Squad Oath

I opened Squad Oath with pretty relaxed expectations. A cute-looking survival game, I figured, would take a few taps per stage. The first two stages went exactly like that: the wooden cart shot on its own and all I had to do was drive it in circles with the monsters chasing.

On stage three the game changed its tune. The sixth wave crashed in from three sides at once, and the cart's 1,000 HP dropped to 398 and then to 0. The screen showed a single word, Defeated, and only then did I notice the whole arena was covered in green gems the cart never got to drive over and collect.

How a stage plays out with one wooden cart and three riders

Your squad isn't a group of characters on foot like in most games of this kind. It's a six-sided wooden cart on legs, carrying up to four heroes seated around its rim. Each rider picks targets and fires on their own; your only job is steering the cart away from where the monsters are thickest.

A stage is split into eight or nine waves, each bigger than the last. Every few waves a line of text scrolls across the screen warning that something big is coming. After the final wave you have to drive the cart yourself to the boss marker at the edge of the arena, because the game won't take you there.

The four seats aren't all open from the start either: you begin with three heroes and need to recruit another to fill the fourth. Each has their own fighting style: a long-range archer, a mage hurling long-burning fireballs and a swordsman who fights up close.

Dead monsters drop green gems, and green gems are your XP. This detail decides the whole run, because the cart's pickup radius is very small, so any gem that lands a little too far away stays there until the battle ends.

Every level-up, the game makes you pick one of three cards

Each time you have enough XP, the battle freezes and three upgrade cards appear for you to pick one. Some add damage directly to a specific hero, some change how a hero shoots, like one extra arrow per shot, and some restore 30% of the cart's HP right when you're hanging by a thread.

So your build differs every run, and that's the game's real roguelite side, not just a label on the box. Mid-stage, two small interludes pop up too: a random reward spin and one that lets a hero evolve on the spot.

Outside battle: patrols, recruiting and a harbor tavern

Outside battle is a journey map, each stage with its own scenery, unlocking as you advance. Next to the battle button is a patrol slot that works as idle income. It produces 145 gold per hour plus skill books, and stores up to eight hours before it stops.

Heroes come from the recruit slot, and this is gacha in the most literal sense. Each recruit costs 300 diamonds, and the guarantee counter runs to 300 pulls. The gem hunt for upgrading gear works the same way, with a ten-pull costing 500 diamonds.

Once you've pulled a new hero, you have to press and hold its card and drag it onto an empty seat on the cart, because a simple tap does nothing. The game also runs seasonal events; when I played, it was a harbor tavern open for more than 23 days.

Five meat per run, and this is where the game starts asking for money

Entering a battle costs 5 meat and the meat bar maxes out at 30, so you get six runs in one go. The meat timer takes about seven to nine minutes per point, so waiting for a refill from zero takes nearly four hours.

Losing still costs the full 5 meat. Lose on a hard stage and you've burned a run and gotten no rewards to upgrade your gear for the next one. That loop is exactly where the game nudges you toward the two monthly cards waiting in the shop.

The VIP card costs $6.99 a month and pays 60 diamonds and 2 tickets a day. The $9.99 Value card is a clear step up: on top of 100 diamonds a day, it removes ads, enables double speed on stages you've already cleared, gives you an item magnet from the start of each run and adds four hours of idle time.

Look at that list for a moment and you'll notice something a bit funny. The three most valuable things the $9.99 card sells you are all things the mod unlocks out of the box.

What the mod turns on, and what you see when you do

The MOD button floats in the left corner of the screen; tap it and a five-line panel appears: God Mode, Damage, Battle speed up, Map-wide item magnet and No ads. Damage and Battle speed up also have sliders for setting your own multiplier; the rest are plain on/off switches.

Before touching any switch, I replayed a clean run to get a baseline, and it ended in defeat just like before. Only then did I turn the mod on and re-enter the same stage.

Same stage, same lineup, the only difference being the God Mode switch was on. This time the result was a victory with 100% HP remaining, after all eight waves and the final boss. My gear didn't change between the two runs, so the difference came down to that one switch.

Battle speed up is the easiest to see, because the game itself draws a speed badge in the left corner. With it off the badge reads x1; set the multiplier to 3 and it changes to x3 right away, and the slider goes all the way to x5, two and a half times the speed the monthly card sells.

The item magnet is my favorite, even though it sounds minor. With it off, by the second minute the arena floor looks like it's covered in gravel, with gems everywhere. With it on, the floor stays spotless and you level up much faster, because gems fly straight to the cart the moment a monster falls.

No ads is subtler. The game doesn't cram full-screen ads into battles to begin with; every spot marked ADS is an optional view for extra rewards. With this on, I tapped the check-in double reward button and got the full set of skill books without watching a single video to the end.

The Damage switch fooled me at first. Same stage, same level 2: with the multiplier at 1 or pushed all the way to 100, the number popping over the monsters' heads was the same 143, and the wolves didn't seem to die any faster. The reason is that the mod multiplies damage where HP is subtracted, not where the number is drawn, and on an easy stage you're already one-shotting everything. Measured in the same battle over the same 31-second window, the game made 142 HP deductions at 1, only 42 at 100, and 225 again after switching back to 1.

Three things to know up front so your expectations are right

• The speed multiplier is locked in when you start a battle. Move the slider while a battle is running and that run keeps its old pace; you have to leave and start a new run to see the change.
• This game requires a connection to play. When I cut the connection and reopened it, it sat on a black screen showing only a retry button and never even reached the login screen.
• God Mode only keeps your cart from losing HP; monsters are just as tanky as in the original. On long stages you won't die, but you still have to sit through all eight or nine waves to finish.

What I liked and what annoyed me

The easiest thing to praise is the art: it's tidy, the characters are drawn round and cute, and the arena is bright enough to read the monsters clearly even at the busiest moments.

The most annoying thing is how many purchase pop-ups there are. In a single test session I counted the $0.99 costume pack popping up twice, the monthly card once, the check-in once and the seasonal event once. Every one of them barges in right after a battle ends.

On the store, Squad Oath held 4.6 stars from 229 ratings and over 5 thousand downloads. That's a thin pool of ratings, so don't treat the score as settled. But the praise gets one thing right: runs are short, which makes it a good fit for a few spare minutes.

Who should download it, and who should skip it

If you like auto-shooters with roughly three-minute runs and upgrade cards that let you build in different directions, this is an easygoing pick. You don't need to learn much to get going.

And if you gave up exactly where I almost did, losing a stage and then watching the meat timer count down for nearly four hours, the mod removes exactly that. God Mode keeps runs from being wasted, the magnet levels you faster, and battle speed up gives away for free what the shop prices at nearly ten dollars a month.