System: iPhone
Developer: Thunder Game Works
Publisher: Thunder Game Works
Genre: Strategy

If you’re anything like me, that is you spend tremendous amounts of time playing flash games at school/work, you might have come across the game Warfare 1917. Trenches takes a lot of cues from the popular flash game and strips down the gameplay to make a simple, enjoyable World War I strategy game for the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Review:

The concept of Trenches is pretty much as simple as it gets. You create units from four different classes including Riflemen, Machine Gunner, Sniper, and Mortar Crews, to complete certain objectives. Thanks to the recently introduced update there are now four mission types available. This ranges from a full on “Battle” where the objective is to reach the enemy’s bunker to the defense based “Overrun” mode.

You deploy troops by tapping the icons on the bottom of the screen. Once they are deployed you can allow them to auto-advance, or draw a path for them using the touch screen. Trenches provide additional cover and barbed wire patches to slow the advance of troops. Controlling multiple units at one time is a bit difficult, thanks to the lack of any control buttons. You use two fingers to control all units at once and make swiping motions to determine their movements. This wouldn’t be so bad if it worked 100% of the time. The gameplay is still fun despite the control issue, but in all honesty it lacks the depth you would expect from a strategy game.

You can choose to play through the game’s campaign on one of three difficulties or dive into the skirmish mode. The campaign, recently extended in the update, mixes missions up and allows you to unlock units as you progress. The progression system is a nice touch, but without an upgrade system or more units it just feels incomplete.

Skirmish is the main meat of the game ironically, allowing you to choose what game mode you would like, what units are allowed, and how large you would like the map to be. There’s even a “Zombie Horde” mode which pits you against an unstoppable onslaught of German undead.

The game type choices are in good stock, but the limited class selection is disappointing. Granted there are two artillery types to use and 3 different commanders awarded for heroic actions, you can’t help feeling a little limited by the scamp troop selection, or the way Snipers dominate the battlefield with extreme prejudice.

A small group of snipers can shred enemy opposition a little too well sometimes.

Graphically, Trenches is a very nice game to look at. The artwork is creative and clean, and the game runs fairly smooth even when a large amount of units are on screen. Despite the well done visuals, Trenches is lacking in the sound department. Music is repetitive and very unfitting, and the voice acting, while comical at first, definitely repeats all too often. It’s a big relief that you can listen to your own music while playing.

Final Words:

Overall this is a great strategy experience for players on the go, and well worth the $.99 price tag (for a limited time). Aside from the lack of multiplayer, which is in the works for the next update, Trenches is a high quality strategy game with enough content to warrant its low, low price.

Pros:

• Cheap
• Plenty of game modes
• Well drawn artwork
• Zombie mode

Cons:

• Iffy controls
• Small class selection
• Lame sound design

Score: 8.5/10 (Great)