From the people who brought you one of my favorite game ever (Pix’n Love Rush) comes this single and multiplayer strategy game called Battlestar Commander.

Alright, first things first. If you’re going to make a game that plays in portrait mode (vertical) don’t make the menu in landscape mode (horizontal)… Especially since you have to go though the menu screen between each battles. It make for a lot of useless rotation of the device and makes the game look broken.

The general concept of the game is to defend you base against the enemy and eventually win by destroying the enemy’s supplies or his base (depending if the battle happens in space or on a planet). You start with a couple turrets and a few basic space ships. The game plays on a turn by turn basis. You have 10 seconds to move you ship to the target of your choice and destroy it. If you’re good at it you might get a couple go at it before your time runs out and then it’s the opponent’s turn. During the opponent’s turn you get to fire your turrets at the incoming enemy ships if you didn’t already use them during your turn. The basic turrets you start with can only shoot once per turn so use them wisely! You can only build so many space ships per turns so it is up to you to use them right away or to strategically keep them for a massive attack later on. Keep in mind that you will still have to maneuver each of them separately once your 10 seconds start. Also if you stack up on space ships you risk the enemy to come and destroy them before you could even use them. Once your ship fires at a building it automatically goes back to the base costing you precious seconds and forcing you to pass the enemy’s defenses once more.

As you progress through the missions you gain money that you can spend on upgrades for your base and new spaceships. You can buy new turrets and as you progress afford better turrets that allows you to fire up to 3 times per turn. Later on more slots on your base free up allowing you to add more defenses to it.

The way you control your ships and your turrets is by swiping. You swipe the ship in the direction you want it to go and the turret in the direction you want to shoot. The faster you flick your finger, the faster and the further your ship will go. In order to shoot an enemy ship you have to get close enough and swipe in it’s direction but not to much otherwise your ship will just suicide itself taking the enemy with it in its explosion. This control scheme is just terrible! It is probably the worst I’ve ever used… :/ I would have much preferred it if the ship just followed my finger rather than having to frantically swipe my finger in all directions trying to get the ship to follow the right path within the time allowed. Remember you only get 10 seconds so you’d better get good at moving your ship around or this game is going to become frustrating very quickly. To add to the frustration half the time you end up crashing your ship in an enemy without meaning to or firing at the wrong building (which will also send it back to your base forcing you to start over and wasting many precious seconds.)

I guess this is all supposed to be part of the difficulty of the game and supposed to make you learn how to do it right and also allows for ships with different speeds and all but I can’t get past it. Every time I play, I end up frustrated at the controls. A much better approach would have been to either get the ship to follow my finger and fire when I tap with an other or use a virtual joystick and buttons but no matter what there should be different controls for maneuvering and shooting.

I can imagine that the multiplayer mode would be really fun with friends if the controls didn’t require hours of training to master :/ (Friends get easily turned off by a game they can’t control or when it’s obvious that you know how to use it and they don’t)

On top of that the expensive price tag of $3,99 for both the iPad and the iPhone version and the fact that for that price it is not a universal app makes my choice even easier.

You probably figured it out by now but it is sadly that I give this game a THUMBS DOWN   q ( ; _ ; ) p