Infested Mars

They say that the straight lines on the surface of Mars are canals. Evidence of an ancient and primitive civilization. If so, it's likely they'd just about discovered games like Infested Mars.

It's a bare bones real-time strategy game. You pick a size and style of map, then watch as the game terraforms a unique landscape with cities and roads, forests and lakes. Then you plonk down a base which generates rover units for you.

Your mission is to send these servile robots off into the wilderness to destroy the crab-like invaders. To win, you must wipe out the nests which are the source of the infestation along with all their vile spawn. If the enemy manages to destroy too many cities first, it's game over.

Martian rovers

Swiping or tapping will select a group of rovers, then you press on a destination to set them moving. It's easy to pick up, although it's still disappointing to see a text-based tutorial rather than an interactive one.

On anything other than the smallest maps, it can be hard to pinpoint exactly the right square when setting a target. You can zoom in, so that's fine. Or at least it would be, if not for the bone-headed design choice to force the player to pick "zoom" from a menu first, instead of "destination".

It's hard enough to remember this when you're used to games just responding when you make the appropriate gestures. Having to do it when there are several urgent things requiring your attention is just infuriating and unfair.

What's particularly mystifying is that the motions needed are different. You select things with taps, and zoom with pinches. So there's no need to slow things down with an extra step.

It becomes second nature with practice, of course, just like any other set of game controls. But you're likely to get bored of the title and give up long before you reach that stage.

The instructions promise a certain level of tactical sophistication. Terrain like cliffs and roads affect the speed at which your rovers travel. And you can use that same accursed menu to select a choice of path-finding algorithms to get them where you need them as fast as possible.

Enemy crabs can destroy your production facility as well as the cities. So the game splits your attention three ways between protecting cities, protecting yourself, and wiping out nests. It's a recipe for a taut experience with simple rules, just what you want from a mobile RTS title.

Objects on the martian surface can change your strategy. You only get one base, and you get to pick where it goes down. But again there are competing needs in terms of protecting nearby cities and accessing roads.

There are also forests you can use to hide your troops from the enemy, and scout towers and drones to spy out the landscape.

It ought to be enough to make a simple but compelling strategy game. In reality, bad AI routines make a nonsense of all these tactical options. The game tends to be a pushover, even with the difficulty options cranked up.

The procedurally generated maps can be interesting, and will sometimes throw up a challenging game. But for the most part, you just point your drones at enemy nests, keep a small reserve in place for defence, and wait for victory.

The game doesn't help itself with weak graphics and sound, and a confusing menu layout. It exudes the sense of a rush job. Like the developers came up with some awesome terrain generation algorithms, and then got bored finishing the rest.

This is unfortunate. A fast-paced real-time strategy game with a simple interface would have been ideal for touchscreen. And it'd make a change from all the endless runners and board games. Sadly, Infested Mars looks the part, but on closer inspection it falls apart.