The Return of Clash Royale
During 2021-2022, a game was played by everyone in the school. That game was Clash Royale, made by Supercell. I would see how students would be playing during the passing period. After that year, I never heard the name Clash Royale, so what happened is that now, in 2025, I hear everyone talking about it or playing it.
What is Clash Royale? Clash Royale is a real-time, multiplayer strategy game where players use a deck of cards to build towers and spawn troops in a battle to destroy their opponent’s towers.
I first needed to know the reason everyone left the game in the first place.
“I quit for a while because I got stuck in an arena, but once I got back into Clash, I improved a lot,” is what Colton Bradley said after I asked him the reason for his quitting.
When I asked Kearney Williams, he answered, “I quit cause this game sucks and I needed a mental break, but I came back to be the best.”
What I’ve gotten from this information is that Clash is a fun game, but it also comes with struggles in playing it. The player count at its lowest level was in 2019-2022 and 2022-2024, with 2022- 2024 around 35 to 38 million active players.
The reason everyone plays it again is that “it’s nostalgic and very fun,” is what Gustavo Estevez said when I asked the reason for his playing Clash Royale. I asked the same question to Makana Garza, and what he said was “everyone is playing it, and during school hours I played it.”
Clash Royale has had 56 million active players as of August 2025. Other reviews on Clash are “it’s a very fun competitive strategy game and even if your opponent is a higher king level and or better cards, you can win with skill.” Clash Royale has plenty of good reasons to join the game.
The year the game first started was on March 2, 2016, and the soft launch was on January 4, 2016. The game’s peak was in September 2025, when there were about 49.9 million active players. Something else I questioned is when everyone first started playing. Kearney Williams says he started playing four years ago, Makana Garza says he started when the game first came out, but at the time had no clue how to play it. Alonzo Johnson started in 2018, and I started playing back in 2021-2022. After 8th grade, I wouldn’t hear about clash, making it the downfall of Clash Royale.
It’s still relevant to the memes of today, the emotes in the game reference memes of today, not only that, lots of popular streams live stream themselves playing it, there’s also a Clash Royale league in regular games and global tournaments. For the 2024 tournament total prize pool was $500,000, with the winner earning $200,000.
What is the feeling people have while playing it? Alonzo answers the question by saying, “It helps you with situations in the future and strategizing.” I also asked Makana this question, and he said, “happiness and stress.” Gustavo said that he feels joy when he wins, and when he loses, he gets mad but still loves the game. The game gives you a type of rush, the type that makes you want to keep playing, the feeling of gambling.
I see now that the reasons people came back to the game were for nostalgia, the fast gameplay, the popularity everyone started giving it, and the way that if you lose, you still want to go another round just to get the feeling of going up another arena.
