Slug Wars: To Shell and Back iPad review

In the miniature world underfoot, a fierce battle wages between those who fear salt: Slugs. Slug Wars: To Shell and Back, is a puny little iPad game that uses an RTS/tower defense gameplay model simplified tenfold, without retaining either genre’s defining qualities.

The point of Slug Wars is simple: Overtake enemy Slug bases with your forces. Five Slugs that penetrate the enemy’s base claims victory, though taking down opponents is easier said than done, but not due to difficulty. Instead, because winning strategies are so easy to pull off, the game is very time-consuming.

A wide selection of maps (37 single player, 18 multiplayer) allows for up to four players to play at once on a single iPad. For the single-player campaign, that means up to three enemies attacking at once (players never receive AI help), and in fact the most thought-inducing element of the game comes from deducing which opponent has the closest line of attack and which is the most vulnerable, because fighting on multiple fronts becomes overwhelming fast.

The gameplay is simple enough: A certain number of dirt paths lead from your base to the enemy bases, and slug soldiers on both sides travel on them. There are multiple slug classes, from the standard soldier to suicide slugs (which explode salt in the surrounding area) to missile slugs and more. As players progress through the campaign, more and more slug variations become available, though I barely found any use for older ‘models’ once a new one came along, with rare exception. That, and a horrible touch-bar to slide between slug classes. Using this bar in the middle of battle is too cumbersome and too inaccurate, and when battling enemies at full strength it just isn’t worth it to use multiple classes. There just isn’t enough time to switch between the slug classes you want.

Along with different slug variations are attack towers, and these also are too hard to switch between, though each new tower makes the last one almost entirely obsolete. As players will progress through the game, it becomes all too apparent that only certain types of slugs and certain towers are actually useful, and the rest just get in the way.

Finally, a currency system allows players to build more slugs and more towers. Funds can be earned by collecting flowers (left over from random dead slugs) and by defeating enemy slugs. The combination of slug classes and towers makes for a simple win-all strategy, which we won’t ruin for you. Suffice it to say, this one strategy works on every single level. Sure, you can use others that work great on specific levels, but ultimately this is a one-trick pony.

As mentioned earlier, Slug Wars has local multiplayer, though chances are your games will be never-ending or one player will constantly dominate when playing one on one. Three or four players, however, is much more exciting.

By far, Slug Wars: To Shell and Back is a mediocre but time-consuming title. It’s not the kind of game you sit and play through for hours, but rather one level at a time, and if wasting 20-30 minutes apiece is what you’re looking for Slug Wars is a great choice. But all too often you’ll just finish the level just to beat it, and for no other reason.