WarCraft Arclight Rumble impressions: High production values, questionable costs

Enlarge / Welcome to the mini-styled smartphone-RTS universe of WarCraft Arclight Rumble. (credit: Blizzard)

Blizzard Entertainment's first real-time strategy game for smartphones, WarCraft Arclight Rumble, is slated to launch on iOS and Android later this year, with a tech beta going live sooner in various regions. Ahead of that launch, we were invited to test the game's current version for a couple of days, and we can confirm that Blizzard is still pretty good at designing games for phones. (Even if they've brought at least one related gaffe upon themselves.)

In Arclight Rumble's case, however, a certain chicken-and-egg question comes up: When comparing this game to the wildly popular Clash Royale, exactly who is ripping off whom?

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  CGI intro emphasizes that you're tossing plastic figurines onto a table, which then come to life and do battle on your behalf. Gotta... WarCraft 'em all? [credit: Blizzard ]

Both games overlap, as Blizzard's new smartphone game adopts more than a few of Supercell's well-trodden, touchscreen-friendly conventions. Yet Supercell's game arguably borrows a lot from the original WarCraft series on PC—not just in its adherence to RTS traditions but also its medieval, primary-color aesthetic.