Though nobody likes to pull comparisons to other games or IPs, Doodle Hex kind of requires a few. For all intents and purposes Doodle Hex is Magic The Gathering with a bit of Harry Potter. Although that would be cutting it a bit short it’s hard not to see the influences for this game. Despite that Doodle Hex can be a surprisingly good rune battler.

You start off at the school (a la Harry Potter) of runes and have a pretty much averagely boring day at school until you start to encounter people who tell you how you can harness the power of the runes for battling. This is your basic premise that really just about serves it’s need to exist by giving you a background for what your actually doing.

What you are actually doing is a series of random battles with students in the school. Your upper screen shows you your opponent while the lower acts as a drawing pad for different rune symbols. You can then use these in different ways and at different points for completely different effects. At first you might think this game is quite shallow due to the amount of runes locked but there is a lot of strategy behind these battles.

There’s also a lot of skill if you time a rune perfectly it will do more damage. If you draw the symbol as it is shown you’ll get a more powerful attack. But if you want to send out quicker attacks by scribbling the symbol you can although this will result in a weaker attack. It’s all simple stuff that works really well for the games surprisingly complex structure and strategy.

The combat works well until the latter stages of the game. You’ll find your self frantically going mad on the touch pad to sent out any kind of attack. This is where it becomes less like a well thought out game of chess or magic the gathering and turns into madness. It’s a shame but the natural progression of the game was always leading towards this twist. Doodle Hex also get pretty challenging but it’s partly to do with the speed the game amps up to. Despite the sudden peak in difficulty you’ll inevitably encounter, if you are willing to put the time in you’ll be rewarded.

Doodle Hex has it’s moments though and if your a fan of Magic The Gathering or similar mystical card games there is definitely something here for you. It might appear to be shallow but there is depth to be found even if that does eventually go full circle into a race of mullering the touch pad. Nevertheless Doodle Hex is interesting and at some points a damn good game.