Stickman War

A combat game where the progression is the point. Battles are short and mostly automatic in their resolution, and what you spend between them — on stats, skills and equipment for your heroes — is what determines whether the next one is winnable. The fighting exists to fund the build. That structure rewards planning over reflexes. Upgrades interact: attack speed is worth more with high damage than with low, survivability matters only if the fight lasts long enough to need it, and spreading points evenly produces a hero who loses to everything specialised. The game is honest about when this has gone wrong — a wall is a wall, and grinding the same battle does not move it, which pushes you to reconsider rather than repeat. There is a long ladder of opponents and a steady trickle of new equipment and skills to rearrange the build around. Battles take a couple of minutes and the between-fight decisions take longer, which is the right balance for this kind of game. It plays with taps on a phone, runs on anything, and saves progress reliably.