We spoke to the developers of Warcraft Rumble to learn more about its road to release and what’s next for the mobile game.
Before he worked on Warcraft Rumble, its associate game director, Adam Kugler, did not play many mobile games.
Kugler was lead class designer on World of Warcraft, and at one point during Warcraft Rumble’s development, he went to lunch with game director Tom Chilton to get some advice. While Kugler wanted to get guidance on where to take the MMO next, Chilton pitched working on Warcraft Rumble to Kugler and convinced him to check out some mobile games and get a better idea of the space. When he returned on Monday, Kugler had been won over by the idea of a Warcraft mobile game and jumped ship from World of Warcraft to work on a new title shortly after that.
Warcraft Rumble is the latest mobile game from Blizzard, following in the footsteps of titles like Hearthstone and Diablo Immortal. It’s very different from those titles, though, as it’s an action strategy game where players strategically place collectible miniature versions of iconic Warcraft characters and watch them slowly march forward as they capture objectives and eventually take down an enemy boss. It’s a new way to package and expose the Warcraft franchise to even more people on a new platform, including players like Kugler, who might not necessarily play mobile games.
We’ll see if the game can pull that off now that it finally got a wide release across iOS and Android today, which also happens to be during BlizzCon 2023. Ahead of its release, Digital Trends spoke to Kugler, as well as production director Jacquelyn Bacal Head — who joined the project just before it entered beta and has overseen its production through release — to get a better idea of what this Warcraft mobile game’s road to release was like.The core concepts
Initially titled Warcraft Arclight Rumble, the narrative conceit of Blizzard’s latest mobile game is that it’s a game within the Warcraft universe. A mysterious machine is found that can create mini-figures of iconic Warcraft characters. They come to life when placed on a game board, and that serves as the backbone of what players collect and play in the game. Its gameplay has similarities to titles like Clash Royale, although levels are a bit more expansive, reaching back to Warcraft’s real-time strategy roots.
This setup gave the developers plenty of opportunities to draw from their favorite Warcraft characters and locations when creating content for Warcraft Rumble. Kugler tells Digital Trends that it’s a “smash your toys together type game,” something that’s clear from its premise and the constant action on-screen. A standard campaign level is meant to last around three-and-a-half minutes, a match length the development team spent a lot of time getting just right.
