Skulls of Shogun is a surprisingly great game of 2013 for me. With the rise in popularity of Turn Based Strategy (TBS) games, It can be difficult for Skulls of Shogun to stood out among the other quality TBS games such as XCOM, Civilization V, and so on.

Still, with its quirky art style and fairly witty humor that is set in Samurai's afterlife, Skulls of Shogun features a well designed and carefully balanced mechanics, I find Skulls of Shogun to be very enjoyable game to play. At the same time, the game tries to introduce a gridless movement system where your unit's movement range is denoted by a white circle with a fixed radius, I find this innovation to a decent change that works well to be an alternative to the typical grid system found in a lot of TBS games. Combining with the cross platform compatibility with iOS, one could even play this game on the go. While Skulls of Shogun looks like a mobile port, it felt more like a PC game with reasonable amount of depth despite having a rather small unit roster. Each unit has its own unique role that can be useful in the right hands. Personally, I find the PC version's UI to be pretty decent and mouse friendly while it is equally playable on a touch screen.

If you like Turn Based Strategy, give Skulls of Shogun a go if you have the chance. You could find yourself putting a couple of hours into this indie gem.

Unfortunately, little do the bulk of TBS addicts know about this rare gem bringing a nice change of pace. Many consider it as a spiritual successor of Advance Wars, and it is in many ways yet by being a truly unique experience in the even rarer ''cartoony TBS'' sub genre. Don't get it wrong: despite its ( marvelous ) cartoony construct & hilarious dialogues ( really ), Skulls of the Shogun also shines via a lenghty campaign of well drawn maps.

Overall strategy and multiple tactics may seem basic, but ways to win versus enemies ( AI or multiplayer ) require the full attention of veteran players as well. It's not perfect on crowded bottlenecks when trying to command orders, some little glitch here and there, though nothing to alter an otherwise joyful turn based combat.

Pros: vivid cartoony construct and turn based combat mixed pretty well; lenghty campaign and multiplayer modes; hilarious dialogues; great audio track.

Cons: ordering units when crowded like sardines; some questionable unit range versus obstacle placement.

Bottom line: Highly recommended. ''OSHUDA''

Skulls of the Shogun is another indie turn based tactics game. This is a fun game to play because the levels are short and packed with action and tough decision making. It’s also easy to learn and play because there is no hex counting, no charts, and no tables. It has special objectives for completionists including a time attack trial and a developer commentary for all 20 levels.

I like this game because individual levels are short. The long levels can be 30 minutes but you can easily finish most within 15. Skulls doesn’t waste time with load outs or gear management. The only thing you need to manage is your troops and your rice (a currency to buy units). You manage your units with five orders each turn. Activating a unit takes an order. Most decisions are simple yet tough. Do you deal damage? Do you take crucial economy or troop producing buildings? Do you eat skulls to upgrade your troops? Do you provide other units protection from knock back?

Many turn based tactics games rely on special attack and armor types. In Skulls you won’t need to memorize the latest version of rock-paper-scissors. Attacks are easy to understand. Units deal damage and armor subtracts it. No long time investments studying maximum efficiency. Though it is a tactics game and so if hyper efficient decision making is what you like then you’ll be glad to know that each level is scored, even including leaderboards. Each level also has alternate secondary objectives such as winning without losing any units.

On the negative side I think knock back while intuitive often felt a bit fuzzy. An attack that I thought for sure would knock an opponent over an edge just barely hangs on and vice versa. Also while it’s fun that individual levels are short it would have been nice to have more than 20 levels to play through. Because it’s possible to play through the game in less than ten hours that means Skulls relies a lot on it’s great replayability.

Due to it's campaign length I think the $14.99 asking price might be a bit much but this is definitely a great purchase at $10.

I found that the user interface, particulary the mouse control/selection has a lot of issue. The art direction is top-notch, but the gameplay itself gets meh very quickly. The randomness of the result of some actions is very annoying, as it will make or break a game too often. Doing all the right things and losing because all of the enemies are in cover, and missing every single 80% "roll" is no fun at all.

A nice looking and easy to understand strategy game. It's a lot like advaned wars only with a silly undead twist. Very fun and worth the low price tag.