You have a castle at the left of the playing area, the enemy has one on the right. You have to destroy the enemy’s castle by generating troops, who march forwards until they meet an enemy. Either they die, or they win and then march forwards again. When they reach the enemy’s castle they break it into little pieces. That’s pretty much it, though there are some special powers you can trigger and some levels require survival, rather than the destruction of an enemy castle.

Battle of Puppets

Go, go, little ninjas!

The strategy comes from choosing which troops to generate with your limited resources and when to use your powers. It’s all rather simple, but gorgeously presented and oddly compelling. It’s real time strategy boiled right down, but that’s no bad thing. I like it a lot.

(It’s fairly similar to Trenches, actually, and any number of Flash games, but I’ve not blogged about those as far as I remember, so that’s not much help.)