The multiplayer game “Stick Empires” is a real-time 1v1 strategy game which uses medieval and mythical warriors like Spartans and archers to wizards and giants. Developed by Stickpage users  Brock and CrazyJay, after making an account using my email and making a password I was set; the game had then sent me to the “lobby.” There was a global chat, Armory for customizing my army, as well as a friend code system where you can fight your friends in the game in real time. Now, the goal of the game is simple, destroy the enemy statue before they destroy yours. Now the statue itself is helpless, it just sits there. It has a health bar, deal enough damage and it will fall. However, each player has the ability to spawn units to fight to attack or defend the statue. So I hit “Play Match” and after about 30 seconds it found me a game, it told me to pick one of three empires, I chose the “Order” Empire. At the start, it will give you 2 units called miners to produce “Gold” which you can use to buy more miners or get attacking units like a swordwrath, a basic unit with a sword. Now once you get deeper in you can get better units, like a spearton. However, these units cost “Mana” as well as gold. In order to get mana, you have to select a miner by clicking on it and then right click your statue, where the miner will then go and “Pray” which gives you mana.

Now I have experience in hundreds of games, and in order to get better, you have to use knowledge of situations from previous battles in order to battle wisely. Some units are used to counter other units, like the shadowrath, an assassin who can sneak past the enemy and kill weaker units. There is also a log-in bonus that is given every 24 hours. This bonus will give you empire coins which you can use to customize your units in the armory. However, the game may seem a little plain fighting to same “Order” empire all the time, which is why the game has added DLC, which gives you full access to the “Chaos” and “Elemental” empires, which each have their own unique playstyle. However you do not need to have the DLC to fight the DLC, so games can vary from Chaos vs Order to Order vs Elementals. Learning how to play as and play against certain empires and opponents makes the game fun to learn, as well as new when fighting new opponents who have different strategies. However since the game is against real people in real time and not AI, how smooth the match depends on your opponent’s internet connection. But the developers have found a small solution to the problem, if you or your opponents lags too much, a 13-second timer will count down until they stop lagging, if it hits 0, the player will be forced to surrender.  

However, the game isn’t perfect. To start the few players in the community can cause matchmaking to take unreasonably long amounts of time, as well as match you against the same player multiple times in a row. A glitch can also cause games to turn into another player’s favor, the “Charroge” unit has the ability to go underground and then pop back up, dealing small amounts of damage and stunning nearby enemy units. A glitch allows the Charroge to jump out of the ground multiple times and cause massive damage, sometimes killing units. However, the community has unofficially banned it from play, since most players using Charroges often don’t use this as a method to win games.

Overall the game has interesting mechanics and little things like center tower and abilities which can all help you in battle. And after you start to get good at the game there is a ranking system to show the top 100 players in the world, based on points gained or lost from wins and losses. The games fresh DLC differs it from the Stick war and Stick war 2 games found online lets and you battle against friends and rivals, which creates hundreds of hours of entertainment, which feels like is time well spent.