Coming off the back of X-Morph: Defense, I was eager to try more tower-defense and strategy games. This is why when we were sent a copy of Space War Arena to review, I was more than ready to dive in and see what it had to offer.
Space War Arena is unsurprisingly, set during a space war. The campaign starts off with a nice and easy set of tutorials to introduce you to your starting ships and ease you into the basics. You’re on the left, the enemy is on the right, and all you have to do is deploy your ships in-between till you decimate the opposing force. You can’t plonk things down willy-nilly though, as you steadily accrue “warp” which is spent on your forces, with the stronger ones costing more to send out. So prioritising is the name of the game. Picking and choosing whether you need to bolster your defenses or increase your attacking fleet size at any moment keeps you occupied so there’s rarely a chance to rest.
As you progress through the campaign you unlock several upgrades to improve your base, and new ship types come thick and fast. There is a great variety of ships to tinker around with, but personally I found that I stuck to my favourites as the incentive to experiment wasn’t really there. I didn’t even touch some of the later ships I acquired because they weren’t as highly ranked as my current ships anyway, and they did sound pretty similar mechanically. It doesn’t help that playing the campaign doesn’t rank up your ships, but instead you have to go into a side “evolve” mode to increase their health and firepower. Why would I use the shiny new toy you gave me if it’s three ranks lower than my current setup?
Speaking of setup, Space War Arena is also a deck-building game… You pick your ships to build your deck, have a hangar (hand), and can even lay mines (you just activated my trap card)! But anyway, my over-powered setup was to deploy energy wells which increase your warp output, because faster deployment is naturally really, really good. I would also prioritise droid factories because they constantly spawn drones that, while weak, are nippy and dangerous when they swarm together. Apart from those two I’d have defensive sentries available, more drones, and the odd missile attack thrown in for dealing heavy damage. And my “in case of emergency” option was a laser that stuns incoming enemies temporarily, allowing for safe and quick disposal. I flew through the campaign in a few hours using this tactic, with only the occasional break to “evolve” my fleet.
This isn’t to say that Space War Arena was easy. The difficulty curve was very smooth, but I did hit the odd bump in the road when the enemy increased their power level. It only ever took a couple tries at “evolving” my fleet or replacing one ship to counter them though, so I was never stuck for long. Once you have completed the campaign you unlock an endless mode if you’re desperate for more to play as well, and you can always try ranking up all of the available ships if you really want to grind as much as you can out of the game. I decided against this, cause I did find the game grew a bit stale after a while. Granted, I played it for three hours straight to review, so take that with a pinch of salt. The short levels are perfectly suited for portable play and short bus rides, but for long play sessions, not so much.
Overall I did enjoy my time with Space War Arena, but it’s hard to say if that’s because of its relatively simple mechanics, or perhapsdespite them. As a relative newbie to the genre it was easy to get to grips with and cathartic to play, especially once I found my winning strategy that tore through foe after foe, and I’m glad I cleared the campaign in its entirety, but I think I’ve had enough for now since there isn’t much drive to keep playing afterwards. But I’d still say, if you’re a fan of the tower-defense genre, you’ll like it, and if you’re still warming up to this genre like myself, it’s a great game to test the waters with.
A digital copy of Space War Arena was supplied for Switch by the developer.
