Countless Army scratches a part of my brain that hasn’t itched since I was a teenager. A lot of us can remember those days, stuck in a creaky chair in the computer room (don’t age yourself too much here James), scrolling sites like Kongregate or Miniclip, looking for something to pass away the hours whilst you waited for your crush to log on to MSN.
Everything about Countless Army screams 00’s to me, the art style alternates between charming and headache inducing, but clearly looks like it could have been made during a serious procrastination session on MS Paint. The music and occasional voice clip just shine through with that kind of underground charisma the first sets of Flash games used to get us with.
Gameplay is relatively straightforward. Dos Estrellas labels this a “reverse tower defense”, where you are the bad guy sending the waves of enemies to take over the castle. Each level has a flag at the end with a number of units you have to get past it. Along the way are buildings which you conquer to open new routes, replenish the stock of units you have to send out, give them temporary buffs, or gain resources to buy upgrades, spells and unlockable costumes in the overworld shop.
Countless Army isn’t without its friction points. During the opening tutorial, the same button that moves through the dialogue boxes also loads units into your route queues. The whole thing was clearly built to be played on mouse and keyboard and then ported to console with very little thought of how the control scheme moves over (with only some actions actually explained to you, and no tooltips to explain how to navigate menus properly). You can’t just flood the routes with units, as if there is an unconquered building on the route, all your units will enter it, even if you’ve managed to destroy it that turn (the game treats this as a unit management strategy aspect, but since you can’t tell how many units it takes to capture a building, it’s often a case of frustratingly watching a bunch of units get wasted or wasting an entire wave because you were a couple of units short).
Difficulty seems to spike at random, and the label on each level changes (I’m assuming based on a nebulous assessment of your upgrade level) but seems to bear no link to the actual difficult of the level, as I’ve breezed through hard and extreme maps but currently cannot defeat the one remaining medium level I need to do to progress.
Upgrades are done on a by unit basis, as well as through a woefully unexplained upgrade tree, each using different resources. The upgrade tree has two paths, one to unlock and mechanically change units, and one to upgrade your abilities, by unlocking spells or the ability to take more troops etc. If the unit tree splits at any point, you can only take one option on that row.
This layer of jank smothering an excellent concept could be at least partially intentional, and definitely will vary based on what device you play this on, but overall may be a sorer sticking point to some than others.
I cannot tell you that I don’t enjoy the game, because I do. I’ve watched YouTubers play it long before grabbing it for review myself and I’ve enjoyed the few hours I’ve spent mindlessly chipping away with it. Whether that’s enough to overlook to clear flaws here, is down to you to decide.
Countless Army was reviewed on Xbox Series X, but is also available on Playstation 5, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.
