Iron Frontier

Iron Frontier takes the classic build-defend-expand loop and trims it down until it fits your thumb. You lay out a small outpost, manage a couple of resources, and send squads to contest the map. The clever part is the fog and the timing — you're always guessing where the pressure will come from next.

Matches are short by design, usually under fifteen minutes, which makes it a great strategy game for phones. Losing rarely feels cheap; you can almost always point to the moment you overextended. That's the sign of a fair system.

The single-player campaign teaches the ropes properly before it turns nasty, and the skirmish mode against the AI has enough variety to keep me busy. I'd have liked more map types, but what's here is solid.

What we liked

• Short, decisive matches
• Clean resource management
• A campaign that teaches before it punishes