Epic Arena

"Like chess on steroids," reads the blurb for Epic Arena.

It's a pithy and somewhat presumptuous description, but it's not entirely inaccurate.

Travian Games's effort won't be knocking the 1,500-year-old boardgame from its perch any time soon, but the comparison stands.

This is a a virtual boardgame with fantasy, turn-based strategy, asynchronous multiplayer, and freemium card battling elements folded in.

You call familiar units - archers, alchemists, healing monks, dragons, and so on - to the game board from a randomly dealt pack of cards. Once on the field, these materialised units can be directed using your limited number of action points.

Moving to the extent of your unit's range takes up a point, as does initiating an attack. These attacks can be on enemy soldiers or their fixed defence points. The total destruction of either leads to victory.

There are also additional cards that can be played, from those that boost or heal single units to special one-off attacks that swing the battle in your favour.

These core components are sound. You're not bombarded with unit types, and each on has clear role in each round. Conversely, there are enough tactical possibilities to keep things fresh.

Where Epic Arena falls down is in its structure. Single player mode involves a string of simple puzzles, or preset battle situations that must be negotiated as quickly and efficiently as possible. It's a bit limited, it's not very interesting, and it doesn't prepare you for multiplayer.

Multiplayer is where the game has the potential to shine, with taxing battles against real opponents. But its implementation feels curiously fudged.

There's a strange split between ranked and unranked matches, with unranked matches fitting to the usual asynchronous structure, allowing you to play out a game as and when you have time for a move.

Ranked matches require your undivided attention, as they expire in ten minutes. It's a curious and seemingly unnecessary separation, and makes unranked matches more appealing yet less rewarding.

Then there's the ability to purchase better packs of cards with IAPs, which is a whole can of worms that you can only really open after tens of hours worth of play.

So, Epic Arena, then. It's like chess on steroids - but less ingenious and more convoluted.