Games like Clash Royale, sorted by what you liked about it

We make one of these games, so read the list knowing that. We have kept the descriptions of everyone else's to the facts that do not change: how the game is played and where. Live games change their shops and seasons constantly, so check each one's store page before you invest time in it.

If you liked the real-time lane battle

This is the heart of Clash Royale: both players act at once, units walk down lanes, and placement and timing beat raw card quality.

1. VGA Planets: Skyfire

Ours. A seven-card fleet, energy up to 10, two lanes, three-minute matches. The units are starships from twelve asymmetric races, and freighters that haul fuel for bonus energy add an economy to fight over. Runs in a browser as well as on Android and iOS. Side-by-side with Clash Royale here.

2. Warcraft Rumble

Blizzard's take on the format, with collectible Warcraft "minis". It leans much further toward single-player: a large campaign of hand-built maps and bosses, with player-versus-player alongside it. More on how it compares.

3. Minion Masters

A real-time card battler for PC and console rather than phones. You pick a Master with their own abilities, build a deck around them, and fight 1v1 or 2v2 across a bridge-and-lane arena. The closest thing to the format on a big screen with a mouse.

If you liked the head-to-head defence

4. Rush Royale

Tower defence turned competitive. You and your opponent each defend your own path against the same waves, summoning and merging units from a five-card deck; the last one standing wins. There is a co-operative mode as well. Compared here.

5. Bloons TD Battles 2

Head-to-head tower defence from the Bloons series. You build defences on your side while paying to send extra balloons at your opponent. Less card game, more economy duel, and available on phones and PC.

If you liked short matches with a small deck

6. Marvel Snap

Twelve-card decks, six turns, three locations, and both players reveal at the same time. A game is over in about three minutes. It is turn-based, so the tension comes from bluffing and prediction rather than execution. Compared here.

If you liked collecting and deck building

7. Hearthstone

The big one in digital collectible card games: thirty-card decks, turn-based play, and a very deep card pool. Matches are longer and the deck building goes much further than a lane battler's can.

8. Legends of Runeterra

Riot's card game set in the League of Legends world. Turn-based, with players trading actions back and forth within each round, and decks built around champion cards.

9. Star Realms

If the word you care about is "space". A turn-based deckbuilder where you buy ships and bases into your deck during the match itself. Quick, clever and nothing like a lane battler to play. More space card games here.

How to choose

Why we built another one

Skyfire comes from planets.nu, the home of VGA Planets, a space strategy game people have been playing since the early nineties. It has more than a hundred ship designs and a set of races that have been balanced against each other for thirty years. The lane-battler format turned out to be a very good way to put those ships in front of somebody who has five minutes rather than five weeks.