Video Game / Stick War

In a world called Inamorta, you're surrounded by discriminate nations devoted to their individual technology, and struggle for dominance. Each society has developed its own unique way to wage war. Proud of their unique craft they have become obsessed to the point of worship, turning weapons to religion. Each believe that their way of life is the only way, and are dedicated to teaching their policies to all other nations through what their leaders claim as divine intervention, or as you will know it… war.

The others are known as: "Archidonis" the way of the archer, "Swordwrath" the way of the sword, "Magikill" the way of the mage, and "Speartons" the way of the Spear.

You are the leader of the nation called "Order". Your way is of peace and knowledge, your people do not worship their weapons as gods. This makes you a mark for infiltration by the surrounding nations. Your only chance to defend is to attack first, and obtain the technology from each nation along the way.

—Opening narration

Stick War is a Real-Time Strategy Flash game where, like many strategy games, you must build up an army of units and raise hell on all those who oppose you. Along the way, you'll need to manage resources - mainly your flow of gold - in order to build the structures and units necessary for you to win in battle. Stick Wars offers a nice array of units at your disposal including, the above four unit types as you play along, Miners, and later, Giants. You can take individual control of any of the units as you play the game, or you can issue your marching orders from above. Either way you slice it, Stick Wars is a great game that will keep you playing for hours.

The game also has a sequel called Stick War 2 and an Android app remake/adaptation called Stick War: Legacy. There is also a second sequel in development, which is called Stick War 3 and went into open beta in December 2021. It was given a full release in early March 2024.

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These games has the following tropes:

General Tropes

• Ambidextrous Sprite: The stick figure aesthetic means it's usually not a problem... but then you have the Spearton and Juggerknight's shields switching sides to always face the screen. Archis in Stick War 3 is another notable example as his character portrait sports an eyepatch, which is never seen in gameplay because his good eye is always facing the screen.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Like with many Real-Time Strategy games, there is a population limit. The first game has a limit of 20 units (of any kind), while the sequel sets a cap of 80 but gives each unit a different population cost. Notably, you could easily go over the cap in the first game with Magikill minions, as the Magikill's summoning spell was not restricted by the population cap even though their minions counted towards it. Legacy has a population cap of 40 with different units having different population costs, and Magikill minions no longer count towards the limit.
• Art Evolution:
  • While the basic stick figure aesthetic remained the same, characters' accessories became more elaborate in later games, and the animations became a lot more fluid.
  • While the Giant remained largely the same in Stick War 3, the other returning Chaos units got significant facelifts, as did the hero units returning from Legacy.
• Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Magikill. The ability to blast enemies and summon an infinite supply of minions (in the first game and Legacy) or rain destruction on enemies with powerful spells (in the second game) makes them potentially quite dangerous, but they are universally slow and fragile with some of the steepest costs and longest training times in the series.
  • Giants are huge and imposing, with the ability to stun units on hit and truckloads of health, however they tend to take even longer to train than Magikill and cost a fortune. Also, depending on the game, they might not even have much in the way of damage output.
• Butt-Monkey: The Swordwrath are effectively the setting's Cannon Fodder and tend to get the most elaborate death animations.
• Cargo Cult: Most of the factions you fight worship ways of combat so much they would wage war over it, and even have monuments. Yours, Order, is not one of these, and your goal in the game is to break these monuments down.
• Cool Crown: Order's monument sports one of these.
• Defend Command:
  • The game allows you to garrison all of your units, miners included, in your base, while invulnerable castle archers fend off the enemy (although castle archers are not given for free in Stick War 2). However, doing so will leave your monument open to attack.
  • Swordwrath and Speartons are able to defend themselves in 1 and Legacy. With Speartons, this reduces their speed; with Swordwrath, this renders them immobile in 1.
• Enemy Summoner: The Magikill are capable of doing this. Averted in the sequel, however, where Magikill carry purely offensive spells.
• Excuse Plot: Each game does technically have a story, though it takes a backseat to the action. 3 makes an attempt to expand on the lore of the series, though.
• Grievous Harm with a Body: The Giants in both games drag a corpse behind them, which they can use to bludgeon enemies.
• Hold the Line: A few missions consist of this objective. Advancing to the other side reveals no base.
• Instant-Win Condition: Destroy the enemy monument, and you win automatically.
• Invincible Minor Minion: Garrisoning units in all games aside from 2 summons invulnerable ranged units in your castle to fend off attacking enemies. In 2 and Empires, castle units must instead be obtained by researching an upgrade, and 3 keeps the castle archer upgrade in addition to adding back the old system. Depending on your faction, the castle units will be either Archidons, Toxic Deads, or Air elementals.
• Magic Staff: The Magikill wield these and conjure explosions that stun their enemy. They can also do this stun in melee fashion.
• National Weapon: Exaggerated to the point of Cargo Cult; see above.
• Our Giants Are Bigger: The Giants of No Man's Land, which you can also adapt into your army.
• Power Copying: What your faction, Order, is doing in a technological development sense.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Pretty much everybody. This is a setting defined by people that devote themselves to weaponry, after all.
• Real-Time Strategy: With stick figures!
• Revenue-Enhancing Devices: Stick War 2 and Stick War 3 have purely cosmetic skins and accessories that can be purchased with real money. Stick War: Legacy subverts this as the skins provide actual bonuses.
• Rising Empire: Order, which becomes known as the Order Empire in the sequel.
• Robe and Wizard Hat: Well, the Wizard Hat part at least is followed by the Magikill.
• Series Mascot: The Spearton is more or less the face of the games, most notably replacing the "I" in the game's logo. In fact, he's practically become the mascot of Stick Page in general.
• Shout-Out:
  • Several to 300:
    • The Speartons are pretty evidently stick figure Expies of the Spartans as depicted in the film/graphic novel.
    • After defeating the Speartons in the first game and Legacy, the blurb at the end of the level states "That was madness!"
    • In the second game, the level where you fight the Archidons is titled "Blot Out the Sun." Bonus points for the game giving you Speartons for the first time in this level.
  • The Earth Elemental's profile quote in Stick Empires is "We will, we will, punch you!"
  • Many, many unlockable cosmetics in Stick Empires are some kind of pop-culture reference. There's easily at least one or two on average for each unit.
• Stick Figure Game
• Worker Unit: Miners. You can upgrade their mining speed and load capacity.
• You Require More Vespene Gas: Gold is used as the primary resource across the series. Mana is introduced in 2 (and is replaced by Crystal in 3) as a secondary resource for advanced units and spells.

Stick War

• The Cavalry: Antagonist example; once the enemy's statue is reduced below a certain amount, they will automatically summon a wave of reinforcement units.
• Dawn Attack: Inverted. The Hold the Line missions are "Dusk Attacks".
• Final Boss: The huge Giant who initially serves as the enemy statue for the final level.
• Hero Unit: You can make any unit one temporarily by selecting them and manually controlling them. While under your control, the selected unit is faster and stronger, and a controlled Miner mines faster.
• Mistaken for Granite: What happens to the monument in the last mission, which reveals itself to be a very huge Giant and serves as the Final Boss.
• Primitive Clubs: What you start with, Clubmen, and they look rather pathetic. You get to upgrade them to swords after driving out Swordwrath and adopting their technology. Giants also carry these, and can do much more damage with them.
• The Savage Indian: Despite being called Natives in this game, they have the imagery that comes with it: feather on head, spear and shield, and entirely relentless to slaughter their invaders.
• Unique Enemy: The Natives. They only appear in the second mission, and they are basically reskinned Spearton (minus the ability to throw their spears) that the player is forced to fight very early on in order to march to Swordwrath.
• Villain Team-Up: After you defeat all four factions, you'll find their remnants terrorizing the other neutral nations like Pertland (Archidonis and Swordwrath) and Westwind (Archidonis and Spearton). After passing No Man's Land, you'll find every enemy working together to stop you and staging a Last Stand.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Despite the last few levels featuring all enemy nations teaming up to try and stop you, Speartons are nowhere to be found. This is rectified in Legacy.

Stick War 2

• Action Bomb: The Chaos Empire employs Bombers, which are more or less exactly what they sound like, requiring you to spread out your units to minimize damage.
• Artificial Stupidity: The default AI is that once something gets within their detection range (which is fairly large) they will hunt it down and try to kill it, more often than not resulting in your units getting swarmed and immediately beaten to death. This also applies to Merics, your healers, who will gleefully run headlong into battle, healing themselves the whole way. If a Meric ends up poisoned then it will alternate between healing everyone else and healing the sliver of poison damage it took in the last few seconds.
• Big Bad: Neither any character in the rebel nations or the Order Empire by way of Villain Protagonist, but Medusa, the leader of the Chaos empire.
• Canis Latinicus: Magikill and Marrowkai will chant Latin-sounding incantations when they cast spells.
• The Empire: What the remnants of the other factions sees Order as.
• Enemy Mine: The Order Empire and the rebel nations form a truce when the Chaos Empire rises.
• Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Undead from the land of Deads shamble, have a chance to poison by… throwing their own flesh at your units, and fall apart into bones upon dying.
• Evil Counterpart: Each of the Chaos Empire's units is one to a unit from the Order and rebel nations, with the exception of the Bomber (which can still be loosely equated to the Shadowrath as a speedy Glass Cannon).
• Finishing Move: When certain units kill certain other units, they have a chance to trigger a short kill animation (during which the attacking unit is invulnerable). For example, a Spearton can impale a leaping Crawler on his spear, while a Juggerknight can execute a Swordwrath with his own sword.
• Healing Factor: Chaos do not possess manual ways to heal and cure their units in battle, instead all of their units possess passive regeneration and curing. This means that poison will deal almost no damage toward them and it will be automatically cured after 15 seconds.
• La Résistance: The Archidons, Swordwrath, Magikill, and Speartons forge this in response to the Order Empire's rise.
• Let's You and Him Fight: Medusa has been letting the inhabitants of Inamorta do this, only pitching in when the Order Empire acquired Enslaved Giants for their army.
• Load-Bearing Boss: Of sorts. Once you defeat Medusa once and for all, her monument goes down as well.
• Nerf: Some of the Order units suffer from this, some subverting them.
  • Inverted with the Swordwrath, as they remain mostly the same, and with a new ability ("Rage") to boot. A headshot from an Archidon's arrow will no longer function as a One-Hit Kill, either, due to the headshot mechanic being removed. However, the re-balancing of damage numbers and the removal of the first game's upgrade system means that individual Swordwrath are nowhere near as damaging as they used to be.
  • Played straight with Archidonis, as their arrows can no longer one-shot Swordwraths. They still deal fairly high damage to lightly armored units, though.
  • Zig-zagged with the Spearton. Their range of movements are severely limited from the first game: they can no longer throw their spears, and are now unable to move or attack while blocking with their shields (barring an upgrade that allows them to Shield Bash). However, they have far higher health and defense, as a single unit is now capable of taking on even three Swordwraths at once and winning, in both the opening cutscene and in-game.
  • Played straight with the Magikill as they can no longer summon minions, instead gaining a more diverse repertoire of offensive spells including a far more damaging version of explosion, summoning electric walls, and poison the enemies.
  • Played with the Giants, as they are now separated into two separate units, Order and Chaos. Order Giants zig-zag this as they have different capabilities (throwing boulders of rock, dealing high damage with fairly fast rate of fire at a single unit) from the original ones. Meanwhile, Chaos Giants invert this trope as they are virtually identical with the ones in the previous game, but they now deal far higher damage towards units, while doing less damage to statues. They also possess Healing Factor.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: After Medusa revealed her intentions to the Order Empire, it and the rebel nations unite, with the Magikill representative lamenting that their infighting has made themselves weak, so that none shall ever live as rebels again.
• Ninja: After the events of the first game, some of the Swordwrath remnants managed to escape, rebuild, and become this, renaming themselves the Shadowrath.
• Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: Eclipsors are flying archers that can only be attacked by ranged units. After defeating them, you get to have Flying Crossbowmen, whose wings utilize artificial Bamboo Technology.
• Our Liches Are Different: The Marrowkai are skeletal sorcerers that wield staffs made of bone. They can send out large skeletal fists from the ground or a Grim Reaper to target an enemy.
• Outside-Context Problem: Implied to be the case with the Elementals, which don't even feature in the single-player campaign. Medusa was one to the Order-Rebel conflict, up until they decide to join forces and take down the Chaos Empire.
• Skeletons in the Coat Closet: Chaos Empire Miners have bones adorning their sacks.
• Storming the Castle: The last mission consists of you storming the Chaos Empire's capital.
• Suddenly Voiced: The first entry to have proper in-game voice acting.
• Taken for Granite: After reducing the final monument's health to half, Medusa comes out herself and inflicts this on all your units currently in the field. Thankfully, a group of units will appear for free as compensation, and she will only inflict a lesser version of this (that targets only one unit at a time) afterwards.
• Tech Tree: Unlike the first game, a proper one is present here.
• White Mage: The Merics, who are stick women trained by the Magikill in the healing arts.
• Zerg Rush: Fury Crawlers, which look like demonic monkeys. Compared to the Swordwrath, Crawlers are weaker, but cheaper and quicker to train, and become more powerful if more of them are active.

Stick Empires

• A Commander Is You: Order is Balanced, possessing some of everything and having units that are middle-of-the-road in cost and power. Chaos is the Spammer, employing units that tend to be cheaper in both resources and population and deal more damage, at the expense of being squishier. Elementals are the Elitist, as their fusion units are generally much more powerful than their Order and Chaos counterparts, but also have much higher resource and population costs.
• Competitive Multiplayer: The entire game revolves around two players fighting against each other until one side emerges victorious.
• Fusion Dance: The four basic units of the Elemental Empire can do this to create advanced units such as the Treatures and V.
• No Campaign for the Wicked: In the original game, you didn't even get to play as the Chaos Empire without shelling out real money. A later update that made all empires free to play changed this, though.

Stick War: Legacy

• Allegedly Free Game: Downplayed. While it's a free game with in-app purchases, the game is perfectly functional and beatable without spending a penny, in-game currency can be easily amassed through grinding, and the stuff you get with that currency is more of a bonus to an already complete game. However, paying up allows the player to get unlimited Crown of Inamorta entries and prevents the weekly missions from being Temporary Online Content by letting the player play all of them at any time, and the higher difficulties are extremely hard to beat without spells.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: The December 2018 patch adds alternate skins for each unit other than the Giant, which can be unpacked from chests or bought with gems. Skins also grant additional abilities to each unit. A future patch added skins for Giants.
• Arrange Mode: The Crown of Inamorta mode puts the player in a single-elimination tournament with four distinct game modes aside from the usual formula. Additionally, weekly missions can include many different twists and win conditions.
• Artificial Stupidity: The AI of many levels in the story campaign, such as the Magikill and Swordswrath, follow the rule that if they have more offensive units than you, they will constantly send every unit they have for an attack to try to defeat you, and when your offensive units outnumber theirs, they will fall back to gain numbers. However, since the miners and castle archers are not included in the offensive unit count, it is posible to build an army of only miners, stockading into your fortress, and wait for your castle archers to easily pick off the weak, standalone enemies that try to rush you. When your opponent runs out of gold to mine (and thus the resources to summon units), you can send your miners to kill them via Death of a Thousand Cuts.
• Bait-and-Switch: Remember the last mission in where the monument reveals itself to be a very huge Giant? In here, a bigger and badder Giant comes up from behind and kills it before proceeding to your troops.
• Balance Buff: Several units received this treatment, as compared to the original Stick War:
  • Swordwrath had their cost reduced from 150 to 125, gained a heavily-damaging leap attack, and can now block while moving. Additionally, their speed upgrade now also increases their health.
  • Archidons had their cost reduced from 400 to 300. Player-controlled Archidons now have an Arrow Cam that can be used to help aim their shots.
  • Speartons' shield upgrade now give them a chance to No-Sell any incoming attack, even when not actively blocking. Player-controlled Speartons' spear throw now does much more damage. A patch also gave them the ability to stun enemies by headbutting them.
  • Magikill now get to summon up to two minions by default, up from one (up to 5 with upgrades, increased from 4) and now deal more damage with their attack spell. Additionally, their staff upgrade now increases their spell damage instead of stun duration. A patch also caused their damage upgrade to also grant extra movement speed.
• Bling of War: Fully-upgraded units (aside from Giants, which simply get bigger) get shiny gold gear. The Golden Archidon and Golden Spearton you can summon from spells also have bright golden armor and weaponry.
• Boring, but Practical: Leaf skins are the only ones that offer no combat bonuses, instead giving the equipped unit a reduction to training time and cost. While they don't make your army stronger, they do make your army much cheaper and faster to build, and are both cheap to get and show up frequently in chests.
• Bribing Your Way to Victory: Entirely possible with the addition of power-ups and skins, which are purchasable with gems that can be amassed through gameplay or purchased with real money. However, being based on the original Stick War, the game is perfectly beatable without them.
• The Cavalry: In addition to enemies summoning reinforcements when their statue is at low enough health, a later patch gave statue upgrades the additional functionality of summoning reinforcements for the player in the same way.
• Clothes Make the Superman: In this game, the various skins you can unlock give your units extra bonuses:
  • Leaf skins reduce the unit's cost and training time.
  • Ice skins cause the unit to slow enemies on attack, or immobilize them briefly if user-controlled.
  • Savage skins reduce the duration of stuns dealt to the wearer and give them bonus damage against Deads. Player-controlled units also get increased attack and movement speed.
  • Lava skins cause the unit to reflect some of the damage they take onto the attacker, and user-controlled units ignite enemies hit to deal Damage Over Time.
  • Undead skins cause the wearer to revive as a Dead when killed, and user-controlled units also convert enemies that they kill into Deads (with the type dependent on the unit that's being converted).
  • Voltaic skins increase the wearer's health, non-player controlled will build up Voltaic Charge that affects a wide area that it hits, and player-controlled units will call forth bolts of lightning when they attack. AI enemies using the skin instead automatically release a lightning bolt when their Voltaic Charge is full.
  • Vamp skins increase the wearer's health, grant Life Drain on their attacks, and provide immunity to poison. Player-controlled melee units also strike a small area with their attacks.
• Creator Cameo: Crazy Jay, the Author Avatar of one of the game's creators, appears as an opponent in the Crown of Inamorta mode.
• Eye Beams: In Legacy, your monument is capable of doing this as a manually-activated (and purchased) power.
• Eye Scream: When the Final Boss is defeated, a lone Spearton runs in to finish it off by letting it pick him up so he can stab it in the eye.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: The Lava, Ice and Voltaic skins, in that order.
• An Ice Person: The Ice skins that can be unlocked for your units give them the ability to slow enemies on hit. Player-controlled units with the skin will instead immobilize enemies briefly.
• Gold-Colored Superiority: The Golden Archidon and Golden Spearton are summonable allies who can be controlled and are more powerful than the average Archidon and Spearton.
• King Mook: Three of the purchasable power-ups in the game allow you to summon either a Golden Archidon, Golden Spearton or Griffon the Great, a super beefed-up Giant. Both are controllable.
• Minimalist Run: invoked One of the game's achievements requires you to beat the campaign without spending upgrade points.
• My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Hacker.exe, the final opponent of the Crown of Inamorta, is the only one who can use multiple skins on each unit, and gains benefits of both, which the player cannot do.
• Nerf: Speartons had their cost increased (from 400 to 500) and no longer throw their spears when AI-controlled.
• New Game Plus: Unlike the original, Legacy allows you to replay campaign levels with your upgrades intact after beating the campaign. You can also continue earning upgrade points in doing so, letting you eventually fully upgrade everything.
• Night of the Living Mooks: The Endless Deads game mode pits the player against, as the name suggests, an endless horde of various kinds of Deads to see how long they can last. You also get to summon your own Deads using spells or the appropriate unit skins.
• Set Bonus: Equipping the same skin on all of your units gives your statue that skin as well. It grants the statue a minor boost to gold generation and health regeneration.
• Shock and Awe: The Voltaic skins, which grants units the power to summon lightning.
• SNK Boss: The very last member of the Crown of Inamorta roster, Hacker.exe, lives up to its name. It uses multiple skins on each unit, its gold deposits never run out, and it spams spells like there's no tomorrow. And when you drop its statue to half health, it summons the Final Boss from the campaign.
• Tournament Arc: The Crown of Inamorta mode lets you play through a single-elimination tournament against various AI opponents.
• Unusable Enemy Equipment: Despite skins existing in this game, there is no way that the Speartons can equip the skins that makes them look like the Natives fought in the second mission. While the Savage skin is the closest the Speartons get to looking like the Natives, they still lack the unique feather and shield design.

Stick War 3

• Civil Warcraft: Heavily prevalent in the Order campaign compared to the second game, involving you fighting multiple splinter factions of Order troops as Order.
• Color-Coded Multiplayer: In the 2v2 mode, friendly players are coloured blue and black while enemy players are coloured red and yellow.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: The 2v2 mode allows two players to play as one team in either a scenario (one enemy army controlled by an AI, albeit structured as two AI players) or against another team.
• Deflector Shields: One of the game's new spells, Projectile Barrier, creates a shield centered on your frontmost unit that enemy projectiles cannot pass through. The Meric's new ability creates a personal projectile shield with the same properties.
• Lady of War: Thera, the new leader of the Merics, is a General in the Order Empire, with noticeably feminine qualities.
• Limited Loadout: Instead of playing with pre-made factions, this game allows you to design your own armies by mixing and matching units, upgrades, spells, and passive enhancements. You're limited to 8 slots per army, with each upgrade or unit occupying a slot, forcing players to pick and choose the ones that best form a cohesive strategy.
• Hero Unit: A new category of units added are Generals, leaders of various factions that you can deploy as units in play. They tend to be more powerful versions of basic units with strong abilities, but only one of each can be active at a time.
• Only a Flesh Wound: When a General is defeated in battle, instead of dying they'll limp back to your base. Once they get there, they can be redeployed by paying their training cost again.
• Uniqueness Rule:
  • Mythical enchantments, marked by a star above their icon, are limited to one per army.
  • A player can only control one of each General.

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