With a few set rules you can build your vehicles from the constituent parts. These lego blocks are supplied by feeding your Part-O-Matic with resources, including dedicated resource blocks, rocks, sheep and enemy remains. The Part-O-Matic is a mission-critical device that must be protected at all times, under pain of having to redo the level.

Tanktics, then, appears to be a simplified or perhaps more structured realtime strategy game, but it is a puzzle game. For starters, the small terrain is littered with just the right combination of rocks, add-ons, power-ups, routes, mud, water and quicksand, enemy forces and resource blocks to limit the possible number of solutions. There's no point in just swiping the rocks as a building resource, as they are probably required to block routes.

But the control system is determined to slow you down. It's frustratingly difficult to accurately move around the map. There's no way to jump to areas using the map (which is small and unclear anyway), and you can't bookmark important areas (although a shortcut key returns you to the Part-O-Matic). Some levels are so frantic at first that you have to play it a few times just to figure out what your first move should be.

Graphically the game is old-fashioned, from the simplistic character designs to the blocky resolution. There really should be an opportunity to switch to a higher resolution so that you can see more of the map at once.

The control system is annoying enough, but the tough levels are depressingly similar, despite being set over four time zones. The upshot of all this inflicted frustration is that Tanktics just isn't all it could have been.