Some games naturally lend themselves well to some platforms. When real-time strategy games made the jump to mobile, it was as if they found the way they were meant to be played.
2004 (ten years ago!) saw the rise of the browser-based real-time strategy games. Travian, Ogame, and Ikariam quickly grew to millions of daily active players. The main game-play revolved around building a base, training an army, and attacking other players. What made these games so exciting was the always-on persistent world in which you played.
Throughout the various games there were some core features that seemed to define the genre.
Resource management. As with many RTS games that came before, managing an empire’s resources was key to success. In these games players would spend resources to upgrade buildings in their city (Barracks, City-Wall, Academy, etc), to train troops, or do research.
Always-on + Time Management. Unlike MMO’s like World of Warcraft, your empire still existed in the world even if you were not online. You could start upgrading your city walls, go to sleep, and come back once they were complete. You could send troops to attack a city 1-hour away, and come back later to see the results of the battle. Alternatively, you could return to find your own city had been attacked while you were away!
Geography. Unlike games like Clash of Clans, each city in these games existed in a larger game world with its own geography. It took longer to attack a player that was 100 spaces away than a player that was 10 spaces away. This meant players would constantly be engaging with the same group of people, some allies, some enemies. When you were attacked, it wasn’t a random player you would never see it again. It was that same guy 10 spaces away that attacked you last week. This cultivated relationships and rivalries among the players.
These games also pioneered the Free-to-Play strategy, long before it became a term. Revolutionary at the time, the barrier for entry was virtually non-existent. These games made money by selling small in-game advantages (such as a resource production boost) or “nice-to-have” features like an empire overview, or scheduling upgrades in advance in case you wanted to take the weekend off.
Transition to Facebook
Hundreds of games like this hit the web. Aloriah, Clash of Kingdoms, Evony, God of Axion, Lord of Ultima, to name some of the better ones.
But then Facebook happened. Many games tried to make the jump, some thought just allowing players to log-in with Facebook connect would be sufficient.
Kabam’s Kingdoms of Camelot was the first to successfully take advantage of Facebook’s virality, and drew millions of players to the game. The game itself was not so different than Evony, but instead of trying to bring Facebook to the traditional browser-based gamers, it brought the game to Facebook users.
Plarium’s Stormfall was also quite successful, adding voice-acted tutorials, beautiful 3d-animated troops, and many more ways for Facebook friends to help each other.
Rise of Mobile
But Facebook’s time in the spotlight was short-lived. Soon mobile became the place to be.
Valor, by Quark Games, made the first big splash. They took the core, competitive gameplay from Travian (including the ability to control multiple cities and and end-game), and gave it a UI perfect for a smartphone.
Kabam was quick to join as well, and brought their Kingdoms of Camelot and two re-skins Dragons of Atlantis and “Hobbit: Kingdoms of Middle Earth”, the latter of which spent several months in the top-10 games on the app store.
Because these games were mobile, it meant you could check in on your empire and give orders to your troops any time throughout the day. You didn’t need to be sitting down at a computer. You could also receive alerts if someone was attempting to attack you, or if a building was complete. The game came to you instead of asking you to check in all the time in case something was happening.
Tactics vs Strategy
At this point you are probably thinking “What about Clash of Clans?” It’s been sitting at the top of the app store for ages. Yes, but that doesn’t make it a strategy game!
Clash of Clans, is a great tower-defense game, but is not really strategy. The majority of the gameplay is actually single-player.
When you attack someone, he has had no way to prepare for your specific attack. During the assault, the defender can do nothing to turn the tide of battle, and once the attack is over, the two of you are unlikely to ever see each other again.
This doesn’t mean Clash of Clans isn’t a great game, it’s just not strategic. Especially if we define a strategy game as one where the player is rewarded for anticipating his opponent’s actions. The genre we’re focusing on here, however, was built on Travian’s persistent world and geography where players develop long term relationships and rivalries. These are games with high stakes, where you cannot rebuild your entire city in 30 seconds after it is destroyed
Game of War
In 2013, Machine Zone’s “Game of War” took everyone by surprise. Using Kabam’s games and economical structure as a base, it added a few crucial features and claimed the #3 game on the app store for the better part of a year.
One thing Game of War added is their Rally Mechanism. They allowed you to declare you are going to attack someone, and then anyone in your alliance can join in. You can also specify how long you want to wait for people to join.
In the days of Travian, people would be in separate chat rooms planning these things, with separate apps for timers and all that. But now, with the modern focus on user-experience, Game of War does all the work for you. An ally just needs to click on “join rally”, select which troops to send, and the game makes sure they get to the right place at the right time.
On the softer-side, they added an “Alliance Help” mechanism, where anyone in your alliance can help reduce the remaining time for your buildings. At first this seems like a simple replacement for those Facebook requests we’ve all grown to hate, but without the virality. But this small, easy connection to your alliance serves as a gateway to draw more casual players deeper into the game.
Machine Zone also invested heavily in their state-of-the-art translation system. The older browser games would often have many different servers, one for each language. Somehow though, Game of War has made it so you can play with, even chat with, players from all over the world, and they will see your text in their own language.
This becomes very important too, because Game of War lets players move between “Kingdoms”. In older games, like most MMOs, you are placed in an instance with maybe 50k or 100k other players. In Game of War though, you can send your troops to attack other players across the lines of another Kingdom. They even have special Kingdom vs Kingdom events just for this, where rivalries between alliances are set aside to focus on striking the other kingdom. It gets so extreme that players will kill poorly defended troops in their own kingdom, just to prevent the other kingdom from claiming the kills.
One place Game of War seems weak though, a good place for competitors to strike, is the User Interface. Game of War is very usable, thanks to big buttons, but they are very clunky, clumsy, and there is so much on the screen desperately calling for your attention at any given time. It feels very much like a game, and breaks any sense of immersion with the world. It’s hard to feel like I’m actually leading these troops into battle and not just tapping buttons on an app.
Game of War has been sitting on the App Store throne for a long time, but as we have learned, in strategy games the King is never safe.
Keep an Eye Out
While there has been a lot of interest in new MOBAs, (Fates Forever, VainGlory, etc) and other TD-base-builders like Clash of Clans which rely more on quick reflexes than deep thinking, there has yet to be a new true Strategy game since Game of War arrived. What exciting new features, what strategic possibilities, what new games are coming?
Sky Wars: Archon Rises is currently in beta, and shows a lot of promise.
The first thing that comes across is the setting and the striking visuals. Instead of the standard medieval-European troops that compose the vast majority of these games, Archon Rises is set in the sky and you will lead Angels, Djinn, and other “Divine” troops into battle.
The art is also top-notch, reminiscent of Magic: the Gathering
Along with the unique setting, instead of a warlord or king, Sky Wars gives you the opportunity to play as a “god” and cast spells all over the sky, to bless your allies or curse your enemies.
The game also offers a unique take on alliance-vs-alliance warfare, with each alliance having its own citadel on the world map that can only be attacked from other alliance-islands. This will make cooperating with other players (in a meaningful strategic way) much more significant.
You can request to join their beta program at: www.skywarsbeta.com
Forge of Empires, by Innogames, is another game to take a look at. Innogames have been around since the early days of browser-based strategy with Tribal Wars and Grepolis, and now they are back with Forge of Empires, which seems heavily inspired by Civilization.
Originally a browser game itself, and winning the German Compute Games Awards Browser Game of the Year 2013, Innogames has done a lot of work to bring this to the iPad.
Forge of Empires lets you do research to progress your city from the stone age to the modern era, and the art for your city updates along with it.
They also change things up with a tactical, grid-based battle system. Instead of battles automatically resolving, you can give orders to each of your troops. Of course this means you can no longer send your armies off and go to sleep, but maybe on the iPad that is less of an issue.
Finally, be sure not to miss “War of Thrones, Dragons Knights Story & Kingdoms on Fire”. I kid of course, but that is an actual game.
