Having earned $20 million on one clone of Clash of Clans, Space Ape Games is releasing its second clone of clashes — with a story from Rhianna Pratchett and music from the author of the soundtrack to Mass Effect.
Today, on May 7, Apple has put the Rival Kingdoms: Age of Ruin game on the main banner in the App Store in more than 70 countries.
The project is a clone of Clash of Clans, richly flavored with hardcore mobile strategy mechanics, like Game of War. The novelty is also positioned as a hardcore game designed for adult players: here you have realistic (within the framework of dark fantasy) graphics, and a story written by Rihanna Pratchett, and pathos music by the composer Mass Effect.
Whether monetization techniques borrowed from niche box office hits and a non—standard promotion strategy will help to earn more from these clashes than Supercell from its games is an open question, but such an approach looks, at least, interesting and fresh.
The developer of the project is not the most famous studio in Russia, Space Ape Games, which released Samurai Siege in the fall of 2013. The game was also a clone of Clash of Clans, only cartoon and with an oriental flavor.
Largely due to its success, the emergence of Rival Kingdoms became possible: for the entire time of its existence, Samurai Siege has earned about $20 million in total with a total download of 10 million. Although, of course, there was no investment either. Since the company was founded in 2012, various funds have invested about $11 million in Space Ape.
By the way, Rival Kingdoms has been tested for about 8 months.
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