The touch interface seems to be the way to the future for a lot of games, but none of the genres seem more fit for this innovation than real time strategy games. Ever since the iPad came out, people have speculated that it would do wonders for the RTS genre, but developers haven’t really capitalized on it other than the initial spark set off by the device’s release. While brainstorming must still commence, here’s a strategy game with ants that may seem to be the way forward from here.

Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense isn’t like the usual mobile strategy game that has been populating the App Store thus far. There are stuff like unit upgrades and resource management to complicate your RTS mental checklist. The game is played by drawing a line from your anthill to whatever destination you choose. The trail is full of pheromones that the ants will follow, which you can then designate whether it’s for workers, soldiers, or spitter ants. The objective is to gather resources and defend your anthill from waves of attackers. When you kill enemies, their bodies can be dragged in by worker ants to consume as food, which is very helpful. As you gather more resources, you get to produce more ants of different types that will help your cause, including bomber ants that can fly over and bomb on wherever you tap.

Whenever you reach a certain score after each level, you get a certain number of stars that can be used to upgrade the ants in your army. Whenever you purchase these, you get to have more options to play with in various situations and defeat enemies with more force and finesse. As for the visuals, most of the game’s graphics are pretty good in terms of aesthetics. But it does not give much variation in the appearances of the ants, so you won’t be able to distinguish what types they are at first glance. This may pose some difficulty in gameplay, but not so much that you’d get frustrated about it. The music is quite nice too, so it’s a good casual strategy game overall.

Perhaps this is the way that real time strategy games will go for mobile platforms. The complexities of the RTS genre should transcend whatever limitations, whether physical or logistical, there may be in mobile devices in order to propel it forward, and this may be the thing. Okay, maybe that’s too high of a praise for this game, but it’s still fun to play nonetheless with its mechanics and scoring system that comes from how many enemies you’ve killed and how many waves you’ve endured so far.

While it hasn’t broken out of the mold of being defense-based, Anthill: Tactical Trail Defense shows that strategy games can definitely be played in the iOS. Perhaps in the future, we’ll see games of even greater complexity to start appearing in the App Store. But for now, this game will definitely have to do because it has all the necessary components for a fun semi-casual game.