My Little Tank Review

Another game from Astraware that is not a puzzle game! However, My Little Tank was only published by Astraware. It was developed by Binoteq who are well known for their physics-based games and lately for their underwater shooter Shark Attack. My Little Tank is a shooter too, but it is less difficult than Shark Attack, which was quite challenging.

Gameplay is pretty simple. You steer your tank with four direction buttons and shoot in the direction you are driving with an action button. If you are playing on the Zodiac I suggest remapping the Zodiac’s four colored buttons for this. The game can also be controlled with the touch screen but I prefer the buttons. Most of the time the goal is to destroy all enemy tanks, sometimes there are special buildings as targets.

The developers have added a level of complexity by adding enemy tanks of different strength that can endure different numbers of shots and adding weapon upgrades that you have to drive over to collect them and make your weapon more powerful and shoot faster. Other upgrades repair damage of your own tank, increase your tank’s speed or let all enemy tanks in a certain radius explode. There are also upgrades that make your own tank invincible or freeze all enemy tanks, both only lasting for a short while. These are especially useful if there are a lot of tanks around.

Naturally for a tank game, My Little Tank is pretty slow paced. That is a good thing because it gives you a little time to think strategically. However, the game often gives you too little to think about. Most of the time, enemy tanks behave pretty dumb and simply drive and shoot in random directions. This makes the game pretty easy; I could finish it in one go. It can get a little challenging if you die on one of the later levels and have to restart it without any upgrades.

The game has 60 levels, each lasting about five minutes. Luckily they do not get too repetitive because level design is varied, each time constructing new structures made of ground, water, and buildings. Pretty much every level looks and feels different. Most of the time your goal is to destroy all enemy tanks but sometimes special buildings are the target. Every once in a while you have to defend your headquarter which adds a constant fear that an enemy tank might destroy it before you can come back from the distant corner of the level you are fighting in.

The graphics of My Little Tank are very beautiful and the different sceneries like desert, snow or swamp together with the varied level design make every level look different. The buildings are rendered in 3D, adding a nice sense of realism. Music can get a little repetitive but at least it is there. It is very loud but you can correct that in the options menu. Explosions have a satisfying sound effect.

My Little Tank has its weak points like the dumb enemies but all in all it is a very addicting game. It is very hard to put down after you have started playing. It has 60 levels, which is quite a lot but they only last for 6 hours. There is some replay value because it is still addicting the second time around but a level editor would have been a nice addition. Another thing missing is a multiplayer mode. I could imagine a two player on one device multiplayer mode being quite fun. As it is, My Little Tank is a quality, addicting arcade-style game. You should definitely try the demo to see if you like it.