I’ve been excited about Clash Mini since it was announced. The idea’s simple: the Clash universe, with all the units and concepts I already understand, but this time instead of the streamlined tower-defence battles of Clash Royale, it’s something closer to a brisk spin on the auto battler genre. This is a sort of game I’d always wanted to get into but struggled with. All of that combined with the fact that Supercell squishes a lot of games before they get to an actual release, I was doubly intrigued. Clash Mini would be the first new Supercell game in an age. What would a game the publisher deemed fit for actual release look like after all this time?
Clash MiniPublisher: SupercellDeveloper: SupercellPlatform: Played on iOSAvailability: Soft launch now in UK on Android and iOS.
For years I kept an eye out on all the news, but I must have drifted somewhat. In the end, Clash Mini’s UK soft launch in early July was so soft that I missed it completely. Anyway, last week I idly checked on the App Store to see if it was out, and discovered that it was. I’ve been playing it ever since. It’s an interesting game. Here’s what I think so far.
Clash Mini takes auto battlers and shrinks them down so they fit inside of three minutes or so. It’s you and an opponent at either end of a 8×5 board. At the beginning of each round you place a bunch of units down until you’ve run out of elixir, or mana. You rival does the same. The game starts and all placements are revealed. Then your units fight your rival’s units and you can’t intervene. You can place more units in between each round. First player to win three rounds gets the glory. That’s it.
As I expected, Clash Mini does some neat stuff with this formula. First-to-three makes for snappy matches, and the limited board space and relatively small number of units moves things along quickly too. Even better, once a round has gone on for a certain time, things speed up even more with a super-paced Frenzy Mode, which rushes everything to its conclusion. I had worried that even a fastish auto battler would involve a bit of waiting around, and that really isn’t the case.