Battle Waves hits 20,000 pre-registrations ahead of May 29 launch

Battle Waves reached 20,000 pre-registrations before its May 29 launch, and the new trailer gave Gabriel’s Games a much stronger case than a bare store page ever could. The pitch was simple but sharp: a deck-building RTS where cute-but-grotesque monsters march down lanes while players counter an enemy commander in real time.

That hook mattered because the game was not built like a lightweight lane battler. Battle Waves launched with 32 factions, each carrying its own cards and effects, and decks were assembled by mixing six factions at a time. The official game page framed the loop plainly, build a deck, spawn an army, and crush the enemy base in fast strategy battles, with an endless campaign and ranked PvP at the center of the package.

The launch details showed the same push for breadth. The Google Play listing said the campaign ran through five acts and could be replayed with infinite New Game Plus, while ranked PvP included online matchmaking and leaderboards. Battle Waves was also listed in eight languages, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, which gave the debut a wider international reach than many indie mobile launches manage out of the gate. The YouTube trailer pointed players to Google Play pre-registration and App Store pre-order, with the iOS version carrying a 9+ age rating and in-app purchases.

Momentum did not stop at the 20,000 mark. GamesPress later said pre-registrations passed 100,000 a week before launch, and a launch release put Google Play pre-registrations at 160,000. That same release said Battle Waves had taken more than four years of iteration to develop, and that six critical gameplay crashes were identified and fixed during a two-week open beta. It also identified Gabriel Langlois, founder of Gabriel’s Games LLC, as the creator behind the project, building on his earlier 2024 PC strategy title Battle Waves: Card Tactics, released under CAGE Studios.

For a debut mobile game, the real test was never just the pre-reg number. Battle Waves needed the trailer, the monster art, and the faction system to convince players there was enough depth to stick around, and the launch package made that argument as strongly as the 20,000 pre-registrations suggested it could.