Game: Battle Camp

Social games get a bad rap, but in condemning them, critics often miss the creativity and fun to be had from such games. New match-three RPG Battle Camp has to plead guilty to everything the genre is vilified for—repetitiveness, microtransactions, and invasive social media mechanics—but it also contains a goodly amount of light-hearted entertainment as well.Despite having a good portion of fun to offer, Battle Camp makes a poor first impression by immediately slapping you with multiple registration prompts. These aren't necessary, but they look as if they are, and their sheer number could be enough to prevent some gamers from playing. Also oddly off-putting is the utter lack of intro. The game just starts with a tutorial, providing no sort of "how do you do?" and nothing to contextualize what you're doing. If you manage to get past this obstacle-strewn, awkward start, however, there's some interesting stuff in store.After creating a character from a handful of male/female presets, you find yourself at camp learning the game's basic mechanics from a cute little penguin. In your possession are a handful of cute little elemental monsters, and the idea is to wander around challenging other people's cute little monsters to fight. Each battle you engage in costs one energy (yes, Battle Camp uses the insidious energy system), and in a turn-based setup, each side attacks by matching three or more elemental icons on a 6x5 board.