Product Teardown of Supercell’s Brawl Stars
Let’s take a closer look at some of Brawl Stars’ compelling features and its evolution over past few months.
This analysis is based on the game’s Android OS mobile app :)
Four months it has been now that I am addicted to this mobile game called Brawl Stars by Supercell. I have always loved playing video games — from Super Mario to Counter Strike to Tomb Raider to Brawl Stars — I have tried different types of games all my life. I have always been fan of multiplayer games as it makes the games interactive and fun!
Brawl Stars is a multiplayer game, which can be played with one’s friends. To describe the game in brief, it involves battle between different characters (called brawlers) having super powers. It gets better when you try different game modes like football (called brawl ball), hot zone, gem grab, duo showdowns, et al.
This game has been keeping me sane during this COVID-19 situation of being stuck at home. Being a product enthusiast, I could not stop myself from noticing the updates they have made in the past four months! I generally don’t stick to a mobile game for more than a month and this got me asking myself
What is so different about this game that it is keeping me hooked everyday?!?
Time to wear my nerd glasses and unfold the power cards of this game. I am going to highlight three crucial features of this game which contribute to the element of surprise and excitement in the users.
- Unique brawlers (main character)— The brawler has parameters like trophies, ranks and power levels, which keep increasing as you win the matches. Power levels are directly proportional to the attack power and health of the brawlers. Each brawler has its own traits and a “superpower”.
- These brawlers are not readily available to each player. You have to earn them by winning matches.
- As you win more tokens in the game, you get to open “brawl boxes” (rewards) where you can get a random brawler.
Reason 1 — The elements of surprise and delight and the longing for a new brawler that the user aspires are the biggest reasons to keep a user hooked to the game. Also, since each brawler has its own personality, it allows the user to choose, try and play different roles /personalities in the game.
PS: I am still hoping that I get “Spike” or “Gale” as my next brawler (fingers crossed 🤞)
2. Different game modes / events — The game has different game modes that gives you the option to play in teams or play alone and fight it out with the other players online.
Here are some of the game modes that this game has:
- Brawl Ball — This is the football of the brawler world and is played in 3 vs. 3 setup (I am a pro in this mode 😎)
- Solo / Duo Showdown — You can either select solo or duo mode and choose to compete alone or with a teammate.
- Gem Grab — It’s played in the the 3 vs. 3 setup and the aim is to collect 10 gems and defend the title by not losing those gems. This mode sort of has the “police-thief” game feel where you try to steal the gems from your opponents.
- There are other game modes like Heist, Bounty, Siege, HotZone and other special events.
Reason 2 — With the variety of game modes and offering socially competitive features such as playing with or against user’s friends adds a critical layer of engagement depth.
3. Daily Quests — This is a fairly new feature, which was introduced around 8–10 weeks back. The user gets two daily quests to complete and in turn you get tokens. For example, ‘win 3 games in Brawl Ball’, ‘win 3 games with Gale’. This is a proven way to make your users open the game daily and give them daily goals.
Reason 3 — Giving the users something to forward for the next day and making them feel accomplished each day by giving daily quests help in maintaining the user engagement.
Evolution of the game from April 2020 to August 2020
It’s important for the product managers of a gaming app to introduce new features to keep it interesting for the users. Brawl Stars is consistent with introducing and adding new features to the game. Here is how the game has evolved in the last four months:
- Season Quests — In this period, they have introduced a new concept of providing quests for each season. A typical season lasts for around 50-60 days and is based on theme. The season quests are similar to daily quests, but can be completed till the season ends.
- Brawl Pass —There are two rewards track, one that can be accessed by any player and other one that can be accessed by players owning the brawl pass.
The brawl pass has to be bought using green gems. This provides a differentiating factor to the players making them spend hundreds of dollars on the game (to buy more and more green gems).
- New brawlers — Over the course of two seasons, they have added 3 new brawlers categorized as “Chromatic” brawlers. Players owning the brawl pass gets the these brawlers as rewards.
Improvement Areas
Even though the game is packed with gripping features, Supercell can consider improving on some areas:
- The Trophy Road—Recently, the trophy road was extended beyond 15,000 trophies to extend the road for rewards.
But that road only has reward boxes as the rewards. Other rewards like star points, gems or coins can also be added to break the reward monotony.
- Introduce Club-related Rewards and Battles— Currently, being part of a club is used just to team up and interact with other players. This feature is not very engaging.
Personally, I do not find any motivation to join any club when I can add friends in my friend list and team up with them. Supercell can consider introduce a reward system based on the ranking of a club and allow club vs. club battles.
Overall, Brawl Stars is an all-rounder mobile game and is almost perfect. I will be honest, it was quite difficult for me to find the improvement areas. Go and try it for yourself! :)
Check out one of my game plays below 😎 (Sorry, but it is in landscape mode 😢 — try tilting your laptop 😂jk)
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