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Pocket Gamer's Christmas Freebies #2 - HOPLITE

Hope, skip, and a stab

Pocket Gamer's Christmas Freebies #2 - HOPLITE
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iOS

In the run up to Christmas, Pocket Gamer has teamed up with the developers behind some of this year's best games to give you ten award-winning iOS games for free. Come back every day for the next two weeks to get your games.

The second game in our ten days of freebies is Douglas Crowley's majestically minimalist Gold Award-winning roguelike Hoplite. Download it for free on iPhone and iPad here.

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One of the big surprises of 2014 has been the number of brilliant roguelikes that have made their way onto the App Store

And sitting somewhere at the top of the roguelike tree is Douglas Crowley's wonderful Hoplite.

The game almost plays like a grid-based puzzler. You're the titular Hoplite, and need to work your way through 16 levels of procedurally generated dungeon to snatch an enchanted fleece. Then get back out again.

That's much easier said than done when every slice of the dungeon is populated with monsters and foes that want to bash your brains in.

You need to consider each of your moves carefully. Do you jump, spending some energy, and whomp that archer, or try and avoid its arrows and take out another soldier instead?

Hop to it

It might look simple, but in reality it’s an ingeniously balanced game of cat and mouse. Every time you move your foes do too, so you need to predict their plans and try and act accordingly.

At review we called the game "an incredible, ever-changing blend of dungeon-crawling and tactical puzzles," adding that "Hoplite may lack a little longevity but it's impressively entertaining while it lasts."

To cut a long story short, if you haven't already given Hoplite a whirl, you should definitely go and grab it right this instant.

And don't forget to come back tomorrow to see what's behind the next door of our advent calendar.

Follow us on Twitter (@PocketGamer) or Facebook to make sure you don't miss tomorrow's free award-winning iOS game.
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.