ControlCraft 3

When it comes to creating intuitive, well-paced real-time strategy games on iOS, I've always wondered why more iOS developers didn't pick up the gauntlet laid down by Galcon.

Here was a finely honed strategy game with a crystal-clear interface, and no clunky camera controls or fiddling around with multiple unit types on a tiny touchscreen.

Playing ControlCraft 3, you perhaps realise why this hasn't been taken further. It's a bit of a dead end.

RTS games live longer with Galcon

Like the first two games in the series, ControlCraft 3 takes that Galcon formula and applies it to a side-on, zoomed-in sci-fi world.

You start with a single tower, upon which is written the number of troops housed within. As a coloured timer ticks around, this number increases to signify that your forces are growing.

By touching and dragging to other neutral or enemy-controlled towers, you can commit half of your tower's troops to taking over the adjacent unit.

You win the level when all enemy towers have been captured. It's a wonderfully streamlined way to command and conquer.

Trooping around

ControlCraft 3 varies this formula by limiting the paths your troops can take, depending on their type. Ground troops have to run around pre-set paths, which can take a while, and some towers can't be reached by them at all.

Fortunately, capturing an aerial troop tower grants you jetpack-equipped fighters that can go anywhere.

Another noteworthy feature is the way your troops will engage opposing forces in firefights when they meet out in the open, which is essentially a case of the numerically superior force winning out at the cost of however many troops were in the opposite party.

There are also special defensive towers, and perks that can be bought with coins earned through play or (of course) in-app purchases.

Ground control to major annoyance

The trouble is, each game takes on the same repetitive land-grab pattern as the last. There are no real tactics beyond building up a sizeable force across two or three towers and then spamming an opposing tower into submission.

When you find yourself on the receiving end of similar treatment - as we did surprisingly early on in the campaign - it doesn't feel like the engaging battle of wits you might expect. It's just annoying and tiresome, and having some of the action take place just off-screen makes it even more so.

ControlCraft 3 is fine at what it does, but it also highlights a possible creative dead-end in one of the more interesting mobile RTS ideas of recent years. Hopefully another developer can step forward and show us that this needn't be so.