Heroes of Darkwoods

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.

IT TEACHES ITSELF

The tutorial is a real match, not a set piece. It founds an island the way every other game does, draws it with the same views, 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 whenever you like.

THREE GAMES ON ONE ISLAND

The map decides which one you are playing.

THE SIEGE is one realm against the map. There is no rival economy — the opposition is the dead. You win by clearing every last one of them and lose by losing your castle. One road runs from the Necropolis in the far corner to your castle gate, and every ninety seconds or more a wave sets out down it: announced, numbered, and growing, with a longer pause behind each one than behind the last. So the island has exactly two directions. Out, where the camps are. In, where the road is and the towers go. Clearing the Necropolis is what turns the waves off, which is why the hardest camp on the map is the objective rather than the last chore.

THE SKIRMISH is a rival realm played by the machine, and it is 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 stay, dealt evenly between the two halves of the island, so the map becomes somewhere to race rather than somewhere to clear. Both realms are climbing the same ladder on the same nests, and the thing that eventually arrives at your gate is a champion you could have gone and 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 of them. The roster is not built here, it is freed: the whole of it is out on the island exactly once, waiting for whoever empties the right nest. Clear every nest and the island is yours. Lose the last of the band and it is over. The Necropolis is the only tier four out there, which is what keeps it the ending.

THE ISLAND IS THE LADDER

The neutral dead stand in camps of graded difficulty across the map, and killing them is how a champion is levelled. A kill is worth a fraction of what was killed, so a champion that levels by knocking down empty houses is a champion nobody had to risk. Five levels, and the gear your forge makes goes on the ones who earned them. Raising a champion is the point of playing, not a side effect of a race.

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, one tower 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, so everything your town has on the go is one glance instead of a tour
• A well that mends whoever stands at it, and a mill and a mine worth levelling
• One-thumb controls: tap to select, drag to marquee, tap to order
• Generated islands, so no two matches open on the same map

Plays entirely offline. No ads and no in-app purchases.