Waste Creative and Supercell's Clash Royale have Fans Screaming in new Global "Play Like it's 2017 Again" campaign

Mar. 12, 2025

Fan-first creative agency Waste Creative is launching "Play Like it’s 2017 Again", a major new global campaign for Finnish gaming giant Supercell’s Clash Royale, which taps into fan nostalgia.

The new push, which aims to build awareness and excitement amongst current and lapsed Clash Royale players, celebrates the game’s ninth birthday with the return of Retro Royale, an OG game mode that has had fans clamouring for its comeback since Clash Royale’s launch in 2016.

To tease the return of an original game mode without giving too much away, Waste and Supercell re-introduced the OG screaming Royale King, the game’s original app icon, to the community and played back a supercut of their own real screams from the past nine years of Clash Royale, along with a teasing call-to-action to "Play Like it’s 2017 Again".

For the launch, Waste and Supercell have expanded on the screaming concept, using the screaming Royale King to humorously introduce and unpack the game mode for both current and lapsed players. The launch film harnesses the screaming Royale King, along with even more community screams from the past (including a screaming goat), to get the entire internet screaming about the Retro Royale game mode.

The simple concept of screaming is rolling out across multiple touchpoints, activations and content, all with a single aim: to give the community a scream.

The campaign is running globally across Clash Royale’s social channels, with a full suite of creative assets, including teaser and launch films, social content, and influencer activations.

Darren Wanklyn, Creative Lead, Waste Creative, commented:

"When creating this campaign, our goal was a simple one—get players shouting about the release of Clash Royale’s OG game mode. So we took the single-minded idea of a scream and crafted it into a campaign worth shouting about. By using players' own screams of excitement, lols, gags, gasps, game frustrations, and everything in between, we have tapped into their authentic and personal nostalgic memories of playing the OG game. Then, through playful activations and content all centred around the single-minded idea of ‘giving the community a scream’, we are keeping them quite literally shouting about Clash Royale and Retro Royale throughout the campaign, and beyond."