Line drawing and time management are two genres that have been iPhone gaming crowd favorites. With the arrival of this game, I think it’s safe to say this genre is fast rising!

Battle of Puppets ($1.99)

This game is literally a combination of Trenches and Little Big Planet if the latter had to be released for the iPhone. You command different kinds of puppets through a multitude of levels in this challenging, highly polished and VERY well designed game… probably the best looking we’ve seen so far this year!

Presentation

Those who know who “Box Boy” raise your hands! Battle of Puppets is inspired by the hit console game Little Big Planet. Just like that game, Battle of Puppets involves 2.5 type of graphics that look like paper cut outs set against layers and layers of moving backgrounds.

When your puppets die, their strings appear and they get pulled out the “stage”. The setup of the levels is a neat idea as well having you travel over 15+ US cities, each with different backgrounds native to the city, on your road to Broadway of course. If this game doesn’t get nominated somewhere for graphical achievement, I just will NOT understand.

Controls

In contrast with Trenches, the game is NOT a line drawing game. I call this genre line defense as it’s pretty much tower defense on a straight line. Tapping on your main house (farthest left house) makes you select which “tower” you want to build.

Double tapping the screen once the power bar (top center half circle) is full initiates the special power call button. You’ll see sparkly powder pop up on screen to which you can then gesture the letter “Z” to activate the lighting power and so on.

Gameplay

How the game is played doesn’t really take one rocket scientist to figure out: BATTLE. OF. PUPPETS. You control a clan of puppets and try to overtake the enemy puppets themselves and their base. You get a small amount of coins to initially start making your puppets. As you kill more puppets and overtime, you get more coins to use for better puppets.

Upgrading your base is another thing you’d have to keep in mind. As your puppets (automatically) march forward to the right to overtake the enemies’ base, you are sometimes given flag markers where you can set up another upgradeable mini base. These mini bases should give you added strength to battle opponents.

As you unlock more cities/levels to play, you’ll also be able to discover the gesturing feature. When the power bar is full as described previously, you’ll have the capacity to call such actions including killing your enemies or stopping them temporarily.

Lastly, as far as actual level setups go, most include conquering the other base while some levels require you to stay alive ONLY for a matter time and not conquer bases at all. You start out with one breed of puppets and as you get them to Broadway, you unlock another one.

Suggestions

The only true suggestion I have with the game is to make the gestures a bit more logical. For example, an arrow right gesture will activate the move puppets faster potion while an arrow left gesture uses the retreat gesture or something like that. I know letters look a lot cooler but having to remember what each gesture does maybe quite difficult to some people.

Conclusion

Battle of Puppets surprised me a huge deal by only not looking like the prettiest game I’ve played so far this year but also by playing as good as it looks. If developers continue to create line defense games like these and with the impending arrival of Plants Vs Zombies for the iPhone, there’s a great chance this WILL overtake the tower defense genre.

PS. Here’s to hoping Small Wonders put the graphics to good use and create a platformer type of game much similar to Little Big Planet.