Capture the Castle and Tower Defence games are, at their heart, a simple idea, but if executed well can lead to hours of enjoyable tactical fighting.

Cubemen 2 is such a 3D game, although I don’t remember the first game coming out. I suppose it’s the popularity of Minecraft and the insane amount of money it made for its creator than made the developers create their world completely out of cubes. It seems a sensible economic reason.

In simple terms you have a number of little cube men which you deploy to stop the advancing army of similar, though differently coloured, cube men. Standing toe to toe in a staring out contest would be no fun at all, better to have your men have the ability to shoot, bomb and set fire to their enemies.

So you have a number of men with differing offensive and defensive capabilities which you get to place on the game's world board. It is in the strategic placing of your men which determines your chance at winning any particular round and, for most of the boards, brute force will just not cut it.

The presentation of the game is pretty simple, with a cube built world, this goes for both the combatants and the blood splatters. Generally colourful, the focus here is on game play, with a number of options to choose from: the expected capture the flag and tower defence to skirmish in a variety of single and multi-player modes.

To expand the life of the game there is a level editor, which translates into an almost infinite number of game playing areas. Simple in construction, what the game loses in unnecessary flashy graphics, it makes up with good honest game play.

7

Charles Packer