of gacha mechanics which uh most prob let's say

most of their games are build upon Pawn the whole loot box mechanic and everything they have with the chest system which is excellent in Clash Royale and make so much money uh my guess is that regarding the whole monetization power of this game this will be lesser than than like Clash Royale or some kind of a different gacha based game well yes but you know uh there were there was I think a temporary uh boost in terms of revenues when they um removed oh El Primo there you go finally El Primo yeah there was a temporary Revenue but then then it was pretty much the Baseline was cut in half yes exactly and also something happened uh so it's in January star star bra star just dipped from 15 so looking at the numbers brawl star pretty much

was at some kind of a stable five to six million downloads per month and then from January 2022 it seems like the marketing was turned off or like cuted a lot and now it switched into something like two and a half three million a month so pretty much half than that and the revenue of course follow downward pretty heavy from something like 30 million to like 10 million and from the 10 to 11 million it spiked to 19 within the update when players learned that this will be changing and of course there was the over effect so now it's like seven to eight million a month so of course it's like so much money not saying that this game is not making money or something but it's of course it's declining so if you even look at the whole supercell portfolio um currently regarding the live games Clash of Clans is the Evergreen one that is still raking something like 40 million a month with

spikes going up to 60 or even 70 from time to time nice uh brawl Stars pretty much as said went from something of like 20 to 30 mil Baseline into like 8 mil 9 mil a month Baseline currently Clash Royale uh Clash Royale is pretty much at the same value somewhere there like in February then to like 9 million and now they're like at 30 million but of course before they were at like 23 then they even they they spiked big after that like rebalance of the economy and everything uh into like 50 30 some kind of big spikes per month and now they from December 2021 it pretty much fell a cliff from like a 60 mil Spike into like 9 mil so that's definitely into decline Heyday is actually fairing pretty well but it was not that big anyway so it's

pretty much very very stable and even increasing so it was somewhere around see if I let's see if I die 10 million Baseline and then going into 12 million oh I die yeah that's that's great but yeah it won't you know it's it's not nowhere near close The Clash Royale revenue and then there's I can't escape I can't escape man I can't escape it's just like if if he and boom is currently hitting something like million a month or million and a half my God all these big characters [ __ ] so one at one point I was first yeah so not counting the Clash of Clans pretty much the whole portfolio except hey day uh for the rest of the games are in Decline so we'll see what happens regarding the soft lunch games they killed uh everdale or let's say moved it to metacore now well moved it to

metacore say ex uh they killed Rush Wars they killed Clash Quest and then Clash heroes which was announced uh two years ago which nobody heard anything from April 1 yeah that was that like April 1 choke the three new supercell games are soft lunch uh yeah we haven't heard anything of it and this brings me to my other point when I was looking at like all the videos of the game there pretty much like two or one it seems very very familiar and especially some assets seems like they were using Squad Busters so my secret consp conspiration theory is that this is a remodeled version of Clash heroes in a way CL Heroes could be could be because there's there's nothing even if you check the feat account of their game like their last pause is like April 2021 that's it no no other post nowhere nothing is being said about it came from the from from that uh

announcement well you know but also like what's this conspiracy based on just uh assets that you saw the what was it the Golem having control you have you have all the the controls are pretty much the same you have all the characters anyway from yeah the controls are pretty much the same uh the game play is very very similar from that like just like keep keep just just keep in mind that I'm just saying you know two prototypes so there's of course not that like the merging mechanic and this kind of whole Squad Buster mechanic and stuff like that but regarding you killing monsters on the map and like small bosses and stuff like that it it really fits well so it it could be the case that they just reused it here and like yeah but that's you know that's clever use of game assets like don't don't what you before how you should think about yeah that's how should you should think about new games and uh say like be as efficient as possible and how how did you like uh did you

enjoy the the game you are on the on the Android device wasn't able to play it because of course I tried like three different emulators by the way Pro tip only nox is the only one that's capable on running on Android 12 which was introduced like two months ago which is the requirement for Squad Busters and then of course even if you try with VPN you cannot get there because it's a closed beta not open Beta so even in those sof lunch countries which is Mexico Spain and can Canada if you don't have the access you cannot get there if I understand correctly yeah you're pretty Fu so uh because what what the so if you're if you were um looking at the the announcement video the super lady said uh you can please share your feedback uh from your playtime or from watching your favorite creators play the game so I guess I was watching my favorite creator second best game designer M playing

right now all the time come on man like I I I recorded like two at least two hours of of game playay and uh it was it was getting a little bit better yeah the best part was that half of the videos were vertical and the other half horizontal no you were supposed to just you know yeah I didn't I didn't flip it I was just supposed to flip my head of course no you were just to download the download the the video and then flip it on your computer because that would that would definitely work and you know like [ __ ] I'm just nevertheless so uh that's how I and I saw I saw a lot of uh different YouTubers having this hasht supercell partner so I guess uh this was also like part of the of the ba of the beta program because um there was this one guy talking about what's what actually is new in the game and he was already on level 25 and he was like oh well look what we have here this wasn't

here before I was like come on man like you didn't have to progress through the game at all okay now I now just underestimate how much streamers play yeah exactly these guys are paid to play games literally so I I guess that brings me to to the the soft L strategy or or something so you have limited countries you have limited time to play because this is only life for seven days and it's second closed beta I mean it's closed beta so I guess uh that's how how it works but then you have limited slots in the in that closed beta because I mean it was open for these all three countries so not everybody could play even if you are based in Canada or Spain or Mexico that's interesting and then I was looking into the last 90 days of uh of Revenue ven of brawl Stars uh because I was trying to understand like why

these countries I guess also like Canada Mexico can look it's [ __ ] I can pick character that is locked seriously I need to use the roll my God you could have Pi the other one even worse yes I know well nevertheless okay so I was looking into the into the the countries to understand why these so I guess servers as well in the uh America uh makes sense because of the Mexico and Canada I don't know about Spain but then I was looking into the revenues as well and it was like in the last 90 days for brawl Stars top nine 10 and 11 in in terms of revenues all all these three countries maybe that has an effect on the decision making I have no idea or maybe it's because of the fund base or maybe because of the servers or maybe because of all feeling thatw star has this kind of like Spanish team and and

like the whole you know you have the um what's his name the wrestler El Primo and pretty much all these like Spanish them characters and the game seems kind of Spanish to me so don't know if this is an cultural effect in those countries but I still got the feeling that it kind of fits very well thematic but yeah it's it's like an outstanding outstanding character creation that they have there uh but yeah don't know the thing is that this is the usual super cell formula which is make a game that pretty much plays by itself meaning that the players are the content so you don't really need to like create that much content within it and then the other thing is pick something that works and simplify it and make it enjoyable easy to learn hard to master that that's that's what they usually do man this wasn't easy to learn if I was really a normal casual player or whatever like normal mate like I mentioned I would

just drop it seriously you would drop it pretty much of the games that we review on our Channel honestly like okay fair enough fair fair enough but uh so I didn't after after I actually started to enjoy the the game I didn't have this feeling for a long time I think like since the the Marvel since since we discussed the Marvel snap I was like okay well I have like five few minutes of of time uh what should I do oh well let's play [ __ ] die die die die [ __ ] die yeah because I don't think so this could be classified as something as hybrid casual because it's not really that hybrid casual if you compare to something like Survivor AIO for instance but but there is that there is unfolding game play um not that is not tell me should how how you would classify it like unlocking all all the different uh oh well that's true maybe you know there will be a different mode unlocked at

some point in I guess throughout the yeah okay unfolding okay but there will be there will be for sure you have you have new worlds but it's just not like regular progression guess that's the same that's just different content but same content I mean like yeah okay it's within the same structure like what I would imagine is that what survivor IO has that like HBY formula is that you know move few levels and there's this like event gold special level that you need to grind there's idle mechanic there's this mechanic there's trials mechanic and all is pretty much like the game playay in different context here is pretty much the same game play but the flavor of those context change but it's the same so yeah it's true okay but you know think about I was reading the the player feedback and like some of them were just complaining and then like man this is close beta this is just be be happy you can actually feedback to the to developers like seriously like you can't

really expect this is going to be perfect and also like this is one week of gameplay and you basically if you want to oh third place with this level of gems okay whatever you can't expect this is going to be the same experience as if it was open Beta And also final product because you basically need to grind your way through the day one until day seven because well you just want to play it as much as as much as you can because you you won't be able to play it afterwards that's it so it's like come on it's logic it's a it's a very nice kind of a lesson for anyone that's pretty much trying to iterate and design games here to look what did they change within the scope of these two beta arounds where you can see like clear problems in the first one and Clear Solutions for those problems in the second one like the rroll mechanic that solve the problem of snowboard Bing in the first place then the merging mechanic which again adds more depth to

the deck building of those players and then uh what did they add the modes yeah modes is I would say the most important one here yeah makes the game play much more fun and strategic in a way that every single game feels different rather than before it was more of like let me build my meta build and that works all the time which is not the case anymore by adding those modes which completely shift the game playay sometimes so it's like yeah I would say that's really good and those to supercell for doing these kind of nice upgrades I would say all are going the right direction but I still have few problems here with the like the whole PVP aspect of it as I said it's not that PVP driven as it should be but maybe that's is just because of the gem collecting mechanic that that's like look claim gem reward so I just received this the other is that the progression of the game feels very

scripted to me like there's not that much of course there's spend depth because by unlocking the characters and even increasing their levels it's not unlocking the upgrades that the levels unlock it just lets you upgrade the unlocks through gold so you still need the soft currency to upgrade the like level five Primo whatever you unlock there yeah you need to grind your ass off honestly yeah but but grinding your ass off and using a gacha are two different things here yeah it's I don't think so if the spend that will be that big or let's say the conversion will be that big as we see with usual gacha games like gacha great like we just saw it in honkai honai has like what 150 million plus in the first month so yeah so it can yeah it can work uh but the thing is like what would you monetize here in that case I mean no G yeah that's that's that's the thing that you cannot really monetize that much

stuff because it's built like that like it's all streamlined everybody needs to have the same like what would happen like you would be having El Primo and nobody else would be having El Primo let's say few players only it wouldn't work yeah but then like the question is like what would you monetize what in this stage like what's what can Cosmetics seriously yeah that's the whole problem with PVP you canot really monetize that much because uh how it works in supercell games it means that it's very fair so let's say let's say Clash Royale so what they're monetizing it's again the same principle here where you're increasing the damage and health of your characters and you can use money to increase it more but what happens is that the matchmaking matches you with other players that are on the same level anyway therefore even though you were able to beat them few matches where you know until your Alo rating or like the matchmaking rating catches up you're back at the same point so you can spend more and like you know progress further but the same situation

happens again so the thing is like uh he has way uh yeah this is just skill difference because somebody somebody is doing miserable pics here maybe maybe yes maybe no of course about the think is like they all already have like four five level five which I really don't have so you know you could then well yeah but but the level of those characters would change because your El Primo if it's upgraded would be much much more let's say have much more higher Health than his El Primo yeah I just say that so but it's still within that kind of a skill level difference I don't think so it it should match that much you know like of course if if you just spend I don't know1 $200 currently on the game if you could and upgrade all the characters to their max level probably you would immediately you know

win every single game and progress further yeah that's true but as I said like the matchmaking will catch up anyway and you just move further down the like reward track that's it so okay okay but then like more resources you like my player experience improved so much when I actually got all these resources and then was able to like level up the characters because then I was like okay what like what the [ __ ] like I really it was really not a pleasant experience yeah like the game playay changes a little bit you you unlock few abilities when they level up there's like star rating boost and stuff like that so they get much more stronger they got before but keep in mind that everybody else beside you is leveling in the same speed because that the power of matchmaking so and of course there's a lot of bots in the game still yeah could be come come here come here but you know like so what I want what I wanted to say

with this like uh weird uh closed beta it's not weird it's just I guess like we experienced the same thing when we played Diablo 4 throughout those like two weekends you can't really judge a game if it's just like for initial levels and like you know make judgments upon those no but the like supercell is doing a great job in terms of like listening to the feedback because well Diablo didn't didn't do that great job with like pretty much everything yeah it wasn't fun anymore so yeah that was the biggest complaint like it's not fun Necromancer is not fun anymore they had to H fix it during the beta itself yeah you H fix some some uh some balancing you did before so well okay what can you do come here how long are you talking because I I don't even I don't even see you hly yeah it's so addictive I know uh oh here's

the hammer oh nice okay I see the hammer now okay fine so it it just spawns randomly what's the Let's do let's do let's do player rating and game designer rating and then Global launch prediction okay so player rating I would say at this stage um getting into consideration that I really suck it's still like eight out of 10 so mate drops it in 10 minutes instead of two exactly exactly which is uh which is already like pretty good no like drugs aside so um I need I really had to get into it when I got into it it's just it's amazing it's really yeah it's really addictive I can't put it down it's uh I just want to play it all all over again because I just want to progress in the levels I just want to kick other sis as well and then see like what what's what what's here basically but I don't have a time to actually do that oh here's Elixir oh okay so there's

one Elixir here but then it it kind of uh I did a lot of others well the other yeah this is also this is also kind of interesting because you again can select which character to level up if you have the free elixir but throughout the game you have a lot of times where the game actually gives you a specific Elixir for a character that it decides that you need to level up so again it's kind of on Rails scripted experience also you have here the this uh random chest that appears uh so first I think it appeared after like 8 hours but now when I claimed in the morning but that's is there anything random it's just resources like the idle mechanic uh no I got uh what I got I think one sec I think I got yeah I guess alexir Gold and Gems that's it you're right just resources there's no still I thought no no no I thought uh it's it's going to be like every eight hours but then it's actually

12 so I know I don't know now if it scales with the level or if it's just like 12 uh since the beginning nevertheless I guess the resources scale the timer doesn't Okay so I I guess it was like 12 hours since the beginning but I didn't see it because I already y claimed it okay so it's every 12 hours so player experience eight out of 10 I well honestly like if we have to judge like if this is going to be Global launched honestly I mean I have no idea most probably you know I feel I feel adventurous I feel I would say yes I would say yes okay but on the scale a 10 kind of 10 seven seven out of 10 seven out of 10 okay yeah being being Global launched game stage yeah yeah game design wise I think think it's really great uh again outstanding iteration between those two

betas and solving like the like main problems there uh the game play is Fun the mechanic is interesting and like the the whole dynamic and everything it's again built with that supercell mobile first you know mind that everything so smooth polished and well executed uh I would say something like nine out of 10 or eight out of 10 definitely ni but the thing is that we back at this like Marvel snap territory where the game's really good but I'm just afraid it won't monetize that well same as Marvel where it's kind of too much player friendly I would say or not even maybe too much player friendly but it's just kind of very lightweight on monetization like definitely it it probably assures that you will buy those like progression tracks that are the battle passes there or like re tracks passes or however we call them but that's not that big spend up that that we're used to when you you know compare it to something like Clash of Clans or

Clash Royale where you have those armies and units that you need to upgrade on exponential curve so my guess is that uh maybe we'll see another iteration with a different meta progression or this or may Adventures no I think adventures and they will need to release the game finally because they're getting everything yeah but the thing is like the with Marvel snip there's always a huge Spike when the season changes and I don't Spike declines throughout the seasons and is declining still okay but still the game makes like 700,000 dollar per day like how is that not a lot of money not anymore not okay not anymore but there there were spikes like where the game made like more like course like spikes were there but it's declining and it's very steady declining sure but uh I think if uh super launched

the game with the revenue as Marvel snap but they would be okay which you know I think they how how much money they made like since the beginning keep in mind that their Benchmark is like one billion one billion a year true okay okay okay true or let's say one billion lifetime don't know if it's Lifetime by year but they have very very high aspirations so okay well we you know what we will continue doing is um playing throughout the iterations if we get the the chance uh I hope we will and uh then we can uh we can talk more about it and then like when the game is in soft loue which I suppose it's going to be uh because like it's fun and uh I think uh it should be it should be soft launch it deserves the chance deserves a chance if I can play it more than 10 minutes definitely deser deserves the chance we definitely keep an eye on it because again it's very very good lesson in learning what

happens and what has happened and what was iterated what was not and what work and what did not work and you know Market will decide as usual if they let it even to go GL launch so let's see yeah right let me just uh where is it here I can I can see you again ah uh anything else we want to you want to add actually I think that that's it then that's it okay thank you very much for listening um see you next time definitely continue subscribing and uh please share your feedback in the meantime cheers thank you bye-bye bye-bye [Music]