Iron Tide Command

Iron Tide Command asks you to juggle base building, unit positioning and resource flow all at once, and it does it without overwhelming the screen. Each map is a coastline you have to fortify, and the raider waves come from angles that force you to actually think about your layout rather than turtle in one corner.

The touch controls handle better than I feared. You draw movement paths with a swipe and tap to assign priorities. It took me a mission or two to get comfortable, but once it clicked I was rerouting squads on the fly. The difficulty curve is fair — losing usually taught me something specific.

There's a decent amount of unit variety, and the tech choices between missions let you lean into either defense or aggressive counterattacks. It's a proper strategy game that respects that you're playing on a phone.

What we liked

• Smart, readable coastline maps
• Path-drawing controls that work
• Meaningful tech choices between missions