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A port of a popular PC real-time strategy game may not seem like an obvious decision for an iPhone title (especially when you consider squeezing micro management onto a screen no larger than a playing card) but that’s precisely what developer Handmark has done with Westward, an economy building sim set during the frontier days of the wild west.
The game opens with a lengthy but well thought out tutorial that gently eases players into the pace. This game is slow, and that’s not a bad thing at all (far from it) but it takes a moment of adjustment after playing through hordes of free five-minute affairs, and marks a change in substantial content from anything else available on the system. Despite its blatant content Westward is less about gun-slinging heroes (although you do have the option to recruit them) and more about keeping your town healthy by staving off famine and ensuring your residents have sufficient accommodation. This change in tack may see more impatient gamers put off, but for fans of The Settlers or The Sims, playing Westward will feel just right.
Managing a well-balanced economy will see other settlers arriving and making your town their home and it’s a truly satisfying experience to build up a small camp into a thriving frontier town. The controls feel very natural with an emphasis on drag and dropping characters into different situations – for example, employing a settler is as simple as placing a finger on the character in question and dragging him/her over a relevant place of work.
Westward feels so much like a PC title that the absence of a second mouse button can become frustrating, forcing you to constantly select between scrolling and multiple selection functions. Another slightly annoying trade off is the size of the playing field – a box handling important actions covers the bottom third of the screen, letterboxing the action into what feels like an uncomfortably small space (especially if your have large fingers).
Overall Westward is a charming example of how the iPhone can handle slower paced games. It drip feeds you with enough enjoyment that you’ll want to play until you have finished the lengthy story mode and is only let down by some slight control issues inherent to the iPhone’s small screen.
