Jelly Troops

Genre: Real-Time Strategy

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Split-Screen / Online)

.

Review:

Jelly Troops, released in 2025 on PC and Nintendo Switch, is a family-friendly Real-Time Strategy game that boils the genre down to its most simple core elements, putting players into the role of magicians growing and commanding a growing army of slimes with the aim of collecting flags and bringing them back to a base.

The presentation here is simple, using colorful, cartoony cel-shaded 3D visuals that work well enough for the gameplay, save for perhaps a lack of contrast with the environment. This is backed by whimsical music that fits the game’s accessible gameplay and light-hearted themes, albeit without being too memorable.

In simple terms, Jelly Troops is basically a competitive-focused version of Pikmin, where players control a character in the environment directly tossing his slimes onto objects to grab them or otherwise interact with them. you have slimes bring fruit back to your base to grow more slimes, toss slimes onto flags to capture them, or toss slimes onto wall-building structures to create walls that block off both you and your opponent.

In addition to tossing slimes, players can also grab up magic spellbooks that act as power-ups that can help them or harm enemies. Also, there are neutral guardians stomping around the environment that will harm anyone that wanders near them, and which can be baited into positions you believe are more advantageous.

Players win in one of three things happen – either when the timer runs out and you have more flags captured than the opponent, when you’ve captured three flags, or when you’ve captured the large flag sitting in the opponent’s base.

Overall, I think this is a pretty well-constructed Strategy game that’s different enough from both Pikmin and from other Strategy games to truly set it apart within the genre. It’s big problem – a severe lack of content. There’s no single-player here apart from a pretty boring mission mode that has you completing a series of goals. There are no rule variants. And despite that this game seems like it would work well with four or even eight players, you’ll only ever play with two. On that note, good luck finding online opponents – online lobbies are pretty empty.

Despite these flaws, Jelly Troops makes for a delightfully satisfying multiplayer game if you can get a friend to sit down with you and challenge your slime-collecting skills. It’s just a shame that your enjoyment of this game is really going to hinge on that point, and even then you might get bored before long after seeing how little variation there is here. I really wish just a bit more time had been spent on this game to fill it with content and options. Lacking this, it’s merely a good Strategy game without the legs to carry it very far.

tl;dr – Jelly troops is a family-friendly Real-Time Strategy game that plays a bit like a competitive version of Pikmin where players take the role of wizards commanding an army of slimes. The gameplay here is fairly-balanced and accessible, making for a pretty enjoyable Strategy game… if you can find an opponent. Unfortunately, empty online lobbies and a depressing lack of content and options makes this a hard sell unless you have a friend to play it with. If so, you might find this worth a look, but don’t expect to play it for very long before that lack of content has you looking to another game for variety.

Grade: B-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Jamie and His Cats, Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Johannes, Jaka, Jared Wark, Gabriel Coronad-Medina, Francis Obst, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}