Iron Tide Command

Iron Tide Command drops you into naval skirmishes where you manage resources, build up a fleet, and out-position the enemy. It sounds heavy for a phone, but the developers clearly obsessed over the interface. Drag to select, tap to move, pinch to zoom — it just works.

The campaign eases you in over several missions before letting you loose in harder scenarios. I liked that pausing is allowed in the story mode, so you can plan without panic. Multiplayer is faster and less forgiving.

It runs hot on longer matches and the battery tanked at about twenty percent an hour for me. Turning the graphics to medium fixed most of the heat. Landscape only, so it's a two-handed game.

What we liked

• Intuitive touch-based unit control
• Pausable single-player campaign
• Scales well to older phones on medium settings