For most, life is an endless battle. Not for Greg. He’s a simple man with simple goals. Greg wants to chop down trees. He lives on the outskirts, cutting down trees all day.
But one day, as he felled a tree, he looked out into the horizon. Amidst a cloud of dust, they were approaching. An army, here to end Greg’s simple life.
No… not an army.
A squad.
The Whole Squad’s Here
Developed by Supercell, Squad Busters is an online battle arena where players grow a squad using all-star Supercell characters and battle other squads to be the last squad standing. Each character has unique attacks and abilities, and each arena is filled with obstacles, enemies and interactable elements, ensuring that no two matches play out the same way. You can fight, gather or scheme your way to victory as long as your strategy and adaptability are sound enough.
Common Baby Barbarian
When it comes to presentation, Squad Busters aims for cartoony simplicity. Characters are only given as much detail as necessary to make it clear who they are and what they do. Since matches can get very chaotic, readability and clarity are very important. The title prefers using pastel colors for its environments and characters, keeping harsher colors for health bars, danger zones and other such informational graphics.
While the visuals are used to provide the player with information, sound effects are used mostly just to enrich the experience. The soundtrack is mostly generic mobile game music. The most memorable audio is undoubtedly the announcer saying the name of each character you recruit, which is frequent enough that the phrases will surely get stuck in your head long after you close the app.
Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good
When you begin playing, at the start of each match Squad Busters gives you a choice between three random characters. This is your starting “squad”. Your goal is to gather gold to open chests that contain more characters, growing your squad this way and then taking the fight to the nine other players present in the match. If you get three of the same characters, they fuse into a more powerful version. Since the cost of opening chests depends on your squad size, fusing characters also makes them cheaper going forward.
Since there are numerous characters, a big part of your strategy should be deciding which ones to choose. Some of them are better at combat, be it melee or ranged. Some of them are better at gathering resources like carrots or trees. Others might provide some kind of utility instead, like speed, healing or empowering your squad. While not all characters are created equal, each of them can end up being useful in certain situations.
If you had to defeat every other squad, matches would go on for too long. Instead, the primary goal is to gather gems from various sources around the arena. This is what determines your placement at the end. Busting enemy squads causes them to drop their coins and gems, giving you an edge in the match. Finishing in the top five lets you keep your win streak alive, gaining better and better rewards after each match.
Squadder’s Rights
But what are you even playing for? What are these rewards you can earn? When you first play Squad Busters, your unlocked characters are rather weak. As you’re awarded more copies of them, you can use the excess to upgrade these characters, strengthening them and giving them better abilities. This is the main gameplay loop: play so you can upgrade, and upgrade so you can play. You will definitely need to upgrade, too. The more you play, the further you advance, unlocking new characters and arenas as well as having to face stronger opponents.
Most of the monetization comes from speeding up the meta progression, like buying extra copies of characters to upgrade them. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because it doesn’t directly affect people within matches, it just lets you fight higher-tier players sooner. The main pay-to-win purchases are power-ups that let the player grow their squad faster, like making chests free to open or making the next acquired character an instant fusion. This puts paying players at a clear advantage. However, since you only need to place in the top five by the end of a match to keep earning win streak rewards, this isn’t usually a problem. If you can recognize that a player is advancing their squad faster, you can always just avoid them or adapt your strategy accordingly. Obviously, getting first place will always feel better, but it’s not mandatory for progression.
Squad Busters is the definition of “quick fun”. Each match lasts a mere four minutes. You can log in, play a little, then log out anytime you want. While good strategy is rewarded, matches get chaotic enough that you don’t have to think about it too hard. Collect coins, gather a squad, then ram it into a boss monster or another squad and see what happens.
Oh, and eat your carrots.
