BOOM BEACH GUIDE

Combining freemium elements with base building and combat, Supercell managed to create a compelling system to encourage players to come back and spend some money. Nowadays, the freemium powerhouse has returned with the worldwide launch of Boom Beach, the spiritual successor to Clash. Offering a similar experience in a different setting with just enough tweaks to make it unique, Boom Beach isn’t going to offer a radically different experience, but that might not be a bad thing in terms of approachability.

Developer Supercell is smart not to break a proven formula: it took what worked in its hugely successful Clash of Clans and basically put a modern skin on it. Boom Beach has the same high level of polish and an approachable design. A very simplistic, but effective tutorial gives you a clear and concise feel for the need to upgrade your base, and how it leads you to branch out from your base and attack the good variety of other player and computer-controlled forts scattered across your map of the sea.

Have you played Clash of Clans? Then Boom Beach is going to look very well known to you. Players start out with a simple island base with the goal being to explore the surrounding areas and free the surrounding island natives from villainous servitude. You’ll free them by building and upgrading ships, namely a gunship and landing boats, that you’ll use to deploy landing parties and take out opposing headquarters.

Freeing islands rewards both immediate and long term resources. In addition, islands are constantly being taken back, affording players an opportunity to retake and earn additional supplies. At last, the retaken islands become player islands which, provide even more resources along with medals, which are the primary measure of success.

Even though not having direct control over your troops in combat is initially frustrating, the choice of landing zone and use of flares gives you a simplified rule set that builds in complexity over time. This mostly automated system made for both exciting victories and agonizing defeats that I grew to love. You can also use a support ship off the coast to shoot flares, send in first aid kits, or even lay waste to the enemy camp with guided missiles. I couldn't help but get excited every time I had enough points to fire off another missile from the ship. The mixture of pre-battle strategy, real-time attack simulation, and active support makes for a very engaging experience that not many iOS games have captured.

The fact that battles still continue while you’re not playing made signing in to find out I had been attacked both terrifying and tantalizing. There’s a unique sense of pride when watching a replay of an attack that my defenses thwarted, and beats taught me more about how I should be laying out my beachfront base correctly. I quickly learned and appreciated that tactical placement of base buildings is important, as opposed to other games of this style where placement is largely meaningless.

But for a game that’s well populated with other humans, it’s stripped of any meaningful ability to connect with those players. There’s no chat functionality or depth to the interaction, and it became repetitive to only be able to either ignore or attack other player bases. Boom Beach is begging for a way to taunt your foes or ally with them, but that sort of collaboration is not currently available.

You’re working to upgrade your base when you’re not battling. The variation of all the materials needed for upgrades and their constant scarcity borders on maddening. Of the nine resources, gold is the easiest to come across and yet the most difficult to spend. Wood is the essential building block early on, but becomes the constant bane of your beachy existence. Once you have at last a steady amount of wood coming in, you'll run up against a stone wall (no pun intended), and then an iron one. There are just too many of these requirements in the way to allow for an reasonable pace of progression.

Landing boats can be outfitted with a wide variety of different units, each having pros and cons in terms of health, strength and weapons. Gunship weapons, as well as each of the landing units, can be upgraded as well as the ships themselves. Meanwhile, base buildings include the standard defensive mechanisms, as well as resource gatherers, structures that allow the aforementioned upgrades, and so on. Of course, all the building and upgrading is buttressed by a freemium timer system that applies to all facets of the game.

As someone that was a bit intimidated by Clash of Clans, I was surprised by how inviting the introductory phases of Boom Beach were. Currency is simplified at the onset with secondary currencies slowly introduced as you upgrade your headquarters. Premium currency, which plays the standard role of speeding up timers, doled out on a regular basis. Even the game’s combat system is paced really well with a player’s zone of influence (and potential opponents) being small at the onset but gradually expands at whatever pace the player desires.

As friendly and interesting Boom Beach is, it’s important to note that it’s still a freemium game at its heart. The building, recruiting, upgrading and resource systems are all premised on timers, with the only alternative to patience being to use premium currency to speed up the timers. Also, once you get into mid-game and additional currencies start appearing, Beach has a nasty habit of pushing you to instantly upgrade fundamental buildings for said new currency.

 Considering the fact that combat only occurs when you explore new regions that will take coins and radar upgrades or when conquered islands are retaken (which take time), long session players will quickly find that Boom Beach plays best in smaller, more frequent sessions. I won’t get into a theoretically debate about freemium, but all I’ll say is this style of play fits perfectly for my lifestyle, which is why it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

That path to upgrading your base would not be as frustrating when improvements affected more than just one building, but the frustration piles up as I look across my base and see every building calling out for an improvement. Being a completionist of sorts, this was like someone giving me a skin burn while fingers scratch across a chalkboard. It didn't ruin the experience entirely, but there were several times when I chose my upgrades poorly and had to wait an hour or more for the opportunity to right my wrong.

Now, I’m a fan of the streamlined gameplay but it does come with some costs. As far as building bases is concerned, there’s some loss in customization. In fact, taking a glance at the top players it also seems like there’s some loss in terms of viable endgame strategies as everyone seems to have the same exact base layout. There’s also very little in social integration currently available, which I thought was a pretty big part of Clash. I’m sure such additions will get updated into Boom Beach at last, but right now it’s a bit bare.

Regardless balance and approachability are important facets to a successful freemium game, and I think Boom Beach succeeds well in both in its other non-base defense aspects. Assuming you aren’t too obsessed with the end-game or social aspects (and you don’t have an irrational hatred for freemium games) Boom Beach continues the showing seen in Clash of Clans. Whether it has enough staying power as its spiritual predecessor will depend greatly on the inevitable tweaks to the core gameplay. Meanwhile, it’s worth a shot.

You can download the game here