Strategy games

Strategy games

Labels are supplied with the games, and a label is a claim that the game itself can contradict. Two titles carry the strategy label here. We opened both. One of them defends a gate and deserves the word; the other loads into a side-on shooting level with a jump button and a fire button, and whatever that is, nobody would call it strategy after ten seconds of holding it. This page exists mostly to save you those ten seconds.

What Kingdom Defense puts in front of you

Not a battle. A map. The first screen is a wide expanse of pale sand and scattered trees with roughly thirty small shield markers dotted across it, one of them lit orange to show where you are, plus two labelled buttons along the bottom — Ability and Guide — and a coin bar between them. The battle is one shield on that map, and the shelf's only genuine planning happens on the screen before it: what you spend, what you carry in.

Inside a level the camera holds on one gate. A hooded archer in orange stands on the right with the bowstring already drawn; skeleton soldiers in red-crested helmets come from the left carrying round shields and curved blades; a chained beast with bat wings hauls itself along behind them; arrows cross the frame the entire time. The scale is small enough that every decision produces a visible consequence within a second or two, which is the reason this is where the shelf's learning happens.

What Grand Commander turns out to be

A red sky. Glass domes with jungle plants inside, a grey building bristling with satellite dishes, and a soldier in a bandana standing on rocky ground with a machine gun. Orange coins stamped with a Z hang in the air in a five-by-three block waiting to be collected. Along the top: three portrait heads (your lives), a blue orb reading 200, a Z-coin counter, and an hourglass counting seconds. At the bottom corners sit a jump arrow on the left and a fire arrow on the right, with three ability discs between them.

That is a run-and-gun platformer with cooldown buttons. It is filed as strategy by the source catalogue and we keep the filing rather than quietly rewriting it, but if you arrived here wanting to plan something, this is not the title you wanted. If you arrived wanting the noise, it is precisely the title you wanted — its lookalikes, right down to the ability discs, are gathered in the loud set, though this title itself is not one of them.

How to tell the difference before clicking

The tell is what the game hands you in the first frame. A map with locked markers and an Ability screen means you are being asked to prepare. Two big arrows in the bottom corners of the screen mean you are being asked to react. The artwork of both titles promises armies; only the first one delivers a decision.

Note too that Kingdom Defense is deliberately filed twice, here and on the action shelf, and for once the double filing is honest: the planning and the hurried hands really are both in there.

Two titles, and what to expect from them

Which of the two is the defence game?

Kingdom Defense. Grand Commander looks like a war game on its cover and plays as a shooting level once loaded.

Is there anything to read before I start?

Kingdom Defense has a Guide button on its map screen, next to Ability. It is the only title on this shelf that offers instructions at all, and using it costs nothing.

What are the three round icons at the bottom of Grand Commander?

Abilities, laid out between the jump and fire arrows. They sit in the same place, in the same style, as the ability rows in several action titles here, which is another clue about what the game really is.

Does anything carry over if I close the tab?

We would not count on it. The level map shows locked markers, so a run of progress plainly exists inside a session, but this site keeps no account for you and stores nothing about your play on our side. Treat every visit as a fresh one and you will never be disappointed.