Folks love to get down on the various clones on the App Store, but over the years what we’ve seen is that these popular games that are worth cloning are super fun, and sometimes all it takes is a theme that’s slightly more appealing to get someone involved in that gameplay formula. For example, we saw quite a few people around here who never were able to get into the super generic fantasy setting of Game of War (Free), but are big enough fans of Final Fantasy that the reskinned Final Fantasy XV: A New Empire (Free) was what got them sucked into the free to play base building and war fighting genre.
Somewhat similarly, maybe you don’t really like Supercell’s cartoony art style that’s shared across all their games, which always turned you off from playing them. That’s totally fair, but Clash Royale (Free) is a really good game, and the reason it has consistently charted so highly on mobile app stores is because the format of a super lightweight strategy game with short session lengths and units you summon and command via simple drag and drop gestures works really well. EA realized that, and as a response released Command & Conquer Rivals (Free) which is the same basic idea with futuristic C&C flair.
As of this week, there’s another pretty cool option, and that’s Road to Valor: World War II (Free). If you’ve played Clash Royale or any of the other similar games that have been released, you’ll know exact...