Clash of Clans, one of the world’s most popular mobile games, turned 10 years old in August 2022. To celebrate #Clashiversary, the maker of Clash of Clans, Supercell, and their creative agency, Wieden + Kennedy, created a documentary and campaign centered around 40 fictitious years of Clash of Clans. The goal of the campaign was to envelop the fandom in this fake history and make them believe it was real through never before seen, “re-released” games, created by ROSE, one from each era of game design history, as outlined in the documentary Clash From The Past: The Untold Story.
To support the idea that Clash of Clans had been around for 40 years, instead of 10, we created three mini-games, each reminiscent of the types of games that had helped define the respective decade.
For the 1980s, we created an arcade platformer called CLASH. Players play as Clash of Clans’ Barbarian, smashing through buildings to try and find their stolen sword all while the goblins that stole the sword are trying to stop their progress.
For the 1990s, we created Clash Dash, a racing game reminiscent of Mario Kart and Crash Team Racing, but Clash of Clans style. Users could play as one of six classic Clash of Clans characters. Players are racing through a Clash of Clans village, trying to catch up to the siege machine containing the goblins that have taken Barbarian’s sword. To win back Barbarian’s sword, players must win the race.
For the 2000s, we created a mix between a role-playing and boss battle game, think Elder Scrolls meets Kingdom Hearts, called Clash: Cradle of Darkness. In this game, players finally meet the Goblin Chief who has been orchestrating this time-traveling adventure, all to try to lure and defeat Barbarian. By winning back Barbarian’s sword, users made it back to present-day Clash of Clans to battle the Goblin Chief in a non-anniversary-related event.
Each game used Clash of Clans scenery, items, and characters but recreated to look like the era it was supposed to have come from. This meant the creation of over 900 net new assets to fully re-create the look from each decade. Additionally, to tie each game together and further the story, a series of cut scenes were also created, also in the style from each decade. CLASH and Clash Dash were available for users to play directly within the Clash of Clans mobile app, accessible via an arcade cabinet placed in each user’s village. Clash: Cradle of Darkness was released to a limited number of influencers and as “never before seen” footage on YouTube.
These games took the Clash of Clans fandom by storm, with 170 million users worldwide. Additionally, YouTube videos released by Supercell about the games and videos of Youtubers playing the games wracked up more than 5 million views and thousands of comments, not including the documentary. The campaign was also named as one of the top 5 ads of 2022 by Fast Company.
The era-specific looks of the games along with the documentary left countless fans wondering if the fake 40 year history of Clash of Clans was actually real. Reddit threads and YouTube comments were full of fans commenting about how these games took them back to their old favorites and “really looked” like arcade and PlayStation games from the aughts, all from their modern mobile devices.
