Jelly Troops is a casual PvP strategy game developed by Nukenin and published by Phoenixx Inc. Your goal is to raise an army of slimes and have them take three flags around the map. Another opponent is doing the same and you can hinder them with spells or stone guardians. Protect your main flag if possible or your opponent might steal victory under your nose. It’s fast-paced and silly action that requires quick thinking to succeed.
Every game of Jelly Troops starts with two opponents on random parts of a square grid. Both players have three slimes and must grow their numbers. The objective is to claim three yellow flags around the grid or grab the opponent’s main flag. Whoever gets to three flags first or captures the opponent’s flag wins. Slimes are responsible for grabbing the flags and you can stop them with magic, walls, or stone guardians lured to the opponent’s base.
No player starts with an advantage over the other, every game starts on equal footing. The only advantage another player may have is experience. Locations of flags, players, guardians, and layouts are randomized every time. While you might feel unlucky at times, it’s never due to the opponent doing anything unfair. Your opponent is doing everything you can and they don’t get a special advantage. This equality is Jelly Troops’ strongest aspect. Rather than players getting better upgrades or gear, every player is equal except in terms of experience. Even relatively new players can succeed against experts if they let their guard down. More experience does mean you know how to exploit concepts like luring guardians to your opponent’s doorstep. But there’s never a situation where the game is overwhelmingly biased towards one side.
Even the victory conditions reflect this. You can take three flags around the map or steal your opponent’s flag. Stealing your opponent’s flag successfully is an automatic win and it can reverse a losing situation. No one’s ever truly doomed or hopeless because the enemy has an unfair advantage. Anything they can do, you can do as well. This makes gameplay fairer and harder to exploit, evening the playing field and forcing veterans to be careful.
Jelly Troops comes with a solid tutorial and plenty of practice maps in case you forget anything vital. After a short session, even a new player can play well on online matches. Victory is never guaranteed but knowing the fundamentals is all you need. Practice maps help reinforce the basics to ensure you know what you are doing. Your quick thinking and planning is what will likely clinch the victory since everything else is equal.
Unfortunately, there are no AI opponents to practice with and every match must be against a human opponent, even in the single-player Challenge Mode. You are paired with random opponents online but this isn’t always reliable. Playing with a friend side-by-side mitigates this but there’s no way to play properly without another person. This may limit people who are just looking for a quick match or just want to practice a real game.
But even the practice maps wear out their welcome since they are built to train a particular aspect. For example, you can’t lure guardians gradually to squish rows of slimes since that’s too slow in regular gameplay. The real appeal comes from playing with other people and while that isn’t hard to find now, it could be a problem if people aren’t interested.
Jelly Troops perfects the art of equality in PvP gameplay. Every player starts on even footing since the maps are randomly generated. Quick-thinking and experience can help you win games and it’s fun to exploit parts of the map to your advantage. You can also practice the basics on your own in the Challenge Mode before you play online and the tutorial is robust. However, this game is boring without multiplayer. Dive in if you like the competition, but you can’t play this without friends.
