Swords & Soldiers was released for WiiWare this week, and as I have been interested in this one since Nintendo Power covered it a few issues back, I doled out the $10 and dived in.

S&S is a side-scrolling RTS/Tower Defense hybrid in a deliriously bright and silly cartoon style. The game is driven entirely with the Remote pointer and was developed by Ronimo Games, the Dutch company responsible for the original PC version of de Blob (they did not develop the screwed-up Wii edition).

There are three campaigns, each following the story of a single tribe: the Vikings, Aztecs and Chinese. In the First Thirty, I breezed through most of the Viking campaign (about eight levels) and met all three factions.

Getting an RTS to work on a console has never been easy, but Swords & Soldiers has a cute simplified interface that makes it fast and fun. All of your unit-building, spellcasting and upgrading buttons run along the top of the screen, leaving room for the side-scrolling 2D action on the bottom. The buttons are large enough that I had no problem selecting between the various button options, although thanks to the jumble of units marching ever eastward, I found it tough to select specific dudes to target with, say, a healing spell.

Like many RTS games, your first job is getting those peons to mine gold… in the Viking tribe, the peons are busty Nordic gals. The only other resource is mana, but mana is not mined. It fills up by itself although some levels let you find treasure chests with bonus mana in them. Interestingly, both mana AND gold will slowly refill on their own, even if all your units are dead.

As soon as you have the money required to build a unit, the proper button lights up. The unit is manufactured almost as soon as you click, and all units march to the right immediately without stopping. You can’t save up a bunch of guys and then instruct them all to go in a group, the way you would bind units in Starcraft. In the Viking faction, you get a melee fighter and a ranged attacker to start… although I have not yet played as the Aztecs or the Chinese, I get the impression that each tribe gets its own unique units and spells.

Spells are your chance to become directly involved with your army (and enemies). The Vikings have a heal spell, a damaging lightning bolt and a freezing snow cloud. Click the spell button, then click your target! As I mentioned, sometimes I would not select the exact unit I intended, particularly when you get small battalions of guys all bunched up. I suspect the readily available funds and speedy unit regeneration make up for any imprecision in this area.

There is a two-player offline split-screen mode (which I have not tried) and some bonus challenge levels outside of the three main campaigns… so it feels like a great amount of content for your $10.

The Viking levels are really easy inside your first half-hour, but I will cop to playing a later level that went on for twenty minutes (a hard-won battle!) So I expect to devote some serious time to Swords & Soldiers, particularly if the multiplayer is OK. Looks like a WiiWare winner to me.