If you have been in a fight in school, you will know that there are two factions always at war, always at each other's necks: the bullies and the geeks. If you were one of the bullies in school, I hate you. You made my life miserable. However, if you were one of the latter, then you might enjoy Playground Wars, an interesting strategic mix of strategy and MOBA in the battle for schoolyard supremacy.
In the game, you play as the geeks. That means you control the kids who normally gets pushed around, slammed into the locker, faces get shoved into toilet bowls and, of course, wedgies. Ouch… Just thinking about it hurts. Anyway, this is their revenge. They are dead set on taking back the playground and protecting their treehouse, their fortress, from incoming bullies who want nothing more than to beat the crap out of you and claim your mighty treehouse as their own.
The game plays a lot like a MOBA but instead of a steady stream of automatic backup, you have to spend resources to summon your minions. The resource is lemons, don't ask me why. As the resource slowly increases, you spend them to call for backup to help your main character, the one you control, to fight off the bullies one by one.
The controls are simple. You tap on the right to move forward, and left to move backwards. Your character auto-attacks whenever an enemy is in range, and you can unleash special abilities on the enemies by clicking on them on the bottom right of the screen. To summon your friends to your aid, you can click on their icons on the bottom left when you have enough resources. The resource can also be upgraded to generate more lemons more frequently.
You have multiple options when it comes to your team. You start of with a small guy who walks fast but hits for not very much damage and has low health, and as you play, you gain more and more allies such as a tank, a healer and a ranged specialization. Besides having different roles to play, each of them are also stronger against some types of enemies and weaker against others, not to mention the fact that they have different weather preferences. Yes you heard me, this game has variable weather man, and each of them behave differently under different circumstances. This adds a whole other level of complexity to a game that already puts a lot of emphasis on strategy and tactical thinking.
The enemies are also very varied in their abilities and types, including a healer of their own. If that doesn't sound complex enough, there are also big boss battles to be fought. Believe me, those boss bullies are no easy task to defeat.
As you complete daily missions, you gain points that can be used to upgrade your character, treehouse, and allies. The sense is progression is amazing in this game. The game just does it so well. I have to mention though that the difficulty ramps up pretty quickly, so newcomers to the genre will have a tough time later on.
Playground wars is a really cool game. If you are a fan of strategic and tactical, yet cute and fun, you should definitely try it out. It is now out on the Google Play Store for… wait for it…. FREE. For no cost at all, this game has a surprisingly deep gameplay that you can spend hours playing. There are some IAPs, but nothing that you can't live without.
I highly recommend giving this a try. There is no harm to try, especially if you were one of those kids back in the day. Hey, even if you were a bully last time, maybe you can help the geeks for some karmic redemption!
