When it comes to strategy games on the Switch, in general the real-time variety of the genre hasn’t had all that much representation overall. While roguelike deckbuilders and turn-based titles seem to come to the system with some regularity, fans of tackling challenges on the fly don’t seem to get much love. While Jelly Troops may not be what more seasoned genre fans are looking for, it actually serves as a decent starter set for less experienced gamers who may enjoy some real-time capture the flag play, at least if you can find some competition outside of just the CPU.

The first thing you’ll likely notice is the game’s colorful and decidedly cutesy style, which already may be too much for people looking for something a little grittier, or at least a bit more serious-looking. It’s absolutely a choice, but the style seems well-paired with the more generally mild tone the developers seem to have been looking for. Your wizard has the ability to collect and control little jellies who will diligently work to grab and move objects, do a little fighting when necessary, and even sacrifice themselves one by one if you’re trying to set up a wall for your defenses.

On a general level your goal will be to do some basic exploring to get the lay of the land, set early collection tasks for your slimes that will help to swell your ranks, and identify where every critical element is on the map. These include the flags you’ll be trying to capture, the location of the enemy base, and some robotic sentinels that you’ll want to make sure to use to thwart your enemy’s efforts rather than your own. From there you’ll need to have a plan of attack, looking to secure the flags with your jellies while working to get in the way of your enemy doing the same. You’ll have a variety of options for how to do this, whether offensively trying to pull sentinels near their base to be a pain, setting up key walls to slow them down, or making critical use of one-off spells you’ll find on the map, which can really shake things up when used with intention.

The thing is, whether online play will be sustained more than a few weeks is always a valid question with indie titles, and bots don’t pose quite the same challenge once you get into their preferred patterns. You can work through the solo missions, which are a nice option, but again they don’t offer quite the same degree of satisfaction. If you don’t mind the simplicity, and can accept the potential issues with longevity, this is at least a reasonably-good real-time effort.