No one wantꦺs to see a village full of cute little monsters perish at the hands of a plague of spiders. So killing them is your motivation for replacing all the trees in a forest with cannons, gun towers and anti-aircraft missiles. Admittedly Greenpeace might not approve.

PixelJunk Monsters’ hand-drawn 2D visuals give it a cutesy look, but they hide a deceptively deep real-time strategy game. Just not your typical one, because instead of using a cursor for armament-placing you have direct control of a monster. And instead of paying cold hard cash to upgrade towers, you do a little dance in front o▨f them. Quite.

It’s the tightly balanced levels that make it so addictive and, despite its simplicity, the few choices you have are vital. Do you spend the seconds before a new wave of enemies collecting coins before they disappear, or dancing to upgrade towers? Do you spend funds on upgrades or save them for a new type of tower? The 20 levels, co-op play and t൲hese tricky dilemmas will have you hoo♔ked.

Feb 7, 2008