Bow Guard

Bow Guard puts you on top of a castle wall with a longbow and a wooden gate below you. Goblins come over the meadow from the right in waves: grunts with clubs, spear carriers, goblins hiding behind round shields, wolves that run twice as fast, trolls that need a few arrows, crews carrying ladders, battering rams under a shingled roof, a slow catapult that lobs rocks at the gate and riders hanging under striped balloons. Drag back to draw, aim and let go. Arrows fly under real gravity, so a far target needs a higher arc and a running wolf needs a shot that lands where it will be, not where it is. On the first waves a dotted line shows where the arrow will go; it shortens castle by castle until you are shooting by feel.

Hit a goblin on its iron pot and the helmet bonks off with a clang, leaving it seeing stars, and the next arrow to the head counts double. Every hit knocks the attackers back, and when they have had enough they drop their clubs and run home or vanish in a puff of boots. Hitting streaks build a combo multiplier, and you can even shoot the catapult's rocks out of the sky. Gold from every wave buys new arrows: fire that burns a patch of ground, ice that slows a crowd, split that looses three at once and a bomb that goes off in a cartoon burst. There is also an hourglass that slows time for five seconds, plus quicker draws, sharper arrowheads, an iron-banded gate and repairs between waves.

The campaign is four castles of twenty quick waves each, from a meadow keep through a pine forest and a frozen tower to a fort on a volcano. Every castle ends with a boss: an ogre carrying a door as a shield, a troll king who calls reinforcements with his horn, an ice giant who freezes himself into armour and a lava golem that sheds rolling embers. If the gate falls you only replay that one wave. Endless siege keeps the waves coming through all four lands for a high score, and the daily siege gives everyone the same seeded waves each day. Mouse, keyboard and touch all work, the castle fits a phone held upright or a wide screen, P pauses and M mutes.