Swords & Soldiers II

Swords & Soldiers is a 2D Side-scrolling strategy game. You and your opponent have a base at the opposite ends of a path. In some levels, there are occurrences where the path splits and rejoins at a short distance. You can choose which path to venture down, by turning the sign-post.

I did think the graphical style and some aspects of the gameplay reminded me of Awesomenauts. Turns out it is by the same developers!

Worker units collect gold from the mine next to your base, and can also be sent out to recover gold/mana that drop in from the sky over time. With the accumulated gold, you can create units, or research new units or magic abilities. Your abilities cost mana. There’s a wide range of abilities, such as attacking a unit with lightning, healing a unit, temporarily turning a unit into a defenceless sheep.

In each level, you will have a different set of units and abilities, and everything has to be researched again (it doesn’t carry over level to level).

In certain locations, you can place down towers. One is a Mana tower that simply generates mana over time. Another is a Defence tower and acts as a wall, and gives an occupying ranged unit an attacking bonus. Another churns out short-lived, weak skeletons.

Some of the story levels will have different objectives so you may have to recover certain objects before your opponent, or take out certain towers.

There are a few skirmish encounters where you can choose your available abilities and units from the ones you have unlocked so far.

The levels are generally short and some can be completed within 5 minutes. This is because the majority of levels are very easy. I often failed on non-standard levels though. However, in the next attempt; I easily beat it. I found that some levels seem to sway wildly in your favour if you have a certain army or power by a certain point. I think it seems a bit unbalanced. Ironically, there are a group of people in the credits that were credited for “Balance”. The units themselves seemed balanced and you get what you pay for; cheap units have lower attack and health.

The final two levels have a massive difficulty spike, and the penultimate level was particularly frustrating and took many repeated attempts. I really liked the concept of the game, but the difficulty really needs revising.