Supercell announced that Squad Busters will launch on May 29 as its first global game in over five years.
The game will be the sixth title from the Helsinki, Finland-based game studio which is majority owned by Tencent. Supercell has a reputation for killing more games than it ships out of a fanatical focus on quality — and a high bar for creating games that are memorable and generate billions in revenue.
The Finnish mobile games giant has fast-tracked its game to global launch after an unanimously positive community reception during the soft launch period, said Ilkka Paananen, CEO of Supercell, in a press briefing.
Squad Busters is a player-versus-player multiplayer mobile game that brings together all-star Supercell characters from Clash of Clans, Brawl Stars, Hay Day, Clash Royale, and Boom Beach. You can fight each other in 10-person multiplayer matches. To pre-order the game, visit the App Store here.
The game is launching globally on May 29 (iOS/Android). Supercell anticipates Squad Busters becoming its next smash hit, following in the footsteps of Hay Day, Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, Clash Royale and Brawl Stars in generating more than $1 billion in lifetime revenue. Supercell is leveraging all those games for the mashup of characters in Squad Busters.
Squad Busters gameplay
Squad Busters sees players take part in epic 10-person multiplayer matches, building up squads over the course of 4-minute matches and competing against rival players to grab the most gems. The game features characters from across the Supercell universe, including the Barbarian, who start off as cute baby characters and gain new abilities as they evolve into ‘classic’ and ‘super’ forms. Players can earn characters by playing the game.
Eino Joas, game lead for Squad Busters at Supercell, in a press briefing that the team had the idea of an IP mashup game from the very start, and there might be opportunities in the future to bring in different characters to join that IP mashup, Joas said.
The game is designed to appeal to everyone who has a mobile device — featuring intuitive and inclusive gameplay that can span from casual players, to those looking for more intense, competitive play.
By the end of a match, your squad can grow to up to 10 members, with each member being a character from a Supercell game. You can gain a special ability like a log, which you can set loose and make it roll over some enemy characters. There are perhaps 10 spells like the “log” spell in the game.
Each match is only about four minutes long so you can’t just waste your time collecting things. You have to go after other players and “bust” them. Even if you are eliminated, you can still win some kind of prizes or rewards for your efforts, Joas said.
“We really want this feeling of everybody feeling like they’ve won something and every battle being enjoyable,” he said.
The core pillar of Squad Busters is focused on developing your squad of characters. As you progress in a match, you can bring more and more squad members into the match to make your squad more powerful.
The way you progress in the game is to collect characters that you get from battles, and then evolve them into new forms. The characters start off as babies and then they grow up as they evolve.
“We think it’s a great analogy for your progression through the game,” Joas said.
The game that didn’t die
While other games were cut, this one stayed alive.
It’s been a while since Supercell game clicked like this.
“Our goal has always been to launch a game globally,” Paananen said. The goal is to make “a game that will be remembered forever. Having such a high bar for quality, of course, explains why we haven’t actually released a new game in a very long time.”
He added, “I actually have mixed feelings about it. Would I have liked to released a game sooner? Yes, I would, of course. But on the other hand, I’m incredibly proud of our teams for holding themselves to a super high bar. And this is why we haven’t launched a new game since the Brawl Stars, which was in 2018. So you can imagine how it feels to us right now because we’ve been waiting for this moment for a very, very long time.”
Paananen said that the game came up around the time of the company’s 10th anniversary in 2020. Part of the thinking was to create a game that combined all of the Supercell IP — meaning the characters, stories, universes in one single game, an IP mashup.
“We would release it when the company turned 10 years old,” Paananen said. But that particular game team could not make the game happen and it did not hit the quality bar for fun.
“So eventually when they decided to kill that game, the incredible thing was that from the ashes of that game, and particularly the key people from that team, they told us, “It was a crushing moment, Paananen said.
That team revived the idea of a squad game later on and began testing a new idea. Rob Lowe, head of marketing for the game, joined Supercell in December. He remembered walking into the office and hearing these cheering and squealing and shouting noises. That reminded him of the days when he was at Nintendo playing Smash Bros. That made him feel like he made the right move.
“This is obviously a super, super exciting moment for all of us and for Supercell. This is such a special moment for us as well. Most people will know Supercell as famous for killing a lot of games. And the reason why is our game teams hold themselves accountable for like a very, very high bar or creating new great games,” Paananen said.
Why did it survive?
Supercell has published five games (it launched Everdale in 2021 but then pulled it and turned it over to another company) and killed more than 30. Paananen said Supercell’s dream is to create games that as many people as possible play for years and that are remembered forever.
There was a lot at stake in this game, which has one of Supercell’s bigger teams. There are about 50 people on the team, not counting the cross-functional teams that support the launch.
“I think what we have for this game is that we have one of the strongest teams,” Joas said. “We have key players from many different previous games coming together to make this one. So we believe that we’re ready to also tackle anything that gets thrown at us when we go into the wild.”
The team started seeing “the magic” happening in the second closed beta test last summer. That was about when he joined the team, Joas said.
Playtesting revealed that older players had some trouble with the controls, but they could still pick up the game and play without having a gaming background.
“We weren’t expecting the game to be this approachable,” Joas said. “It’s a collection of signals that we’ve collected over time. Starting from the closed beta tests like the first closed beta, we didn’t see that magic yet. Then in the second last beta, we added some key elements like the fusions gameplay, and then the modifiers that we added. And suddenly we had a game that actually had this very approachable core loop where we can direct people to play and get a diverse experience every time you go in. And then since then, we’ve just doubled down on making this [as good] as possible.”
The team has done market surveys and consulted players.
At the beginning of every battle, there is this spinner that adds random modifiers that change every battle that you’re going to play. One superpower modifier might involve bees, where the bees collect coins. You fight against non-player characters (NPCs) on the map who guard some of the treasure chests. When you defeat them and open the chests, your squad can start to grow.
You’re never entirely sure what comes out of the chests. The game has “mega units” which are kind of like the blue shell in Mario Kart, where you can open a chest, get a mega unit and then it makes your units six times more powerful, allowing you to come from behind and make a comeback.
Paananen said, “Our dream is to create great games that as many people as possible play for years and that are remembered forever. Huge credit to the Squad Busters team – it’s already apparent that the game has such high potential, making it our first company game launch since Brawl Stars in 2018. Squad Busters brings together our Supercell characters in a fun way that fans have never seen before, and I can’t wait to see the reactions from players across the globe.”
Squad Busters will be available on iOS and Android worldwide from May 29, and is already available in the following countries: Canada, Mexico, Spain, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Singapore. Supercell was founded in 2010.
“I think all the things that are happening in our various games are affecting how we make games because the people reflect the change. And the industry changes all the time. And I think we’re always learning new things as we develop games,” Joas said. “You can see, for example, in Brawl Stars, they’ve had a great run recently. And we believe that that’s because they’ve actually pivoted to focus back more on serving the widest possible audience. We really believe that we need to make games for the widest possible audience.”