Cannon Brawl

Developer: Turtle Sandbox
Steam Release: Sep 2014
Hours Played: 4.8
Similar To: Castle Storm / Swords and Soldiers / Worms Series /
Rating: 2/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
Cannon Brawl is a one-of-a-kind hybrid that fuses together components of other types of games such as the resource gathering from the RTS genre to the firing mechanic of Angry Birds or Castle Storm. Battles take place upon rugged and destructible landscapes akin to the Worms series. You begin a match with your own units on the left of a 2D landscape and your opponents' on the right. You have a castle on the far left which acts as your supply depot, an aircraft that scurries around doing all the work, and maybe a mine or a tower or two to get you started. The basics go like this: (1) you go to the castle with your aircraft; (2) you purchase a mine or a tower with gold; (3) you place mines or towers on the landscape, gold allowing, and; (4) you blast away at the opponent's units with your towers until you take down and destroy their castle. 

BALANCE & PACE
Of course like the RTS games of old - along with Castle Storm and Worms - your opponent, in the form of the AI, are trying to do exactly the same to you so it's pretty much a race against time to get the job done before they do. With the buying, building, placement and firing of towers all initiated and activated by the airship, strategy lies in the speedy and dexterous handling of that vehicle. Furthermore, with shields needing to be angled to block incoming missiles and 3-stage upgrades being essential to both defensive and attacking structures, destructive mayhem is the inevitable result. With towers being on a cooldown before they can be fired, in amongst this frantic dash for supremacy is the quick decision to locate which tower to use as well as which one to attack. It goes without saying that action is fast and furious.
      
 

PRESENTATION & DESIGN

Battles in Cannon Brawl take place in a flat 2D landscape with the art-style being cartoon-like with a slight nod in the direction of the steampunk world. Think bright and colourful though rather than grim or bleak. Outside of the main game you have a rather mediocre and uninspiring campaign map or level-select screen that you roam around in with your airship to select levels. Unfortunately there was nothing to distinguish between this and the skirmish map which was a bit of a disappointment not to say seemingly a tad lazy on the part of the developers. Despite this, the game itself has controller support and, with the left stick taking effective care of the flight and the aiming of towers, I felt this worked comfortably well.

PROGRESS SYSTEM
Clicking Adventure mode from the home-page takes you to the campaign map. This shows a yellow path that winds its way around mountains and woods and streams. Blue dots indicating the 20 levels of the campaign are unlocked and placed on the path with a sword embedded into it once complete. Hovering over a dot brings up an information panel showing which of the three medals have been awarded. You get one for completion, one for finishing it within a certain time and one for carrying out a number of actions within a minute. Once finished you can attempt the whole lot again on the harder nightmare difficulty. Additionally there are puzzle-type levels to complete as well. Finally, you might want to try a battle against the AI but I personally found this section to be a bit flat.   

CONCLUSION

Cannon Brawl should certainly appeal to anyone who likes the idea of combining the relative calm of Angry Birds with a bit of ongoing resource management plus the notion of an army on the other side doing their best to fight you back. The three-star award system plus the opportunity to do the campaign again on a more difficult playing field certainly helps with replayability and the game drip-feeds you nicely by introducing you to and unlocking more powerful towers. True, there is a multiplayer option but as always this invariably ends up as the graveyard area in these lesser-known indie titles (which is why the single-player section is always the way to go.) It's a good blast.