One Troll Army is a strategy game by FlyAnvil, published by tinyBuild. It’s an odd game, as is usual for the publisher, in that you don’t control an army, but rather a single character, MOBA style. It’s also yet another game added to the legacy of tinyBuild’s underestimation of Twitch user’s ability to achieve a goal.
You control Shrek The Troll, a big, beefy green dude with hands the size of Volkswagens. The goblins were praying to whatever sad god lets them get killed in droves in every other game, and their praying awoke the troll, who is easily convinced to help defend their hovels town until such time they could defend it themselves. And he’s totally okay with them living in his swamp.
Gameplay goes as follows; you run around, killing the furrys that crept out of DeviantArt to attack the goblins. If either the troll or the fortress lose all of their HP, you fail the wave, and start the next. You get to keep what you picked up, though, and you don’t need to waste any time repairing your fort. There really isn’t much of a lose state, which makes it fun to pick up and play.
You also need to manage your goblins, as they do all of the actual work between waves, like repairing the fort or mining. Every major building can be upgraded with the resources collected, and each increases the number of workers you have by a certain amount. You can also spend gold and loot by making your workers and tower guards more efficient or stronger. Since you need looters after each successful round, however, you’ll usually pull all of your workers off their other jobs to grab as many corpses as they can before they disappear.
Which brings me to the controls. They’re a bit clunky. Managing goblins seems to be the worst of it, since the sliders never seem to want to cooperate, especially when you have a lot of goblins to order around. Also, you don’t need to constantly click on something to attack, which is mostly where the strategy game roots show. And, for some reason, controller support unchecks itself for every new session. And the Shrek The Troll doesn’t really like moving, preferring to lope like a gorilla.
You might think, after upgrading your towers a bit, that you could leave the fort to its own devices while you kick back. You would be wrong. Waves are always large enough that even with four full towers (which is the amount necessary for you to proceed to the next fort, if you wish), he settlement will eventually be overrun. Even when the only thing the Troll does is bowl over the small enemies, it’s still necessary for your towers to do their work.
There are several skills that make that easier. I find the most useful to be the ones that afford you some crowd control, however. That being said, sticking around in the middle of a ring of enemies for any length of time is a bad idea.
Audio/visually, the game is a Unity game. Chances are that you already know what that means for you. That being said, the designs are pleasing, and the audio is good.
One Troll Army is a fun little game. Sure, it’s a bit rough around the edges, but I’ve never let that bother me too much (well, unless it makes a game unplayable). And the best part is, it’s free! You should be playing it right now!
PROS:
+ I T ‘ S F R E E
+ Fun for quick bouts
+ The game lasts as long as you want it to
CONS::
– Controls can be cumbersome
– Controller support has to be rechecked for every new session
– Managing the goblins can get tiring
*We were provided a copy of this game for review*
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