Heroes of Darkwoods

Simon Schubert-OLD

About this game

A real-time strategy game built for a phone rather than shrunk onto one. Buildings go down anywhere the ground allows, units walk a real navigation grid, and every order in the game is one thumb on the screen.

A DAILY CHALLENGE, FREE

One challenge is put in front of everybody each day, the same one for everybody who plays it — so "how far did you get" is a question two people can compare answers to. Tomorrow it is a different one. You never have to buy anything to play it.

IT TEACHES ITSELF

The tutorial is a real match, not a set piece. It founds an island the way every other game does and takes its orders through the same taps, and a step finishes when the thing it asked for has actually happened. Nothing is faked and no move is played for you, so what you learn in it is still true when it ends. Skip it in one tap, or start it again from Settings.

FOUR GAMES ON ONE ISLAND

The map decides which one you are playing.

THE SIEGE is one realm against the map. The opposition is the dead, and you win by clearing every last one of them. One road runs from the Necropolis to your castle gate, and every ninety seconds or more a wave sets out down it: announced, numbered, and growing. So the island has exactly two directions. Out, where the camps are. In, where the road is and the towers go. Clearing the Necropolis turns the waves off — the hardest camp on the map is the objective, not the last chore.

THE SKIRMISH is up to three rival realms played by the machine, won by being the last castle standing. Nothing marches down the road, because the nest at the head of it is a castle now. The camps are dealt evenly between the realms, so the map is somewhere to race rather than somewhere to clear. Everybody climbs the same ladder, and the thing that arrives at your gate is a champion you could have killed while it was still level two.

THE WARBAND is one champion on bare ground. No castle, no workers, no economy at all — an island thick with nests, and every other champion you will ever field is captive inside one. The roster is not built here, it is freed. Clear every nest and the island is yours; lose the last of the band and it is over.

THE LAST STAND is one champion on an empty island — no nests, no chests, nothing to take. The dead arrive instead, from every side, on a clock that stops only when enough of them have been outlasted. The opposition is not the map or a rival but the schedule, and the wells are the only mercy on it.

THE ISLAND IS THE LADDER

The neutral dead stand in camps of graded difficulty across the map, and killing them levels a champion. A kill is worth a fraction of what was killed, so a champion that levels on empty houses is a champion nobody had to risk. The gear your forge makes goes on the ones who earned it.

THE MACHINE CHEATS AT NOTHING

The rival realm gathers with real workers off real trees, builds through the same call you do, and is held to every rule you are: one champion of a kind, one hall of a kind, the command ladder, the population cap. Difficulty makes its hands faster. It never makes its opening bigger.

WHAT YOU GET

• Free building placement on hex terrain — no grid slots, no build queue
• Economy: woodcutters, mines, mills and the fields they need, markets, a forge that makes gear
• Defence: walls that tile themselves around corners and gates, towers that upgrade
• A works rail across the top: everything your town has on the go in one glance
• One-thumb controls: tap to select, drag to marquee, tap to order
• Generated islands, so no two matches open on the same map

FREE, WITH NOTHING FOR SALE

All of it is open: every challenge, the skirmish set up however you like — island, opponent, and how many realms are on it — and the tutorial.

There is nothing to buy. No purchase, no subscription, no currency, and nothing that makes your army stronger. Money does not change the rules either side plays by, because there is none in it.

Plays entirely offline. No ads.

What’s new

Two new islands. The Old Fort founds a town inside somebody else's walls, one gateway in them, and the dead marching at it from a Necropolis in the far corner. Break the Necropolis and the island is yours.

The Last Ground gives four bands no town at all and a tide that takes the island out from under them. The three rivals now play it rather than drown in it.

Two feats to go with them, and every wall stands the right way round at its corners.