Supercell soft-launches Clash Royale, a card-battling take on Clash of Clans

Clash of Clans has a new mobile rival, and its stars look pretty familiar.

Supercell soft-launched Clash Royale on iOS in a number of territories today, including New Zealand, Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong, reports Pocket Gamer. Clash Royale offers a real-time player-versus-player spin on the chart-dominating multiplayer strategy game Clash of Clans, which alongside the Finnish developer’s other two titles, Boom Beach and Hay Day, made $1.7 billion last year.

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It’s not guaranteed that Clash Royale will make it to final release, as other Supercell games — like Smash Land — have previously soft-launched before dying. But it’s interesting that the Finnish developer is leaning on the card-collecting and battling theme that drives popular titles like Hearthstone this time around.

Clash Royale is a real-time multiplayer game which stars characters from the Clash of Clans universe. Players can collect and upgrade dozens of cards, then use these to build a deck and wage war, battling to knock the enemy leaders from their towers.

Supercell says that it’s been trying to make a “fun and engaging” player-versus-player game on mobile for years, and it reckons that Clash Royale is the answer. It’ll be interesting to see whether Clash Royale ends up finding the same kind of success as Supercell’s three big hits, or it goes the same way as Smash Land.