Starfire, Princess of Tamaran, Alien Royalty, with enough power to take on armies. Let’s fly in… Kori: Warrior, Princess, Sister… Sandwich Thief It also clearly highlights Starfire as a warrior princess! Tales of the Titans #1 Shows us what happens when the team divides to save more people. Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou Review by James Attias It's off to a decent start, for sure, but with Zynga unable to match its rivals' marketing budgets, Dawn of Titans will have to hook a lot more players if it's to succeed in this cutthroat market.1.9K “Starfire: Alien Princess” – Book One Writers: Shannon Hale and Dean Hale As of December 19th, it ranked 64th in the App Store's 'Top Grossing' list and 50th in the corresponding Google Play chart. Since my discussion with Reil, Dawn of Titans was released on both Android and iOS. That may have been true in 2012 when Zynga was valued at $11.5 billion, but now the company is worth just $2.4 billion, less than a quarter of Clash of Clans maker Supercell (which also has the financial clout of Tencent, a $250 billion company, behind it).

'If we want to compete with Clash of Clans - with any of these companies- we can,' he says. Reil argued that Zynga has the resources to compete. Our business model is if we invest more in the product, then we invest less in user acquisition.'īut its competitors reportedly spend almost $1 million a day on star-studded ad campaigns, and NaturalMotion is going to need more than just word of mouth to succeed. 'It's actually a very specific focus that we have with all of our games. 'If we wow people, it spreads word of mouth.' Reil says. Although CSR remains the 24th top-grossing game in the US App Store, a lot is riding on Dawn of Titans' success. The Farmville creator has bet big on NaturalMotion, and despite performing well initially, the company's first game since the acquisition, CSR Racing 2, is currently lying in 42nd in the top free games chart on iOS. Facebook gaming has fallen by the wayside and NaturalMotion's parent company Zynga's relevance and profits have declined with it. 'For it to work on mobile, you need to be able to win a battle in the time it takes you to buy a coffee.'Īs enjoyable as Dawn of Titans is, it needs to do more than impress gamers like me. We felt like we could do that and make them pass the Starbucks test.' Reil pauses, gesturing at the opposing army lying defeated on the screen. 'Those epic battles that you see in the likes of The Lord of the Rings, they don't exist on mobile. NaturalMotion CEO Torsten Reil explains that simplicity is the key to success. Offline missions and online fights reward you with in-game currency, and between matches you train your units and equip your most prized warriors. Most of the real strategizing takes place long before any swords clash. Combat is simple: Skirmishes last around a minute, and you command each type of unit to attack with the flick of a finger. With the studio clearly taking cues from Creative Assembly's Total War series, Dawn of Titans sees you leading thousands of soldiers into battle against either real-life or AI-controlled foes. It's a level of detail you'd expect to see in a console game, not on an app's home screen.Īlthough not quite as detailed, the battles themselves are also pretty spectacular. Upon opening the app, you find yourself looking over an intricately detailed floating kingdom, fully rendered 3D castles and buildings sitting before you as tiny villagers wander around them in real time. Moving away from the simple titles that built them an empire, NaturalMotion's latest title, Dawn of Titans, is the developer's first foray into action-strategy gaming.įor a mobile game, Dawn of Titans offers an unusual sense of scale. The studio is hoping that pushing the processing power of modern smartphones is enough to get players downloading again. It's been nearly three years since the acquisition, though, and the pressure is on for NaturalMotion to deliver a fresh hit. That success led to the studio being bought for $527 million by casual-gaming giant Zynga. It then packed that tech into mobile games like Clumsy Ninja that, thanks to their visual edge, quickly topped the App Store.

The British gaming studio started life creating animation engines, with its software used for everything from The Lord of the Rings movies to Grand Theft Auto V. NaturalMotion believes technology is its hook. Every so often, a game like Pokémon Go comes along, proving that if you have the right 'hook,' you can find a massive audience. But with more than 1,000 new apps flooding the App Store every day, it's increasingly difficult for new titles to make an impact. This year alone, 1.4 billion smartphones will be sold, giving more people access to gaming devices than ever before.

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