Fly a helicopter over a battlefield. Two armies send tanks, soldiers, engineers, missile trucks and demolition vans at each other. A dictator has invaded your homeland. Give your army its orders, do what each mission asks, and liberate the country one battle at a time.
You need a keyboard, or a phone or tablet turned sideways. Nothing to download and no sign-in. Thirty-seven missions in two parts, a 1v1 mode, and longer battles after that.
Money $120
Waiting 0/3 nothing
Upgrades
Every battle has a mission of its own, and doing it wins the battle. So does finishing the red base. Each base has five lives: a van that reaches it takes one, and so does a charge planted by Shock troops (level 8), and so do every ten soldiers or engineers who come up inside it through a tunnel (engineers level 7), once they have broken its tunnel door. A base whose own gun has been blown up ten times is finished as well, however many lives it has left. A time counts only when a helicopter, soldiers or vehicles of the side that blew it up are near the gun (300 px): a missile, a drone or a plane from further off knocks the gun out for a while, but does not count. Every time counts against that base, even when enemy engineers had taken the gun over and its own side blew it up. You lose if your base is finished, or if every helicopter you have is shot down: you start with three.
Your army obeys one order at a time. Push is the usual one. Hold stops everyone where they stand, still firing. Fall back sends everyone past your front-most bunker back behind it, while those behind it come up to it. Full retreat brings the whole army home. Red gives its army the same orders.
Marshal Gorvash, a horrible dictator, has invaded Meridia, your homeland. The campaign drives him out of it, frees the neighbouring lands he took, where people are glad to be rescued, and ends in his own country, where his people are glad to be rid of the smog, the machines and the watchers. That is part one, thirteen missions. In part two, twenty-four more, his Iron Brigades fall back into the ruined north, the industrial heartland and their own capital, with personnel carriers, supplies, zombies, robots, factories, castles, towns, planes, a fairground and whole cities of toy bricks; the war map shows the battles a page at a time. Each mission you win earns up to three stars: one for winning, one for keeping three base lives, and one for beating the time on its briefing. Stars buy research, between battles. Each level you research is yours at the start of every later battle, for free, and Refund all takes it back so you can try another build. Red researches too, with as many stars as you have won, at the same prices, and earns money by the same rule as you.
Choose 1v1 on the war map to play any battle with no mission: you win by finishing the red base. Each battle comes with the research stars a perfect campaign would have won by then, three for each battle before it, and the levels that battle opens. Past the last battle it goes on adding up, one more star for each battle. You spend them on a build kept for that battle, and your campaign's research is not touched. A 1v1 win still earns stars for your campaign, and opens the campaign's research levels as a campaign win would. Both armies earn money by the same rule, and red researches with the same stars, so red's only other advantage is the map, which grows from battle to battle: more bunkers held at the start, more AA guns, a forward base, a bridge it already holds. Win the last mission, or the last battle of 1v1, and you can keep going, each new battle longer and harder than the one before, with one more research star each time, for you and for red. Your build goes on with you, and coming from the campaign you start with its research.
Your game saves itself in this browser as you play. On the war map, Saved games keeps a copy of your stars, research and opened battles in any of 3 slots, to load again later. Restart game starts over at mission 1 with 0 stars, for you and for red, and leaves the slots alone.
Money comes in every second, and every bunker you hold adds more. Each enemy unit or building you destroy or take pays a little too: $1 for a soldier, $8 for a tank, $15 for a bunker or a gun, $30 for the red helicopter. Buy with the buttons beside the game, or the keys 1 to 7. Units leave your base and drive towards the enemy on their own. Up to three can wait at your factory gate, shown under your money, and a vehicle waits there until the gate is clear of your other vehicles, which Hold, Fall back and Full retreat park by it; soldiers and engineers go out past it. Tanks in front and a van behind them is a good start. A spare helicopter costs $200, and you can keep up to five.
Your helicopter has a machine gun, bombs and homing missiles. Bombs are best against tanks, and a bomb that falls on a helicopter hits it too. The gun is best against soldiers, vans and incoming missiles. A missile flies to the nearest enemy vehicle or helicopter in front of you.
Fuel runs down while you fly, and with an empty tank the helicopter falls. Land on your pad, the flat slab next to your base, to refuel, repair and reload. The later battlefields are long, so you can also land beside a bunker your side holds: it refuels you slowly, but gives no repairs and no reloads, and only while it has gas in store. The red helicopter does the same. Saboteur engineers can wreck a pad: it gives nothing until its own side's engineers rebuild it. Level 7 engineers, on any path, put a pad out of action for good, and nothing rebuilds it. Red's can do the same to yours.
Soldiers and engineers need food and water; tanks, trucks, vans and carriers need gas and parts. They leave the base full, and out in the field it runs down: water in two minutes, food in three, gas in two and a half while a vehicle drives, and parts each time a vehicle is hit. A unit that has run out of any of them slowly loses health; a little coloured dot over it says which is running low. They fill up again at the base, beside a bunker of theirs that has some in store, or beside one of their vans. Each bunker keeps a store of food, water, gas, parts and ammunition, shown in five small bars over it: a bunker held at the start begins half full, and one that is taken keeps half of what was left. Every van (key 4) leaves the base loaded, stops at each of your bunkers it reaches that is short to leave its share, and goes back to the base for more when it is empty, or when it reaches your front-most bunker while any of your bunkers is still below three quarters of any store. Only with every bunker stocked does it drive on to the red base. Red's vans do the same. The store feeds your helicopter too: landed beside a bunker it only refuels while the bunker has gas, reloads (with Logistics 4) while it has ammunition, and is repaired (Logistics 6) while it has parts. Red's army needs supplies just the same. Tanks, missile trucks and artillery also carry ammunition for their main weapon: a tank 6 shells, a missile truck 4 missiles, an artillery gun 8 shells, more with some upgrades. Out of it, one drives back to the nearest bunker of yours with ammunition in store, or to your base, loads, and goes back to the fight. A tank's machine gun never runs out, and nobody counts soldiers' ammunition.
Every soldier and engineer has a loyalty of their own, higher with each level of their line. When the enemy around them badly outnumbers their side, or they are badly hurt, and their fear outgrows their loyalty, they run back to their nearest bunker or to the base, without firing, with a white mark over them, and come back once they have got their nerve back. Bunkers and helicopters nearby count in the odds as well. Vehicles never run. Red's soldiers run just the same.
UGVs are small ground robots, a line of upgrades of their own (key K). With level 1 your front-most bunker sends one every 45 seconds, with a machine gun, at most three at once. Armed robots get heavier guns and armour, then become gun robots (more of them, faster, twin guns, grenades) or anti-tank robots (missiles, speed, a last charge). Support robots carry no gun but mend your vehicles and lift mines, then become Mules, which do the supply round with a small load, or Engineer robots, which repair your bunkers, rebuild wrecked AA guns and restore ruined bunkers. Red's robots do the same.
With the Air force line's level 1 (key ') you can buy fighters (key M, $300) and bombers (key comma, $440). They take off from your base and fly by themselves: a fighter patrols over your front and goes after enemy helicopters, planes and drones, then flies home to rearm and goes out again; a bomber flies to the enemy's most valuable target, drops its bombs and comes home for more. AA guns, missile trucks, soldiers' launchers, helicopters and fighters all shoot at planes. The line's Fighters branch makes them stay out longer, carry missiles, and become air-superiority fighters or ground-attack ones; the Bombers branch brings more bombs, then carpet bombing or precision and stealth. Red buys planes too once it has the line.
The briefing before every battle, in the campaign or 1v1, has a switch, "Flying: helicopter" or "Flying: A-10": press it to fly the A-10 instead of the helicopter, in that battle and the ones after, even after you restart the game, until you switch back. It is fast and cannot hover: it flies on the way it faces, faster with the arrow that way, slower against it, and turns round when you hold it back past its slowest. To land, fly home and dive onto your runway, the ground from your base to just past your pad: it lands at any speed, rolls to the pad, and is repaired, refuelled and reloaded there; press up to take off. With your pad wrecked, it can land beside a bunker you hold instead, for fuel. Touching the ground anywhere else is a crash. It carries no troops and its armour is thin, but its gun fires a long stream of 30 mm rounds that tear up tanks (BRRRRRT), and it carries sixteen bombs and eight missiles.
Ballistics (key ;) costs four times as much as any other line, in money and in research stars. Level 1 fires a long-range rocket every minute at the enemy's most valuable target near your front: a crowd of its units, a bunker, a gun. Tactical ballistics bring salvos of rockets, then rocket artillery or cruise missiles; Strategic ballistics bring short-range ballistic missiles with a far bigger blast, then bigger and more of them or satellite aiming. At level 8, on every path, satellite-guided ballistic missiles fall exactly on the enemy's most valuable target, anywhere on the field, once a minute. Missile defence can stop them over its base. They break buildings like any blast, and the people remember who did it.
The battlefields have towns: suburbs at home, half-ruined villages in the occupied land, and city blocks, offices and skyscrapers in the dictator's country, all built of pieces, with roads through them. Each side has a support score, shown at the top. Every piece of a home, school, shop or office that your shells, bombs or missiles break costs you a little support, a whole house about ten points, and so does each road you damage; red pays the same. Freeing a town in the occupied land or the dictator's country (taking a bunker beside it) earns you five. With your support above 10, the townspeople bring food and water to your bunkers near them; above 25 they mend those bunkers and their town; above 40 partisans lay mines in front of the enemy; above 60 volunteers join your army. Support makes your soldiers braver as well, and low support makes them less so. The Civilian line (key L) brings water, electricity, the internet and food to the towns you hold, for more support and more besides.
Some battles have complexes: a ruined factory (from the keep-going battles on), and later factories, prisons and an old castle. They are built of pieces, like everything big, and one side holds each one, with a garrison on its ground floor and on three levels of tunnels beneath it, AA guns on its roof and soldiers firing from its windows. Your soldiers and engineers who reach its door go in and fight their way down, floor by floor; clear the lowest level and it is yours, roof guns and all. Your own soldiers who reach a complex you hold join its garrison while it is small. Offensive engineers from level 3 dig a tunnel from your front-most bunker straight into its lowest level, and the soldiers who ride it come up inside. Blasts that break its pieces cost the garrison on the ground floor, and a roof gun whose roof falls comes down with it. Anything that falls, a brick, a slab, a whole floor, bounces where it lands and hurts whatever it hits on the way: soldiers, vehicles, guns, bunkers, a helicopter flying low.
The Fairground (battle 33) stands in the middle of its field: a gate castle, a roller coaster, a house of horrors and an ice cream stand, all of toy bricks, with three levels of tunnels under it. Nobody holds it at the start: the first soldiers to reach its gate take it, and the other side must fight down through it like any complex. A paratrooper who lands on it rides the roller coaster first, screams going into the house of horrors, buys an ice cream ($1) at the end, and then walks on.
Battles 34 to 36 (Brick Town, Saint Aldric's, The Works District), and Ring Road, Glass City, The Grand Avenue and Capital of Ash, have buildings of toy bricks you can fight for: blocks of flats, office towers, water treatment plants, power stations, factories, and a great church. Tanks drive past them. Soldiers, engineers and zombies go in at the door and fight floor by floor, down the levels of tunnels under the big ones, like a complex. Each map says who holds each building at the start: nobody, one side, or its town. A town opens its building to a side whose support is above 0; any other side must fight the townspeople for it, and loses support for each one it kills. Destroy a building and you lose a lot of support.
A building you hold, while your support is 15 or more, sends you a squad of level 1 soldiers or a pair of level 1 engineers now and then, and fills its store; your units fill up and load ammunition there, as at a bunker. Factories and other large buildings have a safe: clear the building, and an engineer who goes in opens it in 12 seconds, for a free level of the line it belongs to (a water plant: Civilian Water; a power station: Civilian Electricity; a factory: Base Industry or Tanks; flats and offices: Infantry), or $1,000. Engineers from level 4 fit a security door to a building you hold, and to the back end of your tunnels: enemies must break it before they get in. Engineers from level 5 put an AA gun on a tall building's roof, and the townspeople hold it against you. Defensive engineers mend the town's buildings with parts from a store nearby, which they like. Sappers 5 bring an enemy building down, from a tunnel dug under it or with a charge set in a tunnel of yours that runs under it.
Red's zombies who take the church make it a zombie factory: its graveyard raises another zombie every 25 seconds. Clear them out and the town is very grateful; bomb the church, and it never forgives you.
Partisans are townspeople with rifles and an armband. Each building's generator, set by its map, sends out a pair now and then, for the side it backs: blue or red whatever happens, or, most often, the side whose support is 20 or more, sooner the higher it is. Red's support is set by the map (-20 unless the map says otherwise), and nothing red does changes it, so red takes the towns' buildings by force, and goes after the ones you hold with bombs, shells and soldiers. A building a map gives you at the start has an AA gun on its roof and another beside it, and red's helicopter leaves your buildings alone for the first two minutes; after that, the more AA guns you keep near one, the less red wants to bomb it.
From battle 9 red can take up a line of its own that you cannot: zombies, from its laboratories. With it, a red soldier who is killed rises again three seconds later as a zombie. Zombies carry no weapon; they walk at your nearest soldier or engineer and bite. Red's later levels make them faster and tougher, turn the soldiers they kill into zombies, let them take bunkers and bite vehicles, and at level 8 a zombie that is hit but not killed splits in two. Never more than sixty are about at once. Zombies never run away.
Bunkers stand along the field. Each bunker that an army holds flies a balloon on a steel cable. Fly into an enemy balloon or its cable and your helicopter is badly hurt, so fly over it, or shoot the balloon down. It comes back later. A soldier who walks into an empty or enemy bunker takes it, but an enemy bunker shoots at soldiers who come near, and at a helicopter that lands near it. Your bombs and your gun wear an enemy bunker down (missiles fly past it): three bombs empty one without upgrades, and an empty bunker is anyone's to take. Tanks stop to shell an enemy bunker in front of them until it is empty, then drive on, so send soldiers behind your tanks to take it. Red's tanks do the same to yours. A bunker that changes hands three times, taken by either side, is wrecked: it lies in ruins, nobody's, until engineers of level 6 or more, on any path, restore it for their side, which takes one engineer twenty seconds. The tunnels that end at it cave in. They restore a ruin they pass, and go back to one on your side of the front from wherever they are. A broken bunker comes before a tunnel: an engineer at a tunnel's mouth mends a damaged bunker there, or raises its balloon, before it goes down. Mines that are laid again by themselves (a bunker's, a minefield's, a base's mine belt) rest too: after two at the same spot, the next one there waits three minutes. A bomb that bursts by an enemy mine destroys it one time in four.
Your helicopter carries five, more with its upgrades. Land on your pad and buy paratroopers, and soldiers fill every empty seat at once, or land near your own soldiers and engineers and they climb aboard. Press V, or DROP on a touch screen, to let one out, and hold it to let them all out. From the air they jump with a parachute, which opens a second and a half after they jump: from too low they hit the ground before it opens, and die, so drop them from about three helicopter lengths up or higher. Fly past a bunker's gun and drop them right on top of it.
Engineers carry no gun. They mend damaged vehicles and guns near them, raise a fallen balloon at your own bunker sooner, and take bunkers like soldiers. From level 4, on any path, they also repair your bunkers, and while your engineers are level 4 or more every bunker you hold heals 1 health a minute on its own. Each army has an anti-aircraft gun at its base and two AA guns out in the field, and bombs, missiles or tank shells knock them out. A base gun fires again after 45 seconds, and engineers who walk into the red base's gun take it over; if it was knocked out, the rest of their squad repair it. Near the red base your engineers walk past your own soldiers and vehicles, which stop there, so a crowd at the gate does not hold them up on their way to the gun, or, for Saboteurs, to the landing pad. A destroyed AA gun in the field stays a wreck until engineers rebuild it, and then it works for their side: rebuild a red one and it shoots at the red helicopter. Red engineers can do the same to yours.
Engineers build their post just past the front-most bunker their army holds, if it is out of reach of the enemy base's gun: barbed wire, which holds up soldiers until they cut through it, with Defensive engineers a trench behind it, which holds up a tank for four seconds, and from their level 3 a pillbox behind that, which shoots at soldiers. Nobody can take a post, and when its health runs out it is gone. Defensive engineers who come to a bunker your army holds dig a tunnel from it to your next bunker forward, or, at your front-most bunker, back to the one behind it; from their level 3 they also dig one from a new pillbox back to the bunker behind it. Sappers, from level 5, dig attack tunnels from your front-most bunker to the next enemy one. Engineers of level 7, on any path, at your last bunker before the enemy base, with no other bunker left in between, dig a tunnel from it into that base: it goes one way only, and every ten of your soldiers or engineers who come up inside take one of the base's lives, while a van on the tunnel railway takes one by itself. Every base has a tunnel door where such a tunnel comes in, and the troops must break it down first: a steel door at the start, a blast door from base level 3, an armoured blast door from 5 and a vault door from 7, from 600 to 2,200 health. Soldiers shoot it, engineers blow it, a railway van rams it and is lost. It mends itself slowly, and a broken one is replaced a minute later. Red's can do the same to yours, and taking back their last bunker caves it in. An engineer about to go down a tunnel first sees to an AA gun over the tunnel's way: one of yours that is damaged, or a wreck, which it rebuilds for you. Then it walks back and goes down. You see them under the ground, the earth they dig piling up by the shaft, and the tunnel on the radar. Soldiers and engineers who reach the back end of a tunnel ride it to the front end, three times faster than walking, and one tunnel leads on into the next. Tunnels work both ways: enemy soldiers and engineers who reach the front end go down and come up at the back, where they can take the bunker, and soldiers who meet down there shoot it out: Assault infantry from level 3 have a sub-machine gunner in each squad, who clears a tunnel fast. Vehicles drive over the top. A tunnel stays when its ends are lost, and the enemy can go on using it from its front end; but when a bunker at one of its ends is wrecked (or a forward base destroyed), the tunnel caves in, with everyone in it, and engineers must dig it again. Defensive engineers from level 3 link a pillbox to your bunkers: from the pillbox back to the bunker behind it, or from your front-most bunker forward to it. An engineer of level 6 or more at a tunnel's mouth restores a wrecked bunker near it before it goes down.
The dark strip across the top of the game shows the whole field. Blue marks are yours, red marks are the enemy's, and the white mark is you. The box shows the part of the field that is on screen.
Missile trucks fire homing missiles. Soldiers shoot at helicopters that fly low, and from level 6 Shock troops fly up at you on jet packs. Tanks hit a helicopter that is landed or almost on the ground. Each base has an anti-aircraft gun, each army has two more AA guns in the field, and in every battle a red helicopter hunts you and your convoy, with a better pilot each time. You can tell the pilot by the helicopter: a little bubble for the trainee, a slim helicopter for the rookie, rocket pods for the veteran, a narrow attack helicopter for the ace, and a heavy gunship for the master and, from battle 10, the legend, the best of them. Its bombs hit you if you fly underneath it, and if you fly into it, both of you explode. From battle 2 red buys upgrades too and chooses its own branches, and a message tells you which: from battle 3 its soldiers may carry missiles.
From the second battle you can upgrade your infantry, engineers, bunkers, tanks, missile trucks, vans, artillery, helicopter, base, AA guns and personnel carriers, and buy drones, one level at a time: up to level 2 in battle 2, level 3 in battle 3, and so on. Level 2 of each line is a choice between two branches, and level 4 a choice between two more inside it: the game pauses and shows you both, with what each gives. The personnel carriers' line is different: three branches at level 2, anti-tank, anti-bunker or anti-drone, each running straight on to level 8. The choice holds for the battle; next battle you can try the other one. You can see a unit's upgrades: each adds something you can see, like a helmet, a plough or a bigger gun, and vehicles carry a small yellow stud for each level above the first. From level 2 a badge over each unit shows its branch: a triangle for branch A, a square for branch B, pale until level 4, then coloured for the path it took there (orange or yellow, teal or violet); a pink circle for a carrier's third branch. Bunkers, AA guns, your base and your helicopter take each upgrade at once. Soldiers, engineers and vehicles keep the upgrades they left your base with, drones included.
| Action | Keyboard | Touch screen |
|---|---|---|
| Fly, and take off | ← ↑ → ↓ or W A S D | Drag a finger on the left half of the game |
| Machine gun | Z (hold) | GUN (hold) |
| Drop a bomb | X | BOMB |
| Fire a missile | C | MSL |
| Let a soldier out (by parachute in the air) | V (hold for all) | DROP (hold for all) |
| Buy | 1 tank, 2 missile truck, 3 infantry, 4 van, 5 engineers, 6 helicopter, 7 paratroopers, B personnel carrier, N artillery, M fighter, , bomber | The buy buttons beside the game |
| Upgrade (from battle 2) | 8 infantry, 9 engineers, 0 bunkers, Q tanks, E missile trucks, R vans, T helicopter, Y base, U AA guns, I drones, O carriers, K UGVs, L civilian, ; ballistics, ' air force, . artillery | The Upgrades buttons |
| Choose a branch, when the game asks | 1 or 2 | Tap the branch |
| Orders to your army | F push, G hold, H fall back, J full retreat | The order buttons |
| Sound effects, voice and music, each on or off | The Sound button under the game | The same button |
| Pause | P or Esc | The Pause button |
| Battle | Mission | What it asks |
|---|
| Unit | Cost | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Tank | $60 | Thick armor. Its main gun shoots enemy vehicles, guns, pillboxes and bunkers, 6 shells to a load, and its machine gun shoots soldiers; it drives over them too. Out of shells, it goes back to a bunker with ammunition, or to the base, to load. Without upgrades it cannot hit a helicopter in the air: Escort tanks carry an AA gun. |
| Missile truck | $50 | Fires homing missiles at enemy helicopters. Its upgrades add an AA gun or a flak cannon, a radar, and missiles that bring down incoming missiles and jet drones. It carries 4 missiles, then goes back to load. Weak, so keep it behind your tanks. |
| Artillery | $70 | Lobs shells at enemies 200 to 600 px ahead, 8 to a load. Below level 4 it stops and sets up before it fires, and packs up before it moves. Below level 5, unless a spotter guides it (recon drones with Drones Recon 4, planes in flight with Air force Precision 4, engineers with Offensive 2), it fires blind, and its shells hurt your own units too. Level 8 brings satellite guidance. Key N; its upgrades are key period (.). |
| Infantry, five soldiers | $30 | They shoot soldiers, parachutes, drones and low helicopters, and they take bunkers. Your helicopter can carry them. |
| Van | $50 | No gun and thin armor. It leaves with food, water, gas, parts and ammunition, stops at each of your bunkers it reaches that is short to leave its share there, and fills up your units it passes. It drives past your own vehicles when they stop, and past slower ones on the move, and it takes one of the five lives of the enemy base if it reaches it. |
| Personnel carrier | $70 | Carries up to 8 of your soldiers and engineers. It waits just outside your gate (with Logistics 8, beside the forward depot) until it is full, or 8 seconds after the first climbs in, or sets off empty after 8 seconds with nobody, picks up more it passes, drives past anything slower than itself, lets them out in front of an enemy or empty bunker or short of the enemy base, and goes back for more. A machine gun on the roof; its own upgrade line adds anti-tank, anti-bunker or anti-drone weapons. |
| Engineers, two of them (three from level 5 for Logistics and Saboteurs) | $40 | No gun. They mend damaged vehicles, your guns and fallen balloons, from level 4 your bunkers too, take bunkers, and take over an enemy base's gun when they reach it. Just past your front-most bunker they build barbed wire, and with upgrades a trench, a pillbox, and tunnels between your bunkers. Your helicopter can carry them. |
| Paratroopers | $40 | Soldiers who fill every empty seat in your helicopter at once while it stands on your pad, to jump wherever you drop them. |
| AA gun in the field | 2 per army to start | Shoots at enemy helicopters that come near. Bombs, missiles and tank shells destroy it, and engineers can rebuild the wreck for their own side, even an enemy one. The AA guns upgrade line makes all of yours better at once. |
| Your helicopter | 3 to start, $200 more | Gun with 200 rounds, 10 bombs, 4 missiles, room for 5 soldiers or engineers. Lose one and the next waits on your pad. You can keep up to five. |
Each line has its own tree. Level 2 chooses one of two branches, and level 4 one of two inside it. Drones start at level 0, with none: their level 1 costs $400. Prices: level 2 $600, level 3 $1,200, level 4 $2,000, level 5 $3,000, level 6 $4,000, level 7 $5,200, level 8 $6,500. Battle N opens up to level N.