I had been hearing and reading a bit about Clash of Clans so I decided to download it and give it a try. Overall it can be a fun game but it might not be for everyone.

The goal of Clash of Clans is to build your village and defend it against attacks. There are a number of ways you can play the game. You can build up your village and live a peaceful existence.  You can build up an army and attack the goblins, and you can build up your army and attack other players. This is one of the nice things of the game, diversity. To move or build up your clan (village) more quickly you need to do a mix of the three.

You start the game with a small village and a tutorial to get your going. During the tutorial you learn the basics of the game. In the game there are three currencies: gold, elixir, and gems. Gold and elixir are used to build troops, buildings, upgrades, clear the land etc. Whenever you tap on an item, it will indicate what you need to upgrade or build. Gems are used to help speed up the process.

This is the first major “issue” with the game, is the time. The first couple of buildings or upgrades take a few minutes but once you move into the higher levels, it will take literally hours to build or upgrade an item. If you are patient, no problem. Now if you want to speed up the process, it will cost gems. You can of course purchase gems with real money but you will earn some as you play. I like to challenge myself in these types of games to see how far I can go without spending any in game currency.

The long times it takes to build something really slows the game down. For me, I like to play and then check in a few times a day with Clash of Clans, I could check in and wait until the next day before it was done.

Another “issue” with the game, for me, is that you cannot play offline. I do not have Wi-Fi at my office so I am limited to playing either before or after work. This with the long wait times really slows the game down for me.

Since I am covering “issues” the last one I will mention is the text. I am getting old but the text of the screen is really small.

The other aspects of the game is building an army and attacking goblins or other players. When you attack the goblins you are looking to destroy their base, thus earning gold and exlixir. When you attack is done, any troops you have left are destroyed, so you need to rebuild your troops each time.

You can also attack other players. When you do this you open yourself up for others to attack you. When when some attacks you, you will not lose any building, etc but you will lose gold and exlixir! If you do not have plenty of those, you cannot do anything.

So is Clash of Clans a fun game? Yes it is despite the “issues” that I found. Again I use quotes around the term issues because these are items that took away from the game for me but might not be a problem with you. Overall the game is well designed, plays nicely  and gives you a lot of different things you can do. So if you like building games and player vs player games, Clash of Clans might be up your alley.

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