Plastic Platoon: Backyard Battles

Plastic Platoon: Backyard Battles is a free 3D strategy game where green plastic army men fight a rebellion of toys that have come to life. Wind-up robots, teddy bears with dart blasters, RC race cars, toy dinosaurs and a giant robot have built a base out of a toy chest, a doll house and a pile of building blocks, and it is up to you to take the backyard back.

Battles play out at toy scale in three scenes: a freshly mowed lawn, a sandbox with buckets and sandcastles, and a stone patio with chalk drawings and garden gnomes. Giant soda cans, flower pots and baseballs become terrain that both armies have to fight around.

How it plays

Build a Generator and a Plastic Recycler. The recycler comes with a free Dump Truck that scoops up piles of spilled toy bricks and turns them into plastic, your money. Train riflemen and bazooka men at the Barracks, build jeeps and tanks at the Motor Pool, research upgrades like Thicker Plastic and Heavy Ammo, then wreck every toy structure on the map. A Sun Lens Tower, a giant magnifying glass, burns attackers with focused sunlight, and the Field HQ calls in a toy bomber for air strikes.

Easy to pick up

An objective panel guides you through the first buildings, and Easy mode gives you extra money and a slow opponent. The controls are the familiar ones: left-click or drag to select, right-click to move or attack, mouse wheel to zoom. Plastic soldiers hop along on their bases and topple over when they are hit, which is somehow very satisfying.