Tank Duel

Tank Duel is a same-screen duel played on a tabletop diorama: a tray of sand with wooden blocks, grass patches, puddles and crates, and two die-cast tanks with glossy paint and bold black outlines. The tanks move with a bit of weight to them, the turret swings round with the hull, and every shell you fire leaves a thin smear of motion blur as it goes. Drive over the sand and your tyre tracks stay behind you for a few seconds before the wind takes them.

The trick is the ricochet. A shell bounces off the wooden walls twice before it dies, so the shot that wins a round is often the one that goes nowhere near the other tank. Crates splinter when you hit them and open new lanes, bushes hide a tank until it moves, water is a wall you can shoot over but never drive through, and the red rubber pads fling a shell back faster than it arrived. Your own shells will kill you on the way back, so count the angles before you pull the trigger. Between rounds a pair of pick-ups drops in the same spot for both sides: a triple shot, a speed boost, a shield that soaks one hit, an instant laser beam, or mines that fall out of the back of the tank as you fire.

There are eight hand-drawn arenas plus one the game builds on the spot, and a rotation setting that moves you on after every round. Play two at one keyboard or one phone, or take on the computer at Easy, Normal or Sharp — Sharp works out bank shots, dodges what is already in the air and ducks behind cover while it reloads. On a phone in portrait the arena runs up the screen and the second player's controls and scoreboard are turned upside down, so you can lay the handset flat on a table and sit at opposite ends of it. Pick your colour from six paint jobs, set the match to three, five or ten rounds, and watch the winning shot in slow motion.