Cartoon Wars Review

I’ll admit it. I went into this game thinking that I would be doing some “Stick Wars” type of thing and I wasn’t really excited about it. Even when I realized that this wasn’t’ the case, my lackadaisical attitude got in the way of me really seeing what this game was…

I’m just glad it finally went away. Cartoon Wars has quickly become one of my favorite time wasters, and the more I play it, the more I realize that it’s a lot deeper than I had originally thought.

The reason for thinking that it’s like the “Stick Wars” is a bit obvious. You have a bunch of stick figures and castles, but the twist here is that you ARE the stick figures and you’re protecting your castle from a bunch of “real” cartoon enemies. You march your forces against the enemies and try to reach their castle and bring it to the ground.

You create your units by using the mana that you gain in fighting. The better units will take more mana, so you’ve got to use strategy in knowing when to send out a lot of smaller units and when to try and the bigger ones on the battle field.

What you end up with is a great combination of a Tower Defense game and an RTS. Now I’ve read this with some other games before, but I’ve never really seen it work so well as it does in this game.

I wasn’t expecting the TD feeling when I started this game but even with my moving units it was there… big time. And the fact that now I had a TD game where I could actually take out the source of the enemies really put it over the top for me.

The game is almost like a game of tug-o-war. The forces will meet somewhere in the middle and the hope is to keep driving them back towards their castle. If they get the upper hand you’ve really got to get things going or they’ll get to your base. Helping you along the way is a huge bow that sends arrows raining down on the bad guys (I’ll talk about that a little later).

There is also a ton of stuff you can upgrade in this game. You start with a simple warrior but eventually will be able to spend your gold on creating other units. Then you can spend more to upgrade the units making them more powerful.

You can also upgrade how fast you gain gold and mana (very important) and strengthening your castle and arrows. The upgrading system is very rich and allows for a lot of replayability.

The game play is very easy. Everything is basically touch oriented and the unit fighting is all handled automatically. Sounds are also good, though I’ve been playing it a lot and now just turn everything off.

For a buck, this is one of the best TD games out there, and it’s already more than just a TD game. But there are a few problems that need (and can) be addressed in future updates.

Right off the bat you will see some spelling errors in the game. It’s not a huge thing, but really take you out of the “professionalism” of the rest of the game.

But the bigger issues are in the seemingly unbalanced nature of the game. It takes a while until you can upgrade your mana production to be where it should. Your enemy can seemingly put out an endless supply of very powerful units while you’re holding your finger of the create button just waiting for enough to send out even your most lower level unit.

There is also a big jump in the upgrading levels in terms of payment. For instance one level might be 1600 pieces of gold while the next level will be 4000. That’s a bit too big.

And while the arrows help level the field, it’s too hard to control. The aiming is done with sliding bar and it takes a big learning curve to get the aiming right. What you end up doing is either over shooting your mark, or (worse) hitting your own units.

A couple fixes aside… Cartoon Wars is a wonderful game that will keep you busy for hours. For me the best mix of Tower Defense and Real Time Strategy that I’ve seen on the App Store. There is a lot more depth than the little stick figures would leave you to believe. And it’s worth a buck just to watch the little Ninja figures jumping around.

The Good

Very Fun Mix Of TD and RTS Gaming

Something Cool About Stick Figures Fighting “Real” Enemies

The Ninjas ROCK

The Bad

Gets Pretty Difficult Quickly – Needs More Balance

Aiming Of Arrows Is Odd & Takes A Lot Of Getting Used To

Spelling Errors

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Tags: Cartoon Wars Iphone, iphone TD, Review

Category: Games