Boom Beach from Supercell has a new game in their franchise. Developed by Space Monkey, we now have Boom Beach: Frontlines. This game is of the same theme as Boom Beach (obviously), but the gameplay is different. In this game, you go into matches that are like being placed in an arena, but it’s themed as an island. Your team then fights against an enemy team and you’re both trying to capture 2 main points: A and B. Whoever claims both and holds them for 10 seconds wins. This game is a simple concept done extraordinarily.
Your Island
After pushing through the tutorials for the game, you’ll be left on your little getaway island. Here, you’ll be able to see things related to your account, such as your headquarters level or how many medals you currently have. You can see your Headquarters and its level right in the middle of the screen. You’ll also see the current operation that is set up and a button below it to get ready to head into battle on that island. One of the key things to keep an eye on here is your Star Pool, which is at the bottom-right corner above the Battle button and docked right against the current operation button. You’re able to maintain a maximum of 20 stars in this pool at a time. The stars in this pool are earned from playing matches and they go toward your Boom Pass. The Boom Pass is your primary method of earning cards. These stars regenerate 3 at a time every time the operation changes—once every 4 hours.
If you head to the Boom Pass screen, which you can get to by clicking the button in the bottom-middle of your screen (it probably has a Boom Box on it), you can get a sneak peek at all the rewards from earning levels on the pass. Most of the rewards for the Free Pass are going to be Boom Boxes, which contain coins and 9 cards of any quality. Every few levels or so, you’ll instead get coins or even a Big Box, which contains coins and 26 cards where 2 of the cards are guaranteed to be of rare quality. Every once in a while, after several levels, you’ll even come across a Mega Box, which contains a lot of coins and 78 cards where 7 of the card are guaranteed to be of rare quality. Paying for the Boom Pass will let you access premium rewards, including more Big Boxes, Mega Boxes, and even a Troop exclusive to buying the pass: Cluster. In addition to these extra rewards, you get bonuses for having purchased the Boom Pass. For the course of the season, you get 10% additional coins from matches (and this increases if other people on your team also have the pass), plus all your cards below the level of your headquarters will be temporarily boosted to the same level as your headquarters.
Another area you’ll be visiting often while playing the game is your cards, which you access by pressing the building on the left. Here, you can view all the cards you’ve unlocked so far. The main screen lets you see what level a card is and how many extra copies of that card you have against how many you need to get to level them up again. Pressing on any card will show its type, its rarity, its current stats, and the cost to level it up. It’s also worth noting that Common cards start at level 1, Rare cards start at level 3, and Epic cards start at level 5. The max level a card can get to is 10. Because of this, you need substantially more copies of Common cards to get them to max level than Epic cards, but Epic cards are substantially more rare from boxes.
The boat on the right side of your island is going to be locked until you get 6 troops. Once unlocked, this is where all your troops will hang out. When you head into battle, you can only bring 5 with you, so if you’re wanting to switch those up, you head over to this section to change which 5 you’d like to bring. When you have a team full of new, powerful troops, you may decide that you don’t care to bring Assault with you anymore. This is where you’ll go to tell him that you’re going to leave him behind while the rest of your troops head off into battle on an estranged island.
The last few things you can check out here are things like Settings, where you can pair your account to your Supercell ID; the League Menu, where you can see your current medal progress as well as the leaderboards; the Friends menu where you can add people to your friend list or squad up with them; and the Shop, where you can buy boxes, gems, and coins, or add a Creator Code to support a creator you like.
Whenever you’re finally done checking things out, you just press the big Battle button and you’ll be queued up for a match!
The Battle Island
When a match is starting up, you’ll see 3 random powerups, 3 random defenses, and 2 random vehicles show up on a screen. If you have yet to unlock a card that appears here, then you won’t be able to use it in the battle at all. After this screen, you’ll proceed to a screen of a map of the island and the troops you’ve brought into battle. Select whichever one you want and join the match. It is important to try and create synergy with your team. A medic or two can be great to keep members of your team alive, but 6 medics won’t be able to take out enemies.
When a match starts, you’ll be at the bottom-left of the island in a “starting area”. This area is where you’ll respawn when you die. It’s also where you spend your munitions, the in-match currency earned from simply participating in the match, on either a powerup or a vehicle. Only one powerup and vehicle can be used at a time, so if someone else purchases one, you must wait until after it’s been used to purchase it yourself. Because this area is where you respawn, it can sometimes be strategic to intentionally let the other team kill you so that you can get back here faster to purchase something. Airstrikes, after all, are quite explosive!
Once you head out of the area, you’ll be heading towards A or B to capture the point. When reaching these points, the other team will be showing up at about the same time, so be ready to fight for the flag!
After capturing a point, you’ll see a whole bunch of defenses pop up around the area, including the main defense around the flag itself. If you go up to the empty spots around the area, you’ll see that it lets you spend munitions on building a defense. If you choose to do this, it will take several seconds after purchasing to build, then it will pop the defense up to protect your flag. It’s typically a good idea to try and build all the defenses on your flag that you can before trying to head over to the other point to capture it. Once you get over there, though, expect a tougher fight as the enemy will have also built defenses to stop you. Vehicles are particularly good at destroying defenses and the flag point, so if you need to, head back to your spawn spot (or die) to pick one up. Sometimes vehicles can also spawn near a flag point that you’ve captured.
To win a match, you must hold both objectives for 10 seconds. If the timer is getting low, then holding one objective will still cause the 10-second win countdown to start as long as the other base is uncaptured (someone destroyed it and neither team has re-captured it yet). If time runs out and both teams still have one objective each, you enter Overtime. During Overtime, a new timer starts for the match and the game rules change a little: whoever simply destroys the other person’s flag protection first wins—no need to capture it anymore. This adds a little more intensity to your match as you’re trying extra hard to defense and attack at the same time. If you happen to run out of time during Overtime, then the match ends, and whoever’s flag has more health remaining becomes the winner.
When a match ends, coins and stars are given to both teams. You get 1 star for losing and 3 for winning. If you performed exceptionally in a specific way during the match, you’ll get an award next to your name and these awards give you 1 additional star. In this case, a loser gets 2 stars and a winner gets 4 stars. Then medals are given to players of the winning team and taken from the losing team. The more matches you lose, the more medals you lose. The more you win, the more medals you earn and keep. This system is mainly to help pair you against other players with similar medal counts to try and create more fair battles as well as leaderboards for whoever can get the most medals.
Post-Match
After a match, you’re sent back to your island. Stars earned are sent to your Boom Pass and if you’ve earned enough, you can press on it to open your rewards for leveling up the pass. Over time, you’ll deplete your Star Pool and have 0 stars left to earn. This does not stop you from continuing to play the game, it just stops you from earning stars and therefore stops you from progressing your Boom Pass. You can continue playing to not only earn medals and XP (for your headquarters), but also earn coins, which you may become desperate for over time as upgrading cards can become quite expensive.
That’s the game! It’s a lot of fun to play, even if this isn’t typically a genre you would enjoy. Space Ape has done an incredible job at keeping the game simple while also introducing strategic concepts. When playing, you may not even realize it’s anything more than simple. They also have done a wonderful job at capturing that Supercell essence that is present in all Supercell’s games: the sounds, the art, the gameplay—all of it!
The game is currently in an Open Beta in select countries with Canada being the newest addition. This game may not be available where you are yet, but definitely keep an eye on it for when it launches in your country. Regardless of whether or not this is your type of game, it’s definitely worth giving it a try!