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Considering the massive popularity of real-time strategy on PCs, where StarCraft was the first game to gain such a following as to become a legitimate profession, it’s a bit surprising that there are so few successful mobile RTS in the same vein. That combination of speed, precision, and strategy can be a heady brew, and one that’s hard to distil to a handheld screen. Although you can find a lot of options in our most recent Best Of feature, Front Armies is one game that won’t be joining the list.

At first glance, the game is attractive. The graphics are literally iconic. Each unit and building is represented by a front-facing (thus the title?) non-animated graphic. This is an unusual choice, but not one I’m wholly opposed to, especially since it makes identifying units easy at a distance. That’s a smart choice for a mobile RTS, which too often crowd the screen with tiny little soldiers made of a handful of pixels. There’s also less need for a minimap, since you can zoom in and out in a flash.

Likewise, the gameplay is utterly archetypal of an RTS. Minerals are collected and spent on new stuff, with power plants limiting the amount you can build and causing major slowdowns if you run out of power. There are production buildings for land, sea, and air units. Your basic units are a fast but weak buggy, a tough tank, and fragile but powerful artillery. Build a handful of buildings and you can get a few ships similar to the land units, as well as weak and quick flyers. At the top of the tech tree is a ballistic missile that blows a big crater in your opponent’s base in a very satisfying way.

There’s fog-of-war, but it only has one level, so once you reveal your opponent’s base, you get to continue to see all of their plans (or lack thereof) until you muster your forces to crush them.

Control is pretty intuitive. Everything is handled with single taps to select, move, and attack. Buttons on the side let you select all units on the screen, or order construction of buildings or production of units. To select multiple units, you tap and hold to let an expanding circle encompass the group you want. That’s okay, if a bit slow, as long as you’re basically dealing with two groups at a distance. What’s really missing is the ability to select all units of one type, which makes separating groups in your army a chore.

It’s basic, but, in some ways, this is a game that I think people have been asking for. It has familiar RTS gameplay, with visuals that are attractive but simple enough to play well on a phone. Should be, if not a grand slam, at least a hit.

Unfortunately, Front Armies is missing the most important element of any game: somebody to play with.

There is no online play or matchmaking included in the game, so if you want to play multiplayer, you’re stuck with LAN play. That leaves campaign mode or skirmishes against a computer player. Unfortunately, the AI for your own units and your opponents’ is terribly primitive.

Your units are suicidal, rushing to get as close as possible to the enemy they are ordered to attack rather than waiting at a sensible distance. Thus, without careful maneuvering, your artillery and flyers are useless. They are easily separated from their group, taking bizarre looping paths to destinations. They also easily get boxed in if someone else is going the opposite direction. They sometimes don’t react to nearby enemies until they are taking fire.

The opponent AI is no better. The computers build their bases haphazardly, overproducing structures they don’t need which often block in their own units. They underproduce armies and throw them at you with no apparent strategy. Sometimes one or two units will trickle down from their base to spend themselves on your defensive wall. It’s easy to draw their armies into a trap. If you care to spend the time, you can plink away at their defenses from a distance with artillery without drawing a response. But making use of speed or distance abilities in your units requires a lot of handholding. So why bother when you can easily make tanks twice as fast as your opponent and tank rush them before anyone hits the second level of the tech tree?

I tried a 2v2 team game with an AI teammate and found myself taking over all the responsibility for attack and defense for both of us—which wasn’t even hard. There is only one level of AI competence, so the best way to challenge yourself is just to play against three or more at once.

The campaign makes up for this by stacking the deck against you. You get set scenarios with preplaced waves and groups of enemies to wipe out on maps built like corridors. It does a good job teaching you the basics, but sometimes you don’t do what the game expects and get backed into an unwinnable corner.

If, at some point in the future, Front Armies adds some decent AI, it will be a solid recommendation for a mobile RTS. It’s not innovative, but there’s nothing wrong with the core gameplay and a lot to like. But, without an opponent, there’s just nothing to play.

I am really showing my age when I say that I can fondly recall gathering around my Sinclair Spectrum with a couple of friends for a game of the original Chaos. Looking back, it seems amazing that a few blocky pixels and the odd beep could produce so many emotional highs and lows. Chaos, a multiplayer tactical game of duelling wizards, with its wild swings of luck often led to equally wild swings of mood. However, as soon as one battle ended, and the whining and gloating had receded we were all ready to dust off our robes, polish our wands and recommence battle.

In Chaos, each player takes on the role of a wizard, equipped with a deck of spell cards.  Wizards begin at opposite ends of an arena and must attempt to defeat each other by summoning creatures and flinging fireballs and other spells. The author of the original game, Julian Gollop, went on to become an industry legend. Not so much because of Chaos but for a certain tactical squad-based sci-fi game called Rebelstar Raiders, which was later updated in a game entitled Laser Squad, before becoming the basis for the XCOM series.

History lesson over, let’s take a look at Chaos Reborn Adventures, which is based on the 2015 release Chaos Reborn, a PC re-imagining of the original that was designed by Julian Gollop himself. First off, I should address the randomly generated elephant in the room. The level of luck in the original Chaos may be difficult for most modern gamers to stomach. Magic is an unpredictable business with no guarantees of success. Spells have a percentage chance of success and even the simplest of summon spells can fail. Combat is equally ruthless, it is either kill or be killed with just a single hit required to defeat a foe. With a little outrageous fortune, a lowly rat can overcome a dragon – Chaos is indeed aptly named. This may sound highly frustrating, but it does mean that even when things are not going particularly well there is always the chance of pulling off a miraculous dragon spell, hitching a ride and flambéing all of your opponents.

If all of this randomness doesn’t appeal to you then fear not, because a new lawful mode adheres to more modern gaming conventions. In this mode, spells are cast using mana points and health points replace one-off kills. This makes for a far less frustrating experience and although battles take longer it is the mode most likely to appeal to all but the most diehard of gamers. Whichever mode you choose, you will be able to enter into online battles against other players or compete in offline multiplayer matches. There is also an extensive single-player campaign. This will see you traversing realms, acquiring new skills and taking part in increasingly tough battles against AI-controlled wizards.

Whichever mode you choose, lawful or chaos, there are measures that you can take to improve your chances of success. One key strategy is to make for higher ground, as this will significantly improve attacking and defensive abilities. Another thing to keep in mind is that each spell will have an alignment, either chaos, lawful or neutral. Casting spells will impact on the overall cosmic balance. This means that you can work towards casting a powerful spell by first doing the groundwork by casting lesser spells of the same alignment. Then there is the added brilliance of the poker-style bluffing of the illusion spell. Any creature spell can be cast as an illusion with a guaranteed chance of success. Illusionary creatures move around and cause damage just like their real counterparts. However, if an opponent suspects that your dragon is not all that it seems then they can cast a disbelieve spell, making it disappear in a puff of smoke. The disbelieve spell counts as your spell-casting action for the round, so it pays to be pretty sure that the creature isn’t real before casting it.

Mana is vital to success and some is regenerated each turn; you can get an additional boost by burning any cards in your hand. Mana is also awarded for destroying enemy units, with an added bonus if your wizard lands the killing blow in hand-to-hand combat. Make no mistake, these wizards aren’t doddery old men with beards that still contain the remains of yesterday’s lunch. You can equip them with enough armour and weapons to transform them into fearsome killing machines. Alternatively, you can concentrate on developing your magical skills, staying clear of direct conflict. Mana can also be gathered from locations on the map, tempting greedy wizards to overstretch themselves. Each wizard has a mega spell.  As the name suggests these are very powerful spells, such as conjuring a whole pride of lions. However, they require a huge amount of mana. There is no limit to the number of times mega spells can be cast but each casting becomes progressively more expensive.

In a nod towards modern games Chaos Reborn: Adventures also introduces a deck-building element. Victory results in gold, which can be used to purchase random card packs. The contents of these packs include staves and bodygear.  The type of staff you wield influences the hand of spell cards that you draw before the battle, how many cards you can hold at one time and which mega spell will be available. There is an excellent mix of creatures and spells that lead to a range of different tactical approaches. Because you will start each game with different spells you cannot overly rely on a single tactical approach.

Wizards may only have a limited amount of actions, but the nuances make for a game that offers real depth. There is a six-stage tutorial with various additional challenges that help enforce what you have learnt. You can access the rules at any point in the game and they are presented in a nicely illustrated and well-ordered fashion. This degree of care and attention to detail is something that carries over into the single-player campaign. Each level is a tense race against time, as the archmage will be doing their best to summon enough power to expel you from their realm before you have a chance to overcome them in battle. You get to explore ruins, hire mercenaries, enlist help from settlements and even take over citadels. The citadels give access to long-range realm spells such as clearing fog or even breaching the realm’s palace.

The original Chaos was all about the competition of battling against human opponents. Hopefully, the game’s pedigree will help it to secure the following that it needs to ensure an active and competitive online environment. However, the single player campaign is worth the admission price alone, being both tense and having just enough depth to remain interesting. The developers have cleverly elected to cover all bases to create a game that should appeal to diehards newcomers, solitary and social players alike.