Clash of Clans

This is a freemium game review, in which we usually give our impressions immediately after booting a game up, again after three days, and finally after seven days. However, Clash of Clans has been out for months, and I've been playing for a good long while, so I'm going to be doing things a bit different this time round...

Clash of Clans hit the App Store in its full 1.7 release on June 13th 2012, after spending some time in closed beta.

*ADVERTISE*

I was introduced to the game by my main man Jon Jordan through the Pocket Gamer Podcast a few months later, after hearing about his love of the game, and the staggering amount of money he'd ploughed into the freemium title.

I've always been interested in freemium games, and I've sunk more than my fair share of time in them. But by the time I played Clash of Clans I'd become frustrated with the failing common to many freemium world-building titles: there's very little skill or strategy involved in success.

One small step for barbarian man

To me, Clash of Clans represents a tentative but significant step towards changing this, though it's a step that few take the time to recognise. See, Clash of Clans asks you to be good at the game as well as patient, and for that it deserves recognition.

Clans asks you to build a village and populate it with everything the warring tribe you're leading might need. A town hall for leadership, a gold mine for money, an army camp to hold your warriors, an Elixir collector to gather up this additional resource from the ether - pretty soon you've got plenty of architectural work to be getting on with.

As you build and expand your small camp into a burgeoning fortress you unlock more building types, but never enough to weigh you down with choices. Hit a high enough level and you can take over the Clan Castle, allowing you to forge allegiances with other players, upgrade your barracks, and create different types of unit.

There are more than enough types of unit to unlock, but not enough for any of them to seem perfunctory on the battlefield.

It's in the battles that you first appreciate the necessity for skill. The first few battles with the AI are easy-peasy. Simply build enough Barbarians to overrun the Goblin hideout, and watch them take it apart.

Then you're given access to archer units, and you're thinking, "well, this is easy, I'm storming through these."

Read: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Clash+of+Clans/review.asp?c=47309