Panzer Panic

A common pastime for pre-pubescent school boys (at least when I was growing up), was to sketch out epic battles across school books, scrap paper, cardboard – in fact anything that could be readily concealed or destroyed if a teacher caught on.

Panzer Panic, HandyGames's latest Android game, captures the spirit of such scruffily sketched scraps succinctly.

As the commander of three blue tanks you must take on the opposing reds in a succession of increasingly tough rounds.

The art style is charming, with the battlefield presented as a piece of graph paper. Meanwhile your tanks (controlled by dragging across the screen) look like they've been scrawled onto it with a half-chewed biro.

When you fire your tanks' cannons - by swiping in the appropriate direction - great splodges of ink, rather than cannon balls, fly out.

The pen is mightier than the tank

With each successive round taking place on the same field, and with misplaced shots creating wonderful ink-splats all over the page, the battlefield soon begins to look like the doodlings of a nine-year-old Jackson Pollock.

The combat itself is rambunctious stuff, with the shards of your enemies and fallen comrades lingering on the field of battle as solid objects. Thus, the carnage you wreak in the early (insultingly easy) rounds comes back to bite you as your ranged shots impact uselessly on scrap metal.

It has to be said that single player is a pretty bare bones offering, with the combat varying little and only really becoming interesting when the odds start stacking up against you. Even the introduction of power ups can’t really hide the fact that there’s not a lot of variety on offer here.

Here come the reinforcements

The provision of a two player mode, however, should prolong your involvement with the game considerably.

Here combat is turn based, with an ink bar dwindling every time you move or shoot. Once it's empty, you pass the phone over to your opponent and let them make their move.

Multiplayer mode plays out like a stripped back Worms, and it's as fun as that comparison would suggest, introducing a welcome dose of strategy to the dumb fun of the single player game.

Panzer Panic is a game of simple pleasures then. Its blend of joyous blasting and strategic multiplayer manoeuvring may not keep you glued to the screen for hours on end, but it's the sort of game that could well tempt you back for the odd bash months down the line.