Mushroom Wars

Mushroom Wars is a game about numbers. It might have cute cartoon graphics and a sensible touchscreen interface, but it boils down to performing quick sums here and there to ensure that your side in the fungi conflict comes out victorious.

For some, that's going to be fine, but if you look for a bit more depth from your RTS games then you're going to end up disappointed.

While there are strategies to devise and plans to form, often the only way to win is by swamping your enemy.

Each map you fight on is made up of a series of different buildings. Some of these belong to you, some of them belong to the opposing team, and some of them are neutral. These dwellings and watchtowers act as spawn points and objectives.

Inside each building sit your soldiers. As time passes their numbers swell and you can send them out to conquer the buildings held by the opposing side. To begin with the numbers are on display, but as you play through the game that luxury disappears.

So you'll work out the odds, figure out whether or not your own buildings are vulnerable, then send out a force to attempt to kick down the doors and take over. You control that force by sliding a finger from one of your buildings to the one you'd like to vandalise.

As the game progresses different building types crop up that fire out projectiles to stop an advance, and you'll need to keep an eye on the morale of your troops as well. You'll get a slider too that lets you choose what percentage of your warriors to send out into battle.

While the gameplay is pretty simple, there's a problem in that most battles after the first few levels descend into push and counter-push, with no side able to gain the upper hand. Spend too long upgrading your buildings to produce more men and your opponents will swamp you. Spend too little and you won't have a strong enough force to defend anything.

It's a battle of attrition, and there's no real way to break through. Outflanking or using special units to break a siege isn't possible, so you're left to tot up numbers and wait until things look like they're stacked in your favour.

Mushroom Wars isn't a bad game, and there's plenty of content to get your teeth into, with more to come. Later levels in particular start to add more spice to proceedings, but it's a slog to get there.

In the end, Mushroom Wars's focus on the numerical doesn't leave enough room for anything else to shine through.