Hut Take Control

Strategy games are usually designed for slightly more hardcore gamers, given the fact that they feature complex gameplay mechanics and tricky controls. However, one can also simplify the formula and make it accessible to newbies as well, while obviously losing some substance in the process. As long as you keep things fun, on the other hand, inexperienced players should be more than glad to give it a try.

Hut Take Control is a combination of RTS and tower defense mechanics, although it fails to portray either of them in a fun and enjoyable way. In fact, the gameplay is annoying on a regular basis and you rarely get a chance to enjoy yourself, regardless of whether you have any experience with strategy game or not. At the very least, the theme is pretty fun, and you may be amused at the weird creatures running around the map.

Your main purpose in the game is to defend your village against skeletons and various other such evil creatures, while using an army of gruesome monsters yourself. The village is split into huts and each hut is a different level, with a constantly increasing difficulty. You are free to play the levels in any way you want, although you may run into trouble if you decide to go for the most difficult first.

What truly hurts when you try to play along are the controls, even if they are very simple in theory. As such, you have the possibility to use the mouse to select the huts, click on the units to spawn them and then selecting all of them. However, the selection bit is awfully implemented and you cannot move the units around like in a normal RTS. Instead, you have to click on a building or on some units, although you never get any guarantee that your units are going to listen.

To make matters worse, although the goal is to occupy your enemy’s buildings in order to win the map, your units always attack instead of just entering the buildings. Hence, any kind of strategy flies out the window and the game would have been better off without the option to control the units at all. Thankfully, the graphics are rather nice and expressive, which might make it easier to get through some of the levels.

All things being equal, there are very few reasons to go for Hut Take Control instead of all the other, far more polished strategy games on the market. Hence, the terrible gameplay mechanics and the control issues make it rather difficult to recommend the game to anyone.