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Interesting Game Discussion - Clash Royale

I wanted to talk about Clash Royale due to how simple the game looks on the surface which hides the vast amount of complexity and skill-expression the game has.

The premise of the game is extremely easy to understand: you create a deck consisting of 8 cards, and face off against an opponent with their own deck. The goal of the game is to deploy your cards to attack and defend your opponent's cards, with the aim of destroying your opponent's towers.

However, beneath the surface, there are multiple different layers to how players can utilise their cards for maximum efficiency to gain an advantage over their opponent.

For example, most troops can be placed anywhere on your side of the map, but knowing exactly when and where to place certain cards can make the difference between a perfect defence and taking tower damage. Example

Another example is knowing what cards your opponents have in their deck and predicting when and how they will use those cards against yours so that you can counter them. This includes using cheap cards which seemingly may not have much use to distract enemy troops or utilising higher hp units to protect your damage dealers. Example

Rules, Balancing and Limitations of Cards

Another unrelated topic but one that is still interesting as someone studying game design is some of the choices Clash Royale has made when balancing certain cards.

Take for example the iconic P.E.K.K.A: it used to be in a balanced state that players were happy with, until Clash Royale gave the card an Evolution. Evolutions are basically extra effects a card gains after it has been played a certain number of times in a match. This was a direct buff to the card with no compensatory nerfs which resulted in P.E.K.K.A becoming extremely oppressive and eventually having to be harshly nerfed.

Not only that, but the evolution that was given to the P.E.K.K.A was crossing a line that should not be crossed. P.E.K.K.A is a card that has immense single-target damage but a very slow attack speed. This means that the biggest counter is swarm-type cards, which have a lot of low-health units, requiring splash damage or a high attack speed. However, the evolution made P.E.K.K.A heal from killing units, which now meant P.E.K.K.A actually benefitted from facing swarm cards. This fundamentally changed the limitations of the card and was a terrible idea. This can be seen by how the P.E.K.K.A evolution was initially one of the best in game and had to be repeatedly nerfed until the evolution almost had no impact before the card stopped being oppressive.