Boom Beach struggles with explosive potential

In Boom Beach, players build a base, collect resources and then command troops to destroy other player's bases.

In terms of game play it's an upgrade from CoC, with much more direction of troops. In CoC, a player drops a beacon and then troops just attack whatever is around, whereas in Boom Beach there is a flare tool that can set rally points for troops to move.

The differences from CoC pretty much end at the added game-play mechanics and the aesthetics. The goal of the game is the same as it was in CoC: build the biggest and best base ever.

Players are tasked to create naval way stations of sorts, and they can build sniper towers, flamethrowers and artillery cannons among other tools of combat.

To build the best base, players need to free islands from other player's control. The accumulation of islands equates to the accumulation of resources. This is basically a game of marbles where the islands are the marbles and if you lose, you lose all the marbles.

Unfortunately these battles aren't army versus army. Instead a player directs troops to storm a base armed with guard towers and cannons. That said, the game play of Boom Beach is still very much real-time, and much more interactive than in CoC.

Also unfortunate for Boom Beach is the slow pace in the way the game starts. The game is a free-to-play game with in-app purchases but comes with wait-to-play mechanics. Players builds a tower and must wait a set time until the tower is finished before they can build again.

The same applies to troops and boats. As per the norm of F2P games, there are in-app purchases that speed things along, but they don't work very well with Boom Beach. Unlike CoC and its various other clones, there is only one builder available in Boom Beach. That may change in a future update, but for now, playing and advancing in Boom Beach takes forever.

Boom Beach has a lot of potential, and it's already accumulating loads of users. The setup that lets players choose to play against a computer until they're ready to take on human players is quite well done. The game could be the next big mobile game, but as it stands right now, it's still no Flappy Bird.