Hold the Tile is a medieval RTS where owning more land means bigger magic
Mind the grout
- Fight frantic 1v1 RTS battles
- Re-spec your General whenever you fancy
- More land means nastier magic
Hold the Tile sounds like a phrase a tiler would shout at whoever’s nearest while the adhesive sets, except it’s a low-poly medieval RTS, and as the third thing I've written up today, it's also the first one with orcs in it.
Matches are 1v1 and played in real time, on maps split into regions and hidden under fog of war until you scout them. Scouting turns up resources, enemy bases, and camps of barbarians sitting on the best unclaimed land, and clearing those camps gets you the rare resources they're guarding.
You lead with one of three General classes, Warrior, Builder or Mage, and earn skill points between matches to spend on RPG-style talent trees. Those points can be reset whenever you like, so trying a completely different build costs you nothing.
Units run from spearmen and archers up to orcs and mages, all grouped into squads. You can manage every squad by hand or let auto-battle take the frontline, and I suspect on a phone screen most people will go with the second. Most. Some of you will want every archer exactly where you put it.
Behind all that, you're gathering wood, iron and gold, putting up walls, towers and bridges, and fending off raids on your base. Coins then go towards permanent upgrades for your units and structures. Magic sits on top of everything, with fireballs, summoned living trees and slowing spells, and it appears to scale with how much land you hold, so the more ground you take, the harder you hit.
Hold the Tile is out now on iOS and Android. Nobody asks you to hold an actual tile, as far as I can tell.
In the meantime, our list of the best strategy games on iOS has more ground to fight over, grout optional.
