Squad Busters 2.0: "I’d say this is the biggest change to a game of this scale from Supercell and possibly ever"

"Was Squad Busters launched maybe a bit too early? Possibly," says Supercell head of marketing Rob Lowe.

"But we can only get this level of learning by getting so many millions of players playing it. We’re in a very fortunate situation where we can take this level of risk."

Ahead of Squad Busters’ first anniversary on May 29th, the party action game is changing direction with a greater focus on strategy elements, removing certain features while adding central Hero characters to control, altering victory conditions, and more.

It comes after a lacklustre launch for the game, having generated more than $100 million in revenue but quickly diving into a post-release decline. The developer has previously admitted the title failed to meet expectations.

The overhaul, launching today, May 13th, will introduce the initial roster of Heroes including the Barbarian King and Archer Queen, and aims to make things more strategic before battles begin.

Lowe shares with us a number of insights on the changes, joined by head of Squad Busters Johnathan Rowlands, formerly head of studio at Space Ape before Supercell’s 100% acquisition of the studio.

Though Rowlands isn’t directly involved in the design of the game – he hadn’t yet joined when the idea of Heroes arose – he has been present since the prototyping phase, supporting designers, programmers and artists since coming aboard.

He also notes that most of Squad Busters’ development team is based in Helsinki, where Rowlands has spent the majority of his time, but there is a "pretty significant" team in London continuing to grow, too.

"When we look at this actual update, I would say it started in November, throwing around ideas of how we could meet player expectations of agency inside of battle and outside of it," he explains.

"The prototype came in January, and in February we started to go into production. In terms of the scale of what we’ve been doing, it’s been a pretty short timeframe."

Heroes are here

Squad Busters has been downloaded more than 60 million times and there has been plenty of feedback over its first year. The major overhaul is in response to this, with gamers wanting more strategic depth and direct control over characters, as opposed to the nebulous group they have controlled thus far.

As a result, the team decided to focus on larger Heroes and smaller Squaddies, with the former being characters that the player directly controls.

Various experiments were tested in aims of achieving this, such as Heroes having their own powers, or only having one or two Squaddies with the Hero, but ultimately the team settled on a Hero leading a sizeable squad.

Going forward, if a Hero is defeated, the whole squad is wiped out, whereas Squaddies can be replaced if beaten.

"The journey really was hearing that players wanted more agency throughout the game, so making sure they had more ability to impact the core gameplay and progress their own journeys," says Rowlands.

Lowe notes: "We didn’t want to ditch the idea of building a squad throughout the game but the idea of putting a hero there as the focal point and giving you direct dual-stick control, able to move in one direction and aim in the other, was something that the audience we were trying to focus this game on understands."

The changes also mean that strategy will now be required before a battle begins, with players picking which Hero to use and defining the style in which they play – close-combat or ranged, for example.

Players can also select two starting Squaddies that will appear for them to use during the battle, though functionally their combat works much the same as before. Those Squaddies selected can also unlock new skills on Heroes, further emphasising the value of players’ decisions and experimentation.

Overall, Squad Busters is now being much more heavily targeted towards "more experienced mobile gamers" who like action strategy games, unlike earlier aims to "bridge casual, midcore and even hardcore audiences".

Marketing material reflected this, with the star-studded Squad Busters trailer featuring Chris Hemsworth and other Hollywood celebrities having been "built to target a broader audience" while gameplay and CG trailers targeted a midcore audience.

"One of the mistakes we made with the launch of Squad Busters was that we felt through the testing we’d done that we had a game that could appeal to multiple audiences at the same time," says Lowe.

"We don’t have any regrets for launching it in the way that we did. Would we have liked to sustain the scale of launch for longer? Yes. Did it allow us to identify some of the core problems with the game and try to fix those? Yes, it did. There are things we never would have known if we hadn’t done that."

Overhauls and strategies

Lowe notes that with this new Squad Busters update, the goal is in part to bring back lapsed players who might have been interested in the idea of the game but not its execution. He hopes to reach them to show that these new changes may be what they were looking for.

Rowlands suggests that the Squad Busters overhaul hasn’t taken any specific directional changes from Brawl Stars – which itself had a significant comeback last year, outearning 2023 in the first four months of 2024 – but it has been an inspiration.

"In terms of the ambition level and the risks – how they listen to their players, look for quality, want to continue to surprise and add these major changes to the game – that has been a big inspiration," he says.

"I think this is as ambitious and risky a change for our side. I’d say this is the biggest change to a game of this scale from Supercell and possibly ever in terms of changing the fundamentals."

However, those changes also mean removing certain features and modes like Doppelgangers, Double Trouble, Epic Overload, Loot Machines and Hatchling Herdes. Certain progression-based mechanics have also been overhauled, with players to be given items and Hero Points as compensation.

We ask whether there are risks involved in removing features after a global launch which may have been taken better if Squad Busters were still in soft launch. Though this isn’t directly answered, there’s an acknowledgement of some "anguish" from players.

"We never like to remove things, but what I can say is we’ve removed them for the right reasons," says Rowlands.

Finally, Lowe comments on Supercell’s launch strategy more broadly, with recent releases like Squad Busters and Mo.co having released globally much more quickly than many past titles. He suggests that this isn’t indicative of a new launch strategy.

"The mobile games market is quite mature now," he says. "We’re not getting the rampant growth of people coming into mobile gaming for the first time. So you have to stand out, make bold changes, bolder marketing campaigns, invite-only launches. Sometimes you might take a shorter route to a global launch.

"I’m certain there’ll be games coming later on down the line from Supercell that might take more conventional approaches and some might take crazy approaches."

Rowlands adds: "There’s no one strategy for Supercell, it’s whatever’s best for the game and what they think is wise. It’s the game teams themselves that make that decision."