Game: Boom Beach

How do you follow-up a hit like Clash of Clans? If you're developer Supercell, you think long and hard about what made the formula work. Then you do it again, but better. You learn from your mistakes. You tweak, you perfect - and when all is said and done, you deliver a game like Boom Beach to the App Store.Sneaking in a Canadian soft launch late last week, Boom Beach takes the winning ideas of Clash of Clans and fuses them with some changes that players have been clamoring for. It's not uncommon to hear players mutter things to themselves like "why do my surviving troops disappear after a battle?," "why can't I tell my troops where to go?," or "I'm never going to get further in the single player campaign - I'm absolutely stuck!"At the very least, frustration like this have plagued my own Clash of Clans experience from day one. Boom Beach is quick to address such problems: surviving troops return to your landing craft, ready for your next assault. Once you unlock signal smoke, you can give your troops an indication of where you want them to go. The single-player campaign offers plenty of freedom, letting you pick and choose from a variety of battles. In its changes, Boom Beach feels like a checklist of solutions to the little wriggles that bothered players in their last game.