Humans, Orcs and Undead Abound in 'Fortress Frenzy'

Ah, the real time strategy genre. Was it the bain of my youth? The apple of my eye? I fiended on such PC classics as the Age of Empires and Starcraft well into my developmental years, accruing plenty of street cred and simultaneously poking holes in my middle school report card. The thrill of mobilizing an army and sending devoted servicemen into the depths of hell at my whim was a thrill like no other. And no set of geometry problems was going to stand in my way.

I guess you could say it was a bit of a double-edged sword, then.

Flash forward eight or nine years and I'm still up to my old tricks. This time I don't have Professor Cohen breathing down my neck but I don't have a strapping multi-core, giga-tastic PC setup either. iPhone, that's your cue.

RTS offerings on the iPhone (not to be confused with tower defense games) are difficult to pull off. Juggling a bunch of soldier formations in between buildings with just your stubby fingers and a 3.5 inch touch screen is a formidable challenge. As such, most current offerings tend to dumb down the gameplay. It's a casual revolution.

Pockent's Fortress Frenzy is very much a part of this movement. Simplified controls, a waggish plot line and toony graphics squarely place the game in this burgeoning subcategory. And you know what? It's not half bad for a pick-up and play experience. It certainly won't take a nibble at your social life either.

As you should have gathered by now, I'm a fan of witty copy. This is Fortress Frenzy's strong suit. The game features three campaign modes (human, orc and undead)  with plenty of silly banter packed into the pre-battle cut scenes. For instance, during the Orc campaign:

Orc King: Grundar, we are approaching the desert crossroads.

Underling: Oh yeah. Hey isn't this where one of your ex-wives lives?

Orc King: You're right. Let's make this battle quick and avoid eye contact.

You can imagine the fun Pockent's staff had coming up with these lines. In any case, the humor serves to mask Fortress Frenzy's shallow plot line - all three campaigns progress the same way. Level by level, your goal is to annihilate the enemy by capturing every fortress on the map. There are no race-specific abilities, or user configurable upgrades. This is plain old swarm and siege melee, people.

Each level starts pretty much the same way. You are given a certain amount of troops and a certain number of buildings.  If the number of troops you send to an enemy castle (or empty one) outnumbers the current population, the castle is yours. Should your troops encounter an enemy squad on their way to a castle, a skirmish will ensue, with the larger squad coming out victorious. Time is of the essence in Fortress Frenzy, the best strategy usually involves capturing as many available buildings as you can within the first 30 seconds. This is because your troops generate over time, so naturally the more buildings you control, the more men you'll have to execute your imperialistic motives. Unfortunately, the game only allows you to send out half of your castle's population at a time. This can make for some messy situations divying up troops when there are many castles out there for the taking.

Gameplay is complicated by a few factors. For one, the layout of each map must be taken into consideration in determining the best siege strategy. Often times, only one of your cities will be exposed to the enemy - the others fortified by forest of lake - so it's imperative to pack that vulnerability in a hurry. On the flip side, if your enemy's castle is tucked away, you have to be cognizant of the time it takes your troops to reach their destination. If they're too slow (or impeded by natural obstacles) they'll get massacred by an enemy population that has doubled in size during the voyage.

Secondly, several levels pit all three races against each other, which makes for some sweet strategizing action. If you're real savvy you can swing it so that your opponents focus their efforts on each other while your population soars, then swoop in for the kill when the victor is vulnerable.

Further spicing up the mix are bonus crates, a.k.a. chests of heinous contraption.  Randomly popping up on the playing field mid-level, these chests amount to game-changing spoil. Bestowed with a number of their own, you must send 5, 10 or even 15 troops to recover them. The chests include a population booster, growth speed modifier, troop speed modifier, and enemy massacre bonus. So why the disdain, you ask? Well, according to Fortress Frenzy's help menu, "there is a small chance the bonus will help the enemy..." Small chance my foot! I swear the AI had it out for me 'cause more often than not the chests that I risked my troop advantage to recover ended up bestowing plague or massacre upon my own. It got so bad during some levels that I gave up on the bonuses altogether. It behooves Pockent to tinker with these percentages. 

Following your victory or defeat, you'll note the number enemies you managed to slay and the time elapsed in seconds. As it stands, there's no high score list for the campaign mode, so these metrics are pretty useless. After you manage to conquer one of the campaign modes, you can try your hand at the one of the ten challenge mode maps, which do record your fastest time. I'm a little perplexed by Pockent's assertion that there are three difficulty levels. I could not find these settings anywhere in the app, unless they correspond to the three races. In general, Fortress Frenzy manages a healthy amount of challenge.

Getting back to the casual conversation, Fortress Frenzy is controlled solely via taps. Tap on a castle to select it, tap on another castle to confirm your destination and tap again to cast off your men. You can select multiple castles at a time, but I couldn't figure a way to deselect a castle. This can be quite frustrating on a cluttered map. Furthermore, the bonus crates are often positioned directly next to one of your castles, which makes them extremely difficult to select. Simplicity certainly has its drawbacks.

The presentation in Fortress Frenzy is decent. The aforementioned toonish graphics would be right at home in a previous decade, but they mesh well with the game's humor. As your castles accumulate troops, they change in appearance, which is a visual cue I greatly appreciated in the heat of battle. To be honest, there wasn't much going on in the sound department. Military toms before battle and a short musical sting afterward are the only glimpses of music in the game. Additionally, the audio cues that signify taking a castle, or capturing a bonus chest - while helpful - are dreadfully repetitive. I can be thankful that they vary between races, however.

Pockent has informed us than an update featuring more battle maps, and a lite version of Fortress Frenzy are forthcoming. Perhaps they'll consider online head-to-head in the future, a feature that is conspicuously absent from the majority of iPhone RTS titles.

TS Recommendation:

When I first got my hands on Fortress Frenzy, I was put off by its outdated graphics and mediocre sound. But what this game lacks in presentation, it more than makes up for in playability. Challenging map design and (occasionally infuriating) power-ups force the player to develop a sound strategy, which is quite a feat for a game easily pegged in the casual category. At $.99, Thumbspree recommends giving Fortress Frenzy a whirl, or at the very least downloading the lite version when it becomes available. If Pockent sees enough success, perhaps they'll consider multiplayer in a future update.

Title: Fortress Frenzy

Developer: Pockent

Price: $.99

Lite Version: Coming Soon

Supported Devices: All Devices Compatible

Test Device: iPhone 3G

Humans, Orcs and Undead Abound in 'Fortress Frenzy'