I love games that offer me a pleasant surprise and Battle of Tiles certainly fits the bill. The functional, but simple artwork made me wonder what I was getting into, but the premise of a tile based battle game intrigued me. In BoT you control and army of fantasy unit tiles consisting of the usual clichés like soldier, mage, healer, archer, etc. You can move one unit or many, but once that move is complete the enemy take a turn. You cannot go backwards, you cannot restart the last level, you cannot load an old save – your progress must be ever forwards until the enemy claims your entire army.

It's a delightfully simple game. All your units move one square at a time and you can put them in whatever formation you like as long as you do it before the enemy get to you. Any unit that advances heals a little and they all level up through fighting. Each victory provides a little money and this can be used to turn the approaching enemies into new recruits to bolster your ranks. At the end of each level is a large boss tile with room for you to get multiple units in contact and deal some heavy damage.

Simple strategies emerge such as fighters at the front, archers behind and healers in the rear. Alternating new recruits shoulder to shoulder with hardened veterans to help give the new recruits time to level up. Moving the front lines forward when facing easier enemies to give your soldiers a chance to earn experience without the archers and mages grabbing it all first. Changing formation when facing a boss to limit the chance of damage to a single unit and maximise the number of ranged units that can fire. All these little strategies emerge naturally and make what appears to be an extremely simple game into something that can entertain for a good three or four hours.

The problems come after that three or four hours when you begin to fully explore what the game has to offer and it runs out of new tricks. Eventually you'll fight enemies that are too tough and you'll start to take causalities. At this stage in the game buying a cheap unit won't work because they'll just get killed before you can level them up. Buying some of the hard units you're facing is usually too expensive. There is no option to return to an easier area and level up your troops so you soon begin to dwindle away and it's frustrating because there is nothing you can do. It might have been possible to view the game as a test of your unit and formation decisions, a race to see how far you can get with a specific selection. I can't really view it on that basis however because it takes a long time to play through each level and there isn't enough choice to make starting over an interesting proposition.

The units themselves are quite simple, soldiers must melee with enemies in adjacent tiles and archers/mages can level up enough to attack a unit three tiles away. This simplicity helps ease you into the game. However, it does mean there are only limited tactical or strategic options once things get tough. I often wished I could collect spells that might be used to protect a vulnerable unit or control the abilities of my units as they upgraded.

There is no map here; you simply move left to right and face ever-tougher enemies until the boss is defeated. Then you start again on the next level and repeat the same process. A genius idea to help the novice player as it reduces the mental overhead in the early game. Again though, in later stages I was missing the sense of exploration and the tactical challenge.

I had the most fun by playing on the easiest difficulty setting, because it gave me the greatest play time before the difficulty got too high. One stand out moment was when I faced two immobile "demons", a unit I'd never seen before. My front line units were first to engage and were instantly killed, in anger I quickly formed up my entire army around these devils and let fly. I won't spoil it for you, but the result was both amusing and frustrating. That's how I feel about the game really, I just wish there was more of it.


Graphics:
Definitely more functional than aesthetically pleasing, there is a lot of information to convey and they do the job admirably.

Sound:
The music was turned off fairly quickly. The sound effects are clear and functional.

Game play:
It's very easy to get into. It felt a little like a rogue game, with satisfying strategies emerging as you play.

Value:
I had about four hours of fun and at $5 that seems more than reasonable.

Concept:
Part of your brain says: "why are you doing this?", but I just couldn't stop. Advance, kill, upgrade, buy new units and repeat. It's very addictive, at least initially. If more features were introduced in later stages I think it would be exceptional.

Fun:
It doesn't last long, but it's a fun ride.

Overall:
Deconstruct the CRPG to its raw basics and have a fun if short blast. At this price that's fine, I just wish there was more to it in the later stages. A great game for the lunch hour.