Stonecrown: Castle Defense

One castle. Many roads. How will you stop them?

Stonecrown is a medieval fantasy defense strategy game you can play with one hand. A battle runs about 5 to 10 minutes — the right length for a commute, or for the last quiet moment of the day.

■ How it plays

You get 60 seconds to build. Farms bring gold, towers shoot, barracks send out soldiers, and walls narrow the roads. Where you put them decides the battle.

Then the horde comes down from the top of the map. Each wave is heavier than the last, and by the end thousands of enemies cover the ground. Hold, and you win. Lose the castle, and you don't.

■ When your hands are full, call down a meteor

One strike clears a packed crowd. But it hits your own soldiers too, and every meteor makes the next one more expensive. Deciding when to spend it is half the game.

■ Losing still makes your kingdom stronger

Your town resets after every battle, but the experience you earned stays. Spend it on starting gold, tower damage and farm income — permanently. You earn experience even from a defeat, so you can never get stuck.

The stages never end. The further you go, the more enemies arrive, and the harder they hit. How far you get is a question of how you build.

■ What's in it

- Endless stages on freshly generated terrain every time
- Three regions — plains, forest and snowfield. In the snowfield the rivers freeze over, and the horde walks straight across
- One to three stars per stage. Finish with an untouched castle for all three
- Put it down mid-battle and pick the same board back up later
- A small amount of experience accrues while you are away
- Japanese and English

■ Our promises

- Ads, but kept light. Interstitials appear at most once every three battles, and never during your first one. The "double XP" ad plays only if you choose it
- One purchase removes the ads for good. Buying it changes nothing about how strong you are — there is no power you can only get by paying
- The network is used only for ads and to check that purchase. The game plays identically in airplane mode
- No personal information is collected. Your progress stays on your device

Rated for ages 13 and over. No blood, no gore.