Townsmen 3

You might not like Ken Livingstone. You might not agree with his politics. Heck, you might not even know who he is (the Mayor of London).

What you can't argue with is the difficulty of his day job – trying to balance the various interests of one of the world's largest urban centres. And once you've played Townsmen 3 for several days, you'll feel especially sympathetic.

Okay, so the issues facing you as leader of a group of colonial settlers in Handy Games' latest title might not include fielding irate Evening Standard journalists or policing the congestion charge. Nevertheless, the need to keep your 'townies' fed, paid and defended, whilst simultaneously trying to grow your settlement and achieve specific mission targets, does offer an insight into the black art of resource management as faced by Red Ken and his ilk. That you must also service (or fend off) your colonial overlords might strike a few chords too.

But it's not all hard work. Lively cartoon visuals and atmospheric audio samples set the scene nicely, while the missions themselves (up to 14, dependent on your handset) are refreshingly varied, mixing timed, trading and even 'downsizing' challenges with more standard 'obtain resource/build such and such' objectives to ensure that you're never able to settle into monotony. A speed-up function that enables you to skip through five game days also keeps things moving along at a decent pace.

The accessible interface plays its part too, offering considerable power within one or two button presses. It's easy to rapidly scan the buildings and natural resources of your quasi-3D world to identify the general state of play; selecting a structure provides more details, including its level (basic buildings can be upgraded to be more efficient), the resources it currently requires, and its output.

The latter is particular important as, unlike most other strategy titles (including previous Townsmen) that require you to build separate structures for each resource, here just about every building plays multiple roles. Farms, for example, can be set to produce pigs, sugarcane or tobacco, and this flexibility enables you to quickly refocus your strategy.

Aside from creating essential food and building materials, resources can also be stockpiled and traded, either with colonial ships (which offer a wide variety of stocks but are about as reliable as a London bus, frequently disappearing in storms en route) or native tribes (constantly available, but trading limited to water and later gold).

Adding an extra dimension to these relationships is your ability to establish a friendly or hostile stance towards the native tribes. Marked on a simple scale from trader to pirate, your choices will affect not only your in-game abilities (good guys can build trading ships and might have temples constructed in their honour that help production, whilst bad guys can create pirate ships and attack natives encroaching on their land) but also the missions that follow.

Sadly, this supposedly pivotal decision is somewhat undermined by the fact it's just far too easy to be bad. The combination of the slightly haphazard gift system (it's difficult to see what gifts actually increase popularity) and an oversimplified battle element (based around a fruit machine-style mini-game that even a small child could master) mean even the most pious players will soon decide to wipe out the indigenous population. The fact the game seems more than happy to spawn another tribe who are happy to trade with you shortly afterwards hardly helps.

Whilst this isn't a critical flaw – and it certainly doesn't upset the fundamentally sound resource management basics – it's nevertheless a little dispiriting. Taken into account with a few other niggles (like over-efficient alerts, and the fact you can't easily see why production is slowing down in a particular building), it serves to keep this otherwise excellent incarnation of Townsmen from developing an even higher score.

It won't be everyone's cup of tea, demanding more attention and offering a less immediate reward than many other mobile games. However, those prepared to invest the time into Townsmen 3 will discover a satisfying and addictive experience that they can settle down with for many happy hours.

Which is probably more than Ken gets for running London.