[Game]Battle of Galaxy

Besides a kick-butt name, “Battle for the Galaxy War Game” has got some great clashy inventions. And it mixes that with the most sneaky, inventive monetization tricks. I don’t mean bringing in old tricks from other games, I mean “whoa, I never even thought to charge for that!”. First the good stuff:

This is minor, but a keeper. Clash of Clans (and all copies) has one barracks for all regular troops, and later a Dark Barracks for troops made from dark elixir. GftGWG says “why not have different types of barracks, just because?”. So in this game you get a building for People, then Light Machines (robots, drones, small tanks), and then Heavy Machines (big tanks). It’s surprisingly fun. And besides unlocking new troop types they also perform upgrades, so you’ll actually use them.

Next are the daily and weekly Events. For the daily, you and 9 other people attack the same base with a pre-made army — often a strange mix of very powerful troops, trying for the best % destruction. The top 6 out of 9 win something so it’s worth trying. You can even retry every hour. Being able to test-out crazy high-level troops for prizes is pretty fun.

The weekend event is even more unique — a “speed-base”. You start a new game in a new area running at 20x speed. You get prizes for how far you can build it up and for completing little missions. It also randomly turns some troops into super-troops with mega-upgrades. The ultimate reward is a 1-of-a-kind Artifact (a permanent bonus) for your real base. There’s no possible way to get to the end without spending money, but you can carry over points. If you play it a dozen weekends in a row you might save up enough to get the grand prize. In practice you’ll get bored after the 3rd or 4th time (each weekend you restart from nothing), but this idea has a lot of potential.

This game has a clever solution to the clashy problem of not caring whether you “win” an attack, as long as you get lots of gold. BftGWG wins give a random equipment card (a permanent small bonus to some troop type or building). You’re never done (2 more equipment cards gets the next small bonus, then 4 more…) so it’s a constant small incentive to try to look for battles where you may not get quite as much gold, but can win.

BftGWG has a better way of handling back-up armies. A modern clash-like allows you to pre-train one extra army. BftGWG says “why not 2 extra?” “why not start with no extra armies and let the player buy up to 5, through buildings?”. That’s a very clash-like thing to do, and seems obvious in hindsight. They do it by having attacks come from a Starport building. Inside, only in the menu, are up to 4 upgradeable spaceships (your Army Camps). To train a back-up army, buy another Starport. You can have up to 5. BftGWF is then devilish: each Starport independently levels up its spaceships, which is a huge time-sink. But another game could easily change that.

Onto the monetization. You start with 4 builders instead of the usual 2. But after a week you’re down to one! It turns out 3 of them were temporary for new players. Yowch! Your extra Starports can only be bought with gems. The building that houses a hero character is also gems-only (but is 50% off the first week. Seriously). Independently none of this is too bad, but together it means you’re behind if you don’t buy gems. They keep up the pressure nicely. By the time you’ve won enough gems for those buildings the game unlocks a second hero pedestal that you can’t afford.

The third currency, anti-matter — what would be dark elixir in clash of clans, is diabolical. Immediately you’ll see options requiring it — your 4th cannon, 5th machinegun, and so on. Those bonus buildings glow bright pink in the bases of people you attack, mocking you. It turns out you can only get anti-matter from the special events (or the cash shop). Since those buildings are also upgraded with anti-matter, you will always need more than you can get. Worse, anti-matter can buy a unique infantry squad which joins you in every attack. That’s BftGWG’s way of giving paying players a leg up.

That equipment you get for winning is also a cash sink. Normal equipment gives very small gains, which a normal player will tend to get naturally. But as you may recall, the game teases just how good mega (“legendary”) equipment is. You can’t get that by playing (even though an evil tooltip suggests you can). It only comes from paid loot chests.

The net effect is that by midgame things are clearly dominated by paying players. You can see they’ve got plenty of anti-matter to keep up with the best buildings, likewise gem-costing buildings, and they’ve got a few gold-colored troops stronger than anything you can field (which you know since you’ve used those same gold troops in your weekend speed-bases). Beyond that, the units just plain need tuning. Defenses get too tough, too fast, the mortar is far too powerful, the giants can hardly soak any damage, and the healers’ AI is bad. But someone should definitely copy some of this game’s good ideas.