Little Generals Preview

Smarter Apps, a team of veteran mobile game developers based in Canada, are rolling out the tanks for some explosive physics puzzles! Their latest title, Little Generals, pits a player and enemy tank against each other on battlefield landscapes that are hardly suitable for a straight shot. We spent some quality time with the game today and it’s shaping up to be pretty groovy.

The idea is that you have to range your shots with a targeting arc, which you can freely stretch and incline to get a good firing angle. The player and enemy can also move on their precarious ledges while targeting for a little more leeway. Battles tend to wrap up very quickly, at least toward the beginning; neither tank has much armor so the first direct hit wins the match. Even near misses can produce severe damage by burying the opposing tank in debris. You’ll find destructible landscapes aplenty here!

In-game currency earned for victories can be saved up to purchase more advanced tanks, but the need to restock on ammo also chips away at the player’s resources. There is some help here: matches are chosen completely nonlinearly on a world campaign map, and rushing to capture munitions factories can pad the player’s ammo supply over time. Watch out — if you lose a battle a slice of your territory gets taken, meaning you’ll have to reconquer it and suffer the repercussions on your resources. The ammunition management aspect makes Little Generals way dicier than your average physics puzzler, and has the effect of making player performance that much more important over the long haul.

No official release date on Little Generals quite yet, but check out the game’s website, Facebook page and Twitter account for the latest news.