Originally published in print in November 2025. View print issues here.

In recent months the mobile game Clash Royale, released by developer Supercell in 2016, saw a sweeping rise in popularity among students.

Matches pair two online opponents against one another in battles where each player must destroy their opponent’s towers and win crowns. Units are placed in order to destroy towers and inflict damage, which continues until the game concludes when all three of a player’s towers are destroyed or the time elapses.

A Bear Witness survey of 191 readers found that 51% of students regularly play Clash Royale. One student, senior Jeremiah Bolton, was introduced to the game in fourth grade and has played the game for a long time across many accounts.

“[I play] every day, every night, every chance I get to play,” Bolton said. “So I’m very addicted. I have a problem.”

Other students, like senior Alex Le, find the game equally addicting.

“20 minutes every day,” Le said. “Passing periods, lunch, after school. It usually goes over 20 minutes, but 20 minutes is the average. I would say I played the most in class. I’ve never gotten caught — never.”

The game currently contains up to 121 cards — including troops, spells, buildings and champions — granting players large freedom in determining their strategy and formatting their eight character decks. For Bolton, choosing a strategic deck is a huge benefit.

“You want to have a win condition,” Bolton said. “My win condition would be Hog Rider and Giant Skeletons, and then build your deck around that. For defense, I would place Knight somewhere on the field, he’s like a small tank [because] he takes a lot of damage. Then Firecracker if they have any air cards like a baby dragon.”

Many students like freshman Will De Lorenzo find the concept of “pay to win,” in which players pay real-world money for better cards, to detract from the fun and strategic aspect of the game.

“[It gets] way more difficult, especially with all those people using Mega Knight and Firecracker. The game gets so much harder because people are using cheap cards. You can buy the EVO cards and then get really good,” De Lorenzo said, referring to the new evolution mechanic, which allows players to give certain characters more powerful abilities once they unlock specific evolution shards. “EVO Skeleton Army just came out and already people are really good because they spent like $12 [for the diamond pass].”

Yet Bolton, who has experience playing the game in both the high and low ranking arenas, finds that many of the pay-to-win players are relegated to the middle ranked arenas.

“I’d say it gets really difficult near the middle of the game because that’s where all the pay to win people are,” Bolton said. “If you’re not pay-to-win, then you’re going to suck for a while.”

Recent years have seen the rapid surge of a multitude of mobile games. Late 2024 saw the huge popularity of the mobile game Block Blast, in which players connect randomly-arranged blocks into rows and columns to eliminate them and score points. According to developer Hungry Studio, Block Blast contained 40 million daily active users in October of 2024 alone.

According to Google Trends data, both games generated huge demand in a matter of a month or two, and in the case of Block Blast, dropped in popularity just as quickly. Looking at trend data, Clash Royale has continued to rise in searches between September and October, with data still showing upwards player increases in the beginning of November and around over 100 million active monthly players. Despite trends and the existence of games like Block Blast, all three students foresee themselves continuing to play the game well into the future.

“It’s been around for ten-ish years almost,” De Lorenzo said. “I think if [it has] been popular all that time, it won’t go away anytime in the near future.”

Unlike Block Blast, Clash Royale has existed for about six years longer and has experienced other smaller but notable booms in early 2016, 2017 and late 2021. It’s not clear whether the game will experience a significant decline, or in the eyes of Le – stick around for much longer.

“Those trendy games, they’re only around for a certain period,” Le said. “Clash Royale is forever.”