Clash Royale

Supercell's formula, at its most distilled: two players, two sets of towers, one deck of cards each, and a few frantic minutes to knock the enemy King and Princesses off their towers before yours fall. Clash Royale is real-time PvP where the cards are Clash of Clans troops, spells and defences — and placement, not reflexes, is the tested skill.

Your Battle Deck is the strategy before the strategy: choose from 100+ collectible, upgradeable cards (the Hog Rider! presumably first in line for many), then read the arena — when to push a lane, when to hold a card as an answer, where exactly to drop a unit so it defends instead of feeding. Fast matches, deep arguments about eight slots.

Around the ladder there's a whole social shell: climb the multiplayer rankings by upgrading cards and refining the deck, join or form a Clan to share cards and fight Clan Wars together, and take seasonal-event rewards like Tower Skins, Emotes and Magic Items as they rotate.

The money line is printed plainly by Supercell itself, and it's worth repeating: the game is free to download and play, but some items can be bought for real money — including random items — and purchases can be disabled in your device settings if you'd rather not. Its permission notice is similarly upfront: camera access (for QR-code scanning) and notifications are optional, and the game plays regardless; the listing even notes an IGRS 15+ rating. At 500M+ downloads and 4.4 stars, this is the card battler every other arena game gets measured against — Supercell's third entry in this catalog, and its sharpest.