Jelly Troops Review | New Pikmin and Splatoon Inspired Competitive RTS!
Developed by Nukenin and published by Phoenixx Inc., Jelly Troops is a new high-energy pick-up-and-play PVP and PVE strategic action title that’s dripping with charming 3D animations, an up-beat soundtrack, and the cutest little armies of jelly troops that you’ve ever seen. Think Pikmin meets Splatoon with solo challenges and competitive multiplayer. I guess that’s no surprise really, as the founder of the Nukenin development studio previously worked on, you guessed it, both Pikmin 3 and Splatoon!
Jelly Troops follows a wizard and their jelly pawns that are willing to both create life and take it, all in the name of victory for their commanding officer; that’s you, if that wasn’t already clear. Each player takes on the role of their own respective magical master and brings the battle to the enemy. By utilizing the power of their staff, players control their jelly troops to collect magical resources that add new units to bolster their ranks. Those units are then given strategic orders in real time, as each wizard battles for supremacy.
The colorful cuteness is a bit of a trap, as these little fellas are anything but friendly. They are battle hardened and they answer only to you, their master, and obey whatever you demand of them. I often found myself having to make difficult on the fly decisions to halt the progress of my competitors. Much like chess, there were times when I had to intentionally sacrifice my own troops to overcome the enemy, sending my loyal jelly buddies to stretch their bodies out, creating walls to temporarily slow the advance of my opponent’s hostile forces.
Other times I would forcefully throw at least half of my reserves into a melee with our gelatinous foes, knowing that they were walking into a massacre, though serving to stop the capturing of my team’s flags. I know it sounds harsh, but with the whimsical tunes, the squishy sound effects, and the lighthearted nature of it all, it was really presented as funny more than anything else. Plus, in reality there are relatively few consequences to elimination, because the treasured troops respawn back at our base’s summoning circle in short order and are primed and ready to jump back into the fray of their goopy ground war.
It wasn’t just enemy troops that played a factor in the elements of success, as there were powerful Golem Guardians that refused to take sides, and would smash and zap anyone and anything that came within their limited range of vision and motion. These Golems served as sedentary sentries until one of the players’ wizards or any of our jellies entered their sphere of aggressive influence and then BOOM! They would spring to life and get to defending their areas. The beautiful thing, however, is that if you used them cleverly enough, you could trick them into destroying enemy blockades in a much more efficient manner than when utilizing your own melee strike and combined troop damage.
Alongside that was their determination to catch anyone within their reach, so I would often gather them all up, use the slow walking feature, and draw them away from objectives and out of the path of my units. This allowed for easier passage sure, but I could also have them chase me all the way to the enemy’s base and then dash out of their view and they would once again take up a defensive stance until the hostile wizard would spawn in more troops. It was utter carnage, though it worked both ways and often ended with both me and my competitor frantically running for our lives in circles, desperately trying not to get smashed and stunned, while also trying to turn the tables on each other.
To better explain the abilities of the jelly troops for those who perhaps have never played the Pikmin games, it goes like this. I would command the troops to carry things back to our summoning circle (base) such as Magic Fruits. The more jellies assigned to the task, the quicker they would uproot the fruits and transport them back to the circle where they would transform into more jelly reinforcements. Larger fruits took longer to obtain but provided 3 more units for backup, while the smaller fruits were more plentiful and simpler to obtain, but only provided on additional warrior.
I often sent out a handful of units individually to grab one fruit a piece, and once their numbers had grown from that initial gathering, I would send the entire group to begin collecting the larger fruits in a much quicker fashion. This seemed to be the most effective method of expeditiously expanding my ranks, though sometimes led to a rapid defeat, as while I was building up my forces, the enemy wizard would already be capturing flags with their much smaller squad.
As hinted at a few times now, capturing flags is the name of the game, and the only way to truly achieve victory over the hostile wizard is to capture as many neutral flags as possible and return them to your own summoning circle, and if you’re lucky, even capture the enemy’s personal team flag from their base. As the maps were randomly generated, including the locations of the flags, Golems, and bases, this was always a challenging endeavor. The balance between creating a sizable enough army to contend with your foes, while simultaneously clearing the proverbial fog of war and seeking out the objectives hidden within, was rarely not a mad-dash scramble!
Fortunately, there were tomes scattered around the maps that allowed for the use of powerful spells. One of these spell tomes was an offensive strike that allowed the casting wizard to rain meteors down upon Golems, obstructing walls, jelly troops, and the enemy wizard themselves. Another allowed for temporary invisibility that let the wizard and their troops in-tow use stealth to slip past Golems and sneak towards their objectives with little hindrance… until the spell wore off at the wrong time… been there.
My personal favorite spell was a speedup buff that made the wizard and their jellies move, attack, and harvest resources much more quickly for a brief window, allowing for some under-the-wire victories by a nose. Then again, there was one that summoned a group of friendly Golem guardians that would assault the enemy’s forces… and bombs… and lightning. They were really all very useful!
If this sounds fun to you, Jelly Troops offers split-screen multiplayer, online global matchmaking as well as private online skirmishes, but if you want to go at it alone, there’s a great multitude of varied solo challenges that can be repeated for higher star ratings with each go around. Solo was surprisingly enjoyable, even for a game that feels far more geared towards a competitive multiplayer experience. The cutesy colors, whimsical wonder and whacky tone and animations, and the smooth and intuitive gameplay design all come together to create an engaging, exciting, and slightly addictive loop that kept me consistently coming back for more.
I’m giving Jelly Troops an 8/10, as it could benefit from some additional modes, jelly types, and environments (I’m thinking 2v2 and a snowy map type where you can freeze your opponents). Regardless, it’s off to a great start and I think any fans of RTS and Pikmin style games will really enjoy it! Get your copy now and I’ll see you on the jelly-soaked battlefield!
