The Tokyo Game Show launched today and brought some big announcements from Square Enix.
The first news was the launch of their Sliding Heroes game we reported on last week. It was described as a “real time strategy" game in which you control units by tilting your iPhone. We’ve been able to spend some time with the game, and it’s truly a strange mashup between a tactics game and a Labyrinth-type game. Yes, that Labyrinth.
Like most Labyrinth games, your goal is to make it from one end of the maze/level to the other. While there are the traditional hole obstacles that you must avoid, there are also enemy creatures which you must attack. You create new units by simply pressing on the spawn button. There can be up to 8 units at a time on the field. The goal is to destroy all the enemies and make it to the exit of the level.
Since it is essentially a ball roller, all your troops move en masse as you tilt your iPhone. Attacking enemies is as simple as rolling your troops directly into them. There is some strategy in pacing the deployment of different troops depending on the enemies, though you don’t really have individual control of any of them. Defeating the level in record times provides some incentives.
Video from AppBank
It’s really a strange game and one that made us utter “what were they thinking" more than once. I suppose big fans of ball rolling games may find it to be a refreshing take on the genre, but I suspect fantasy/strategy gamers won’t be won over. Fortunately, there is a Lite version that you can try yourself, and we suggest you do, if nothing else, for the novelty of it all.
App Store Links: Sliding Heroes, $4.99, Sliding Heroes Lite, Free
