The problem with Clash Royale is that at its core, its a tremendous game with a completely new and novel approach to a genre the first time you play it. It's super addictive early on not for anything nefarious but because it's so much fun to simply play it, and get new cards, and advance through the early arenas.Clash Royale for me as well. Just recently broke free from it's grip. The game does a masterful job of making you log into it.
But once you get through that initial newlywed phase, the monetization in that game, is truly a kick in the nads. You quickly realize that it's not just about getting new cards. You then have to power up those cards, so you have to get lucky many many times to do that or open your wallet and start spending money. So the joy of getting a legendary lasts no time because you need to now power up that legendary many times for it to be on par against the people you play against. That concept along with the community that likes to spam emotes, and behave in a toxic manner during games, eventually drove me away from the game although I'll fully admit I was quite addicted to that game for a long time. So many mobile games use that exact same formula of needing to power up things you win. It's a really nasty version of fomo.
I eventually switched over to Minion Masters. That game has the same frustration when it comes to the meta issues and random nature of cards but at least when you get a good card, you have that good card. You don't have to then power it up many many times through lucky drops to get it on par.
But the only real way to break an addiction to a game is to simply play it a lot less (or not at all). Eventually the addictive compulsion to play it constantly will wane.
Last edited: