Fight Angry Squares: The Action RPG!, or Fastar! in its more easily digestible acronym, is an easily digestible role-playing game that strips down the formula to the bare necessities; random battles with a variety of enemy types, collecting coins from said enemies and using them to upgrade your attributes whenever you find a town. On the easy setting this results in a three to four minute game in which you are trying to take out a motley collection of angry squares determined to take you out; you have to simply hack and slash your way through until you reach the end of the level.

The game comes with four control options; you can tilt the device to move, touch the screen to attack and a hard tilt in either direction triggers a special attack. Or you can go with a touch based scheme; the most interesting of these is the one handed mode which allows you to play in portrait mode with a space at the bottom for you to perform finger swipes on. But just about any scheme you can think of is here, and having them easily selectable in-game is a bonus!

You’ll be chiefly moving to the right and knocking out any squares that you encounter with your sword, but Fastar! also presents you an opportunity at the start of the game to equip your hero with a spell; you can choose offensive and defensive spells; fire, lightning, instant death, full health restore or a teleport to the nearest town amongst others. Each is very well balanced and the more powerful spells cannot be stockpiled; you can only carry one at a time. Fortunately they do recharge; our favourite was the full health restore because it meant that you could use the coins to upgrade your defence and offence instead of healing yourself in towns.

Once you’ve got the hang of the game in the easy mode, there’s a number of other modes to try out; of course there’s the obligatory normal and hard modes, the latter of which can last around 15 minutes, but there’s also a load of other modes. These include a gauntlet of huge squares with no healing, an hour long marathon mode, an arena with infinite enemies and a conquest mode which lets you practice with one colour of square; useful because each colour has its own unique attack; some sit there, some run away, some are more pro-active in trying to take you out.

For the money, Fastar! simply has to be one of the best role-playing games that we’ve played. It turns what used to be a game that could span upwards of 20 hours into one that can be experienced in a few short minutes. Yes, it lacks a deep story, dramatic cutscenes, huge bosses and multiple characters that most long RPGs are famous for but it gets rid of the cruft; the backtracking, the townsfolk who love to tell you nothing, the inventory filled with mostly useless junk and the price point. This is 59p; and it lacks none of the punch that a traditional RPG has. Go buy it.

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