Hands-on with Sega’s gory tower defence title Alexandria Bloodshow for iOS

Given how bloody battles with swords and arrows must have been, there’s a distinct element of self-censorship in the portrayal of warfare by ancient civilisations. It's all cleanly cut limbs carefully baked onto the sides of pots and neatly excised heads reproduced in tiles on the walls.

Not so with Sega’s upcoming tower defence title Alexandria Bloodshow, which sees the ancient Greeks and Egyptians squaring up to do unspeakable acts to each other across two distinct campaigns and via local and online multiplayer through Game Center.

These unspeakable acts mainly involve lopping off people’s limbs in gruesome bloody conflict. So in that sense it’s as historically accurate a depiction of ancient warfare as you could hope for.

But that’s about where the realism stops, because by the time you’ve conquered your foe in this 2D side-on strategy title you’ll have deployed everything from vicious half-naked dancing girls to murderous waves of mummies, and even a few gods just for kicks (and kills).

The gameplay resembles that of everyone’s favourite undead massacre simulation Plants vs Zombies, in that enemies swarm from the right-hand side and your task is to stop them getting to your men.

You do this by - yes, you guessed it - placing down units in front of them, all with their own advantages and disadvantages.

Cavalry, for instance, will charge head-long down the battlefield (freeing up space on the backline and engaging enemies earlier), while flaming arrow archers can cause considerable distress behind other, more defensive, units.

Unlike the defences in PopCap's super-hit, the units in Alexandria Bloodshow are moveable at a small cost to your coin supply, allowing you to trudge your men and women down unit-specific paths.

Some units can only attack enemies behind them, while others can engage foes across a blanket area in front, leading to some Chess-like considerations.

You have to pick which units you want to field prior to the battle by selecting their relevant cards (obtained by winning, naturally).

There's a mission-specific limit to how many you can pick, but the game appeared to have quite a few options available when we played it, with 120 different unit types to choose from.

Alexandria Bloodshow’s striking visual design for these units is another unique feature of the game, and a big draw for those who love the pottery and hieroglyphics of Ancient Greece and Egypt.

It’s only when a gallon of blood erupts from a phalanx trooper’s neck as an arrow plunges through his jugular do you realise that maybe something’s been amiss this whole time.

Alexandria Bloodshow will be out on iOS this spring.