Supercell

Clash Royale is a rightfully interesting, fun, interactive, and addicting game.

As a high school student in the fall of 2025, I am automatically exposed to the recent craze surrounding a certain mobile game: Clash Royale. I am being honest when I say that I went into the “research” portion for this piece with a negative attitude towards the game—all I had known it to be was a game that made my lunch period at school go from socializing with relatively no phones out to me being left out of the conversation because I was the only one who had not yet downloaded the game. But since I gave in and downloaded the app, my idea surrounding the game has been altered for the better. 

Brief Overview and Trophies

Released in March 2016, Clash Royale is a fast-paced battle game where players fight other real players in real time. In most cases, each game is just under three minutes long with the goal to obtain all three of the opponents’ towers within the time limit. However, some games may end with a tie, meaning that the game goes into “sudden death” mode—whoever can take down the next tower wins the game. Every game that is won, the winning player gains a certain number of trophies; along with this, the losing player loses that same number of trophies. 

One thing that makes the game so enjoyable is that each battle is paired up with a player with a similar number of trophies. This is extremely helpful to learning and progressing in the game because it means a new player won’t be paired with an experienced player. If that were the case, the new player would find it very hard to increase their trophy count. 

The reason that trophies are important to the game is that every time you reach a certain number of trophies, you level up in the game. Leveling up—and many other places throughout the layout of the game—gives you a chest to open with a prize inside. The prizes can be new player cards, gold currency, or gems. 

I personally find it annoying when these chests give me gold or gems because I haven’t seen much use for them yet. A player can only spend gold when leveling up the character cards, which is a process that can only occur when a player collects enough cards for the character card as a whole to upgrade. Right now, I have over 30k gold; the maximum amount of gold an upgrade needs from me is around 1000 gold. I just feel like I have too much gold to do anything with, and all the extra gold they gave me could have been better character cards. 

Decks and Character Cards

A player’s deck is fully customizable to their own personal preferences, consisting of 8 character cards. The character cards are used when you are in a battle, and they are used to defend your towers, as well as try to take down the opponent’s. There are hundreds of character cards within the game, all with their own strengths and weaknesses; some of my favorite cards right now are Mini P.E.K.K.A., Barbarians, Musketeer, and Knight. 

On the left and right towers, the “tower princess” stands, assisting the player’s character cards in shooting down the opponent’s character cards with her bow and arrow. The third tower, in the middle, houses the “King Tower,” and he does the same but with a cannon. This pair is the default for when a player first starts the game; however, once a player begins to progress, they have the chance to unlock a new area of the game. There are four different towers to collect, with the tower princess being the first; the next three can be unlocked by progressing up to arenas 8, 11, and 13. Arenas can be unlocked by gaining a certain number of trophies; for example, every 300 trophies gained, a new arena is unlocked.

I like the fact that each person’s deck is different. There is an infinite number of different combinations of character cards a player can have, which creates a unique experience for each player. Additionally, a player can have multiple decks without needing to delete one; this creates ease for switching between different decks in between games. I feel like that little detail really proves how well thought-out Clash Royale really is. 

Clans and Arenas

Another area of Clash Royale includes “clans”—this may be a hint at the other popular Supercell game, Clash of Clans. Clans are established groups that a player can create or join; I created a clan titled “drumline” for all of the drumline kids and I to join. Up to 50 players can become members of a clan, and the clan leader can decide whether it’s invite-only or open to anyone, as well as many other settings.

Clans can go into “Clan Wars,” which is where a clan fights four other clans every week to gain trophies. My understanding of this feature is that not many people actually play this part of the game because of the limited and outdated rewards gained from the wins. However, if there was an update, many of my friends from lunch say that they would be willing to try out the Clan Wars portion again. 

One thing I am a little turned off by is the fact that you can only be in one clan at a time. This is frustrating because a lot of my friends in the drumline are in their own clans, and while they want to join the drumline clan, they don’t want to leave or get rid of the clan they were originally in. I think that if there were an update allowing a player to have a limit of maybe 3 clans, it could benefit everyone a lot. 

Friends

Because Clash Royale is an online game, a player is able to send an invite link via Messages to anyone and become friends with them in the game. The friends feature is nothing short of awesome for two reasons: friendly battling and spectating. I really enjoy both of these perks because they just bring another sense of community to the game that I haven’t really noticed in other games that have trended like Clash Royale has. 

Friendly Battling is exactly what it sounds like; you can invite one of your friends to battle in either a one vs. one or a two vs. two format. One thing I really like about this feature is that when you are friendly battling someone, you cannot gain or lose trophies. This is especially helpful to someone like me who has a lot of friends who are a lot farther along in the game, so most of my friendly battles end in a loss on my end. If these losses were accompanied by trophy losses, I would have been discouraged from playing the game very early on. 

Spectating is a feature that allows you to watch and cheer on one of your friends while they are battling another player. My experience with spectating has been nothing but positive; there have been times when I was playing by myself and had a really good game, and I wish someone were there to see it. But then, I see the little thumbs up icon on the side of my screen—it’s nice to know that one of my friends did see how well I played. 

Conclusion

All of my preconceived notions about Clash Royale have been changed since I gave the game a shot. I used to think it was just another game that would take FHC by storm for a little while and then die out. I was upset that the atmosphere of my lunch period had changed. But once I gave the game a chance, I realized that I was, in fact, missing out. Clash Royale is genuinely a good game due to its quickness, intensity, and the community it brings to friend groups. To quote my lunch table, and anyone after they win a battle: 

“This is why we clash!”