Clash of Clans creators release Clash Royale

Clash of Clans has been one of the largest mobile games to date, but it wasn’t enough for the crack development team Supercell to rest on the laurels of their previous success. Today, Supercell launched a soft release of their new card-based, direct competition game Clash Royale.
Clash of Clans allured players with a number of effective gameplay components. First, there’s a sense of creativity that goes into designing a base. Strategy also plays a role, as it’s important to be able to assess and attack bases intelligently. Group dynamics got into the mix with the titular clans pitting themselves against each other, and the set-it-and-forget-it nature of much of the gameplay let even players with a busy schedule get in on the action.
However, as games like Hearthstone have demonstrated, there’s clearly a market for one-on-one, live multiplayer with card-based mechanics. Clash Royale seeks to bring users the same feel of creativity by letting players assemble their own deck filled with Clash of Clans characters and elements, but with all the immediacy and engagement of a card dueling game.
Now, this isn’t so much a sequel to Clash of Clans as it is a completely different game of its own. Clash Royale looks like it might even have a radically different demographic than its forerunner, and Supercell reports that the team working on the project is totally different than the one that is still actively developing Clash of Clans. So far, Clash Royale has only been released on iOS, but there is no doubt that we’ll see it hitting the Android operating system some time in the near future.
What are your thoughts on Clash Royale? The primary complaint leveled at Clash of Clans is that some claim it falls in the “pay to win” camp of mobile gaming. Will the same criticisms be leveled at Clash Royale? Let us know in the comments below!