Blog
28 August 2025

How game design makes all battler heroes — new and old — worth keeping in your roster

In a lot of multiplayer games, newly released heroes and units tend to be overpowered — sometimes by accident, but often as a way to nudge players toward fresh content. It might work in the short term, but there are downsides: backlash from the community, broken game balance, and a never-ending arms race where every new hero has to outdo the last.

But there’s another way to do things.

In Kingdom Clash, new heroes aren’t just flat-out better across the board. Instead, they’re designed to shine in specific situations or alongside certain unit types. That means you don’t have to nerf them a few months after release just to keep the meta from imploding, and players who’ve already invested in the hero don’t feel burned.

There’s no shortage of new content in the game now but if we look back, Cleric Tristan was considered the best epic hero around: great buffs, solid support for your whole army, and as a ranged unit, he lasted longer in battle. Melee heroes usually drop faster since they’re always in the thick of things. The Cleric, by contrast, was good in all game modes, though stat-wise, he didn’t outclass the legendaries.

Then came Malium the Herald of Corruption, the lizard rider — another epic hero, added in a last year’s summer update. This guy was tuned to be a beast in the arena but way less useful against campaign bosses.

And there’s Bjorn the Druid, a melee epic who, compared to his counterparts, excels in boss fights. Arena? Not so much. He tends to go down early, like most front-line fighters. But bosses deal damage across all rows, so survivability’s less of an issue — and the Druid’s damage buffs actually outperform the Cleric’s in this context. On bosses, he can be 20–30% more effective, roughly speaking.

All of this encourages players to experiment, build different lineups, and really think about who to bring where. The game is not just about raw stats anymore, it also became about skill, knowing when and how to use your heroes.

So here’s what we’ve got:

  • Cleric – good across the board
  • Druid – great for boss fights, weaker in the arena
  • Malium the Herald of Corruption – strong in the arena, not so great for boss fights

If you want to succeed in all modes, you’ll need to collect and level all three, not just rely on one.

That same thinking goes into our rares, too. 

Usually in battlers, rare heroes exist just to pad the roster — not super useful in PvP, rarely anyone’s favorite. But in Kingdom Clash, we took a different approach.

There’s one (not so) rare hero that everyone actually wants to upgrade: the Baron.

Why? His ability is genuinely valuable. Tap the skill button and the Baron marks a nearby area — every enemy caught in it turns gold for the rest of the fight. Take those units down and you get extra gold. The bonus scales with his level. Normally, a defeated enemy might give you 10 coins. With a level 10 Baron? That jumps to 15. It’s a great tool for farming soft currency, especially in campaign missions.

How important is visual design?

You might think a flashy hero design is enough to make players care. And for newcomers, sure, visuals help make a strong first impression. But for the core audience, cool looks alone won’t cut it.

Whenever we announce a new hero, the community immediately starts breaking down their stats, theorizing about army comps, and figuring out where they fit. I honestly can’t recall a time when players were hyped over a hero just for their appearance. Looks matter, but only in tandem with gameplay.

Same goes for customization and skins. We once created a limited-edition silver skin for Merida, our archer, and added it to the store just to see what would happen. Long story short? It didn’t take off.

That’s likely because of asynchronous PvP — players don’t get to flex their skins in real-time matches. Which gave us an idea. Now we’re building new features with layered progression systems, including character customization that shows up both in stats and in global leaderboards.

A few takeaways

Over the years of working on Kingdom Clash, we’ve done a full 180 on our approach to designing heroes and squads more than once. And even now, almost four years in, there’s no way to guarantee every new unit will land exactly the way we expect, especially when it comes to monetization.

As the game matured, we started putting more thought and care into each hero. In the early days, the goal was quantity: get as many heroes and squads into the game as possible. Now, it’s about making each one genuinely fun and useful.

The final verdict always comes from the players, and their reactions aren’t always predictable. But, through trials and tribulations, we’ve learned a few things along the way:

  • You don’t need to make new heroes overpowered to sell them. If they’re strong in specific scenarios, that’s often more compelling. It pushes players to engage more deeply with the game, and you don’t have to rebalance things constantly.
  • For the core community, stats and abilites matter more than visuals. The most successful heroes tend to be those that not only look cool, but change the way people play.
  • Same goes for flashy effects — players would rather win battles with a quiet buffer than lose with a fireball-throwing showboat.
  • Skins and customization may be good monetization boosters when they have real gameplay value, not just aesthetic appeal.
Blog
11 August 2025

Transition to IAP monetization in hyper-casual and its impact on gameplay

State.io, the hyper-casual strategy game, has been live for over four years. Despite its simple core loop, it still brings in a solid monthly income, especially for a game with minimal depth. But things are about to change. The team is now focused on overhauling the project: deepening gameplay, adding a real meta, and even introducing PvP. The idea is to gradually shift the game away from pure hyper-casual and toward a hybrid model, where a growing share of revenue comes not from ads, but from in-app purchases.

Over the past six months, we’ve been experimenting with meta features — dailies, weeklies, joint progression mechanics. We’ve also introduced generals: special units with unique abilities and cooldowns, giving the core loop new tactical options.

At the same time, we completely redesigned the old UI, which was looking a bit outdated. The new interface is cleaner, more modern, and cuts down the number of screens between levels. These UX improvements alone gave us a strong +20% boost in LTV.

Even though the game isn’t new, it still performs well — R1 remains stable around 40%. And most importantly, profits are holding steady. 

But now, the main challenge is to shift monetization away from ads and toward IAPs.

Right now, only about 5% of revenue comes from IAPs, and most of that is just “no ads” purchases. That’s clearly not enough.

Gameplay changes

Despite hybrids being the latest trend, State.io’s core gameplay — simple and snappy — still hooks players. But that simplicity also limits the game’s potential for IAPs. The problem is this: the core loop doesn’t generate complex enough situations that would justify paid solutions. 

One idea we’re exploring is slowing down the gameplay slightly to introduce more tactical variety and break up dominant strategies. That would open the door to new mechanics, new units, and more monetization touchpoints without damaging what players love about the game. And that’s exactly what IAPs thrive on — giving players interesting, optional tools for solving difficult problems.

It’s a tricky balance. When your core loop works well, it can be scary to mess with it. But the reality is, ad-based monetization just isn’t as viable in the long term. IAPs offer more stability and more control over user acquisition. Even if we lose part of the hyper-casual audience and traffic gets pricier, it’s still a smarter, more sustainable path forward.

Besides, games where IAPs drive revenue also tend to have longer lifespans than the ones that survive on ads. They’re less vulnerable to market shocks, like the COVID boom and the drop-off afterward. With IAPs, your main variable becomes acquisition costs, not the volatility of ad CPMs. That’s a much better risk profile.

Of course, you can’t just bolt IAPs onto an old game. The gameplay needs to support it with depth.

Originally, State.io was designed for an extremely broad audience — not just hyper-casual players, but anyone with a phone. The idea was: even someone who’s never played a mobile game should understand what to do right away. That limited how deep we could go with level design and core mechanics. And now, that simplicity is holding us back.

If there’s only one clear way to play, there’s no room to offer alternative, paid paths. No meaningful choices = no meaningful monetization.

In older games, paywalls were the go-to: want to keep playing? Pay up. Today, that’s no longer acceptable. Players want to play how they want, and IAPs are there to enhance the fun with boosters, shortcuts, or new tools. The key challenge is to design core gameplay that supports multiple viable paths to success. That way, in-apps become a meaningful choice, not a requirement. Once that’s in place, you can build out LiveOps, events, calendars, and other systems on top of that flexible foundation.

The goal now is to evolve the game from hyper-casual to casual, with a hybrid-casual phase in between.

Adding depth to the game

It starts with creating new gameplay situations. Generals were a step in that direction, but so far, they haven’t made a huge impact. Why? Because they solve problems that don’t really exist yet. Players weren’t struggling to beat levels, so offering a better way to win didn’t feel meaningful.

What we need to do now is introduce actual challenges that require different strategies to overcome.

Take walls, for example — physical barriers on the map that require special tactics to bypass. Or key control points that must be captured to win a round.

And it’s not just about making the game harder, difficulty can be ramped up in a pretty basic way by simply boosting enemy AI. What we’re aiming for is strategic complexity: new kinds of gameplay situations that naturally create more challenge. Then we can introduce tools (like generals) that give players creative, effective ways to handle those new scenarios.

Let’s go back to walls. Once they’re in the game, players suddenly have more options. Do you brute-force the wall with sheer numbers? Use a special unit to blow it up? Or hang back and wait for the enemy to make the first move? This kind of decision-making adds layers of strategic depth, and with that, the opportunity to introduce “fun” extras. For instance, players might choose to buy a general who trains demolition units. These units could be used not just to breach walls, but also to disrupt the enemy directly. That kind of flexibility adds juice and tactile feedback to the gameplay.

By introducing more strategic complexity, we create room for players to shape their own approach. And if they want to streamline or spice up their experience, they can — by making a purchase that gives them the tools they enjoy most.

We’ve already tested full PvP in the web version of the game, and bringing that to mobile is another potential path for adding long-term depth and increasing the value of in-app purchases. But the first step is building a more complex core, only then can we layer in systems like LiveOps, meta, and deeper monetization.

Blog
29 July 2025

Ten billion installs later: Why publishing isn’t just publishing anymore

Azur Games recently crossed 10 billion installs. That number means a lot, but what matters more is everything we’ve seen on the way there, all the changes in the market we’ve had to grow through. So now feels like the right time to talk about what’s next — for publishing, and for studios.

These days, if a team has a product that really needs backing — something serious, something with scale — they’re rarely just looking for a publisher. What they want is publishing plus investment. And that second part? It’s a whole different business. Together, it’s no longer traditional publishing, it’s something else entirely.

Blog
3 July 2025

What realistic visuals meant for our audience — and for project growth

Three years ago, we pitched an idea to Ates Games: what if we made a game about a ball rolling through obstacle courses? The studio already had a project called Action Balls — and more importantly, they had their own custom physics engine built specifically for realistic ball movement.

That gave us a strong foundation. We could build something set in a realistic environment, with the same feel as physics-heavy PC games in this genre, which stood out, especially considering that most mobile competitors at the time were cartoonish and heavily scripted. That’s how Rollance was born.

At first, we had a simple hypothesis: realistic visuals might help us bring CPI down. In practice though, it turned out to be more than that. Thanks to its physics and serious tone, Rollance struck a chord with more hardcore players — the kind who are really looking for a challenge. We gained a loyal audience and solid retention. But that also came with its own set of development hurdles.

Launch and growth

We started building the game without testing the setting first — we just went straight for 20 levels. But the team had a strong background to lean on: they’d already been sharpening their skills with Action Balls, and all that work carried over to Rollance.

The thing is, Rollance didn’t have much content at launch, and adding more is a slow process. Realistic physics and visuals mean development is more time-consuming. You can’t rush level design — you need to balance everything carefully, and keep difficulty from spiking too fast. On average, building a single Rollance level takes at least twice as long as it did in Action Balls.

If we had gone for a different audience and chosen cartoon-style graphics, we could’ve just scripted half the obstacles — traps, turns, all of it. But our players wouldn’t have liked that, and the metrics would’ve looked completely different.

Once it was clear the launch was successful, we knew what we needed to do first: add more content. That gave the biggest boost to the already-strong numbers. And since then, content production has basically never stopped.

The biggest challenge isn’t even the visuals — it’s the physics. The whole game is built around it. Every mechanic — from slopes and curves to dynamic obstacles and supports like fans — needs to be carefully tuned. Physics has a lot of variables, and each new mechanic needs to be coordinated so that nothing breaks the player’s experience.

In most arcade games, you can simplify a lot of that. But in Rollance, realism is the whole point — it’s our edge.

We also added a smooth-follow camera early on to reduce friction. Players no longer have to rotate the camera manually — it tracks movement automatically. Of course, that meant scripting it per level, which added another layer of dev time and cost.

Another big early update was material swapping. Originally, we just had one ball with realistic physics. Then we introduced the ability to change the material — wood, metal, paper — and, in addition to looking real, each one is supposed to behave and feel differently. This wasn’t something we’d seen in the competition.

At first, we approached it like a hypercasual mechanic: you pick your material and go. But if you chose wrong, the level became impossible. That version didn’t land well — but we’re planning to revisit it in a new format, possibly as part of upcoming event-based content.

From the beginning, we also tested hypercasual monetization ideas: skins, visual effects, trail particles. None of it worked. Rollance players are here for the hardcore challenge and the physics. Visual fluff just gets in the way.

Last year, we introduced adaptive graphics — a surprisingly impactful update. Because of the realistic visuals, the game was pretty demanding on devices. So we started checking hardware specs and adjusting graphic settings in real time if FPS dropped. It worked.

We used presets that dynamically switched shader quality, texture detail, and other parameters — all live, during gameplay. The result? A \~20% boost to LTV, thanks to better device support and a smoother, more satisfying experience.

Rollance also benefits from strong long-term retention, which helps make the project sustainable. Some teams have tried to make a competitor — and spent a lot of resources doing so — but nothing’s quite stuck yet. Even with great long-term retention, not every studio knows how to make performance marketing work, and that’s a big competitive edge for us.

We’re now up to 50 levels and counting. But alongside that, we’re starting to explore a slightly different direction. Rather than add a classic meta layer, we’re going to test in-app monetization through events. So instead of tacking meta on top, we’ll bake it into event content — and build monetization there.

Blog
19 June 2025

FLEXUS Games: Why we don’t set hard development deadlines

Our stance on deadlines comes down to how we believe games should feel. When you’re building something the market hasn’t seen before, there are no close references or proven marketing numbers to lean on—so traditional estimates fly out the window. All you really have is product sense and game-design expertise.

That “creative first” approach makes us happy and helps our games grab players’ attention. If a game is truly one of a kind, its retention will almost always be higher—because it’s the first to meet a specific need for its audience.

Working closely with our publisher, Azur Games, we’ve seen how this focus on originality pays off, as they’ve supported us in bringing unique titles to a global market. The tenth action idle game on the market, even if it’s slightly better polished than the original, won’t hold players nearly as well if it doesn’t bring anything new to the table.

Blog
22 May 2025

Creating characters for a midcore battler

What matters more to players when choosing heroes: flashy visuals or stats that help them dominate in the arena? After three and a half years of working on Kingdom Clash, we’ve learned there’s no quick or simple answer. We’ve gone from “Wow, cool idea—let’s do it fast” to “Let’s think this through and put it on the six-month roadmap.” In this article, we’ll break down how heroes and units impact not just gameplay, but the overall economy of the project.

Where we get ideas for heroes and units

In the early stages of a game’s life, one of the most important things is grabbing the player’s attention with strong visuals. Units need to look original, and their active abilities should feel impactful on a mobile screen. That’s probably why most midcore battlers lean toward fantasy settings—other genres just don’t leave enough room for visual imagination.

We originally wanted a dark medieval setting—minimal magic, more Game of Thrones than high fantasy. But once we started designing units, it became clear: there’s only so much you can do with swords and bows. Every new iteration added more and more fantasy elements. Today, Kingdom Clash includes three full factions: humans, mages, and the undead.

At the same time, there’s nothing wrong with having some genre staples, especially among Tier-1 units. Infantry, archers, catapults—these help players get familiar with the basics: melee vs. ranged combat, AoE, positioning, heroes, abilities, and so on.

From the start, we wanted most heroes to feel unique on mobile. We pulled references from all over, including classic PC hits. One example: the Air Mage, who summons a battlefield whirlwind that pulls in nearby units. That idea partly came from the cult PC strategy Age of Mythology.

Another legendary hero is Drake, Master of the Seas—a pirate with an octopus on his back who summons a massive ghost ship that glides across the battlefield. It’s a clear nod to Kunkka’s ult from Dota 2.

The goal was always to make heroes memorable: striking visuals paired with standout abilities that looked great on mobile. Meteor swarms, tornadoes, ghost ships—we leaned into spectacle.

Game designers and people from the art team would go through dozens of popular titles—not just battlers—and jot down ideas for heroes, powers, or combos for the producer to look at. Then we’d review them as a group and figure out what fit, what didn’t, and what could be adapted to our mechanics.

At first, we were sure players mostly cared about impressive-looking abilities. But over time, we saw a different pattern. Players actually valued buffs, debuffs, and control effects more than we expected. Doubling your team’s attack might not look as exciting as a flaming tornado, but it helps you climb the leaderboard—and players noticed.

A few hints on creating new heroes

For a game to grow, its hero and unit rosters have to expand. After Kingdom Clash found early success, we laid out a bigger plan for new hero creation. One of our goals was to make passive abilities—what we call talents—available to all heroes. Rares and epics would get one; legendaries would get two.

But in practice, that was tough to scale. Making and testing all those combinations would take too long. So we limited talents to legendaries only. Later, when we introduced a new mythicl rarity, we gave those heroes talents too.

Over time, we settled into our own approach. These days, we define talents for upcoming heroes well in advance. That way, they fit cleanly into the game’s balance and economy. Before that, things were more reactive—we’d see a cool ability somewhere, give it to a new hero, ship it, and adjust on the fly. 

In general, it’s more worthwhile to invest in new heroes than to constantly rework old ones. First, it expands the roster—and that matters. The more heroes there are, the slower players burn through content.

Back when the game launched, we had just three heroes. A new player could get a legendary and level them to 10 in about a month—even with only a 5% drop chance from chests. Today, with over 30 heroes in the game, reaching level 10 on your epic might take six months.

Second, new heroes give you an opportunity to build out offers and boost monetization. But that’s a broader topic—and one we’ll cover in another article.

Key takeaways

  • To draw players in—especially early on—cool, unique hero visuals matter. Don’t be afraid to pull inspiration from outside your genre.
  • Creating new heroes is more labor-intensive than reworking old ones, but the payoff is far greater in terms of metrics.
  • If you’re adding heroes impulsively without a long-term roadmap, you’ll end up spending a lot of time firefighting balance issues.
Blog
15 April 2025

Trillions upon trillions of variations: A data-driven look at a midcore battler’s meta

Analyzing games that feature a huge number of interacting units or entities can be incredibly challenging. Take a typical CCG, for instance: a player may start with hundreds of cards and build a one-of-a-kind deck, leading to an enormous range of possible combinations.

In the midcore battler Kingdom Clash, we have dozens of different units, each of which can occupy a specific position on a battlefield—resulting in nearly limitless ways to arrange them. So, the main goal of this study is to identify the most popular builds and see whether there really is a metagame in the game.

Blog
10 April 2025

Increasing long-term retention in a midcore battler with PvE

Usually, players come to mobile battlers for PvP combat, while the campaign mode mainly handles tutorial and farming tasks, introducing newcomers to units, heroes, and core mechanics. For those who stay longer than a month, it’s almost always about competing in PvP to climb the leaderboards.

In Kingdom Clash, the Arena also became the key attraction and primary revenue driver very quickly. However, after years of experimentation, we discovered that focusing on PvE helps boost product metrics as well. In this article, we share some of the ideas that worked for us.

Bosses with special mechanics

To make players keep returning to PvE, you need to offer a unique game feel they can’t even get from winning the toughest PvP match. Boss battles are a visual and mechanical game changer. These fights also connect to the campaign, since they only unlock after level 300. To deal maximum damage to a boss within the time limit, players have to rethink their army composition—sometimes a lineup that dominates in the Arena turns out to be useless against a giant monster with unique abilities. Currently, Kingdom Clash features three such bosses.

The fight with the dragon takes place on a platform hanging from chains. Occasionally, the dragon tilts the platform, and you have to move your troops fast so they don’t slide off.

The spider summons swarms of smaller spiders. You can switch your targeting from the boss to these minions so they don’t wipe out your army while you’re trying to bring down the main spider.

The battle with the kraken unfolds on a ship’s deck. From time to time, the kraken grabs 15–20 of your units with its tentacles and tries to eat them. To rescue your troops, you have to time a cannon shot just right.

Yes, creating bosses takes a lot of time and resources, and it doesn’t typically yield an overnight surge in metrics. Even so, in the project’s third year, we can confidently say that adding boss fights has had a significant impact on long-term retention and monetization—not to mention how much the community loves them.

Diverse locations

Repetition is the main enemy of any single-player campaign. While you can hold the player’s interest for the first hundred levels by gradually introducing new units and modes, beyond that, other techniques come into play—including visual variety.

The game has three factions: humans, mages, and the undead. We try to design each level so it fits the relevant environment. For instance, at level 120, the Magic Forest appears—created specifically for the mage faction. Level 400 leads to Necropolis, which suits the undead. There’s also a level that features a full city in a classic fantasy style, plus seaside maps, wheat fields, and more. Each boss has its own exclusive setting as well.

Honestly, we can’t say for sure how much changing scenery affects key metrics, or if it’s even something you can track precisely. Mainly, we do it to maintain the atmosphere. We liked the results so much that at one point we decided to give the PvP arena its own unique background—a coliseum-like amphitheater. The first version had no spectators, but later we added jumping figures in the stands, reminiscent of old FIFA games.

Special heroes for the campaign

As in most battlers, Kingdom Clash divides its heroes by rarity—usually Rare, Epic, and Legendary, though we added Mythic recently. In PvP, Legendaries and Epics matter most, while Rares generally serve as extras. However, there’s one exception: Baron, a Rare hero that everyone wants, specifically for the single-player campaign.

Baron’s active ability creates a special aura around him, turning enemy units within that radius gold for the rest of the battle. They then drop extra coins, and the higher Baron’s level, the greater the multiplier. If you’d normally get 10 coins for defeating a certain enemy, a level 10 Baron raises that to 15. Because of this, even players focused on PvP will swing back to the campaign to farm gold with Baron and power up their PvP armies.

A few words on paywalls in the campaign

In the early versions of Kingdom Clash, campaign progression was structured like most battlers: the first 50 levels act as the tutorial, and then players hit a modest blocker, where they have to either farm a bit or buy boosters. In terms of timing, this lines up roughly with the end of day one for a new player, helping to drive initial in-app purchases and generally boosting monetization.

Later, we tried extending this approach with several more blockers between levels 150 and 500, but by that stage, it no longer had the same effect. Players tended to drop the campaign entirely in favor of PvP and side modes. Probably this happened because most modes become available at earlier campaign levels, and progression slows down a lot after that.

At the moment, we’re sticking to softer blockers in the campaign. Still, as the project expands and the campaign gains more perks, we’re considering bringing back blockers for higher levels. For instance, adding a leaderboard for campaign progress could motivate players to clear more levels, and in that scenario, new blockers might make sense.

Final thoughts

Naturally, the main focus in a mobile battler is developing PvP modes, but the PvE campaign also has a crucial role. Early on, it attracts new players and eases them into Arena battles, and later it becomes a key source for farming soft currency. Over the game’s lifespan, PvE remains important for player progression. If you want to keep people from burning out and encourage them to stick around, you need to keep refreshing your PvE content and introducing new features.

Blog
14 March 2025

Sensor Tower summarizes 2024: Azur Games ranks #1 in downloads among game publishers

The analytics platform Sensor Tower has released a comprehensive report on the state of the mobile industry at the end of 2024, highlighting key figures and trends in the mobile games market.

For instance, the total number of mobile game downloads worldwide declined by 6%, reaching 49.6 billion, while in-app purchase revenue grew by 4%, totaling $80.9 billion.

When it comes to IAP revenue, strategy games ($17.5 billion) and RPGs ($16.8 billion) lead the way, followed by puzzle games ($12.2 billion) and casino games ($11.7 billion).

Analysts predict that in the coming years, developers will place even greater emphasis on long-term retention and creating deep, high-quality gameplay. We’ve discussed this before and have been focusing on the development of long-term projects for years—whether midcore, casual, or even hypercasual, which has also proven to sustain growth over time.

Looking at our own results, Azur Games ranked #1 among all game publishers in total downloads. In 2024, nearly 50 billion mobile game installs were recorded globally, and over 1.2 billion of them came from our games.

And here are our top 5 most downloaded games of all time:

  • WormsZone.io – 600 million downloads
  • Stack Ball – 560 million downloads
  • Bottle Jump 3D – 250 million downloads
  • Hit Master 3D: Knife Assassin – 185 million downloads
  • Colour Adventure: Draw and Go – 175 million downloads