Space Ape Games aims for older hardcore fans with Rival Kingdoms mobile strategy app

Space Ape Games is launching its second big mobile app, Rival Kingdoms: Age of Ruin, in another bid to challenge the supremacy of Supercell’s Clash of Clans, which has dominated the top grossing mobile game charts for a couple of years. It’s now live on Android and iOS.

This Unity-built epic fantasy game is the second release from the maker of the hit title Samurai Siege, which came out a year and a half ago and still has about 300,000 daily active users, according to London-based Space Ape Games’ chief executive John Earner. Rival Kingdoms is a real-time strategy game with a heavy emphasis on action, multiplayer combat, and guild-based gameplay.

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“It’s a mobile real-time strategy [RTS] game for a core gamer,” said Earner in an interview with GamesBeat. “Some players liked Samurai Siege, but they felt it was like a guilty pleasure. The theme and art felt like it was something their child would play. It was counter-intuitive. People told us that the games on the market were childish, but we had thought that was the style that the market wanted. We believe players are looking for something harder-core.”

Earner said that the new game has similar game play, but Space Ape is targeting it at older players who prefer more sophisticated or realistic art styles, in contrast to the comical art styles of games like Samurai Siege.

“The market doesn’t want minimum viable products anymore,” Earner said, in a reference to developers who launched half-finished games in the past. “It wants games that come out of the gate with live events, complete feature sets, high performance, and no bugs. Samurai Siege gave us the runway to invest a lot of time in our next game.”

Samurai Siege has generated $20 million in revenue and 10 million downloads.

To beef up its effort, Space Ape Games hired award-winning games writer Rhianna Pratchett to create the back story. Composer Richard Jacques, who did the music for Mass Effect, created the music.

Players build fortified camps, armies and alliances in the war-torn land of Estara, and they fight each other and the world-threatening Ruin. They can discover and recruit a variety of Ancients – powerful allies whose special attacks can devastate foes and change the course of battle.

Earner said the competition includes Clash of Clans, but it is also competing with newer games like Brian Reynolds’ DomiNations and Zynga’s just-released Empires & Allies. It also competes with others for the time of players.

Space Ape Games has 90 people. About 15 still work on maintaining Samurai Siege. About 20 worked on Rival Kingdoms. Others are working on a couple of other upcoming releases.

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Earner said matches take about 10 minutes to play. The company hopes to differentiate itself on its sophisticated alliance system. The result is that some people in the testing play on the weekends for hours at a time.

As for marketing, Earner said the company is targeting communities of hardcore gamers, such as those on certain YouTube or Twitch channels. The company is focusing on word-of-mouth marketing.

“We have spent months convincing these folks that Rival Kingdoms isn’t a clone,” Earner said. “We have made a game that moves the genre forward. We say it is ‘more action, less admin.'”

The game was in testing for about eight months. In the first last year, the company made some big changes. Then it relaunched its beta test in about five countries back in January.

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Earner agreed with Kabam’s assessment that you have to focus on creating games that can be the biggest hits at the top of the charts.

“They are totally right, and Space Ape views it the same way,” he said. “We think Rival Kingdoms has a chance at being top ten.”