Supercell is a firm with understandably high expectations, having enjoyed 3 enormous successes with Clash of Clans, Boom Beach, and Hay Day.

Following on from the lucrative Finnish studio killing off its soft launched match-3 puzzler Spooky Pop earlier this year, the latest game to not make the grade is Smash Land.

Pulling the plug

"The Smash Land team has decided to discontinue its development," reads a push notification for those playing it in soft launch regions Australia and Canada.

"In-app purchases have been disabled and the game will fully shut down on Tuesday the 1st of September. Thank you all for playing the game!"

The decision was explained a little more thoroughly on an official forum post, although the reason is fairly predictable - the game wasn't living up to expectations.

A high bar

"Despite its popularity and positive feedback from players, it was proving difficult to reach the high standards set by our other games," it reads.

"We did not want to continue for the sake of continuing as that is not the Supercell way."

"These decisions are never easy, but we feel it is best to learn from what didn’t work, move on and put our efforts into making better games for you."

Will any future project live up to Supercell's standards enough to actually see full launch? That remains to be seen.