Attack on Toys Toy soldiers, real chaos

Most toy soldier games make you watch the war. Here you fight it. Set up factories and defenses, then grab a rifle and drop into the battle as one of your own soldiers, in third-person or first-person view. When the front line needs help, you are the reinforcement.

Prefer the map view? The two layers feed each other. You build a barracks from the strategy map, then spawn as a bazooka man to defend it when tanks roll in. Battles can swell to a hundred units or more across the map, and the game keeps running whether you are aiming down sights or drawing arrows on it.

Each mode asks something different of you. Invasion puts your HQ under endless enemy waves: build defenses, hold the line, survive as long as you can. Terror Invasion swaps soldiers for zombies, cockroaches and spiders, and the zombie army men can turn your own downed troops against you. Skirmish is classic base building: gather plastic, raise factories, wipe out the enemy HQ. Conquest has you claiming and defending territory across the map. PvP LAN lets you do all of it to a friend.

There is no story to follow, just battles you set up and fight. That suits the game: the fun is in the scenarios you make, not a plot you sit through.

The LAN mode turns the whole thing into a shared battlefield: private matches where you and a friend each build a base and race to destroy the other's HQ. It is straightforward to get into, set up a battle and start shooting, which makes it an easy pick for a casual evening of friendly rivalry.

And if competing is not the plan, the sandbox side works socially too. Set up absurd scenarios in the Toy Box, load someone's Workshop creation, and watch a hundred plastic soldiers sort it out while you both commentate. The battles are big, loud and unpredictable enough that half the fun is seeing what happens.