Painted Kingdoms combines real-time strategy with firefighting on lavish maps made entirely of paper

Paint the map so it won't burn

It takes a lot to get me interested in anything tower-defensive these days, and I'm getting pretty grouchy about paper-based aesthetics, too, but "minimalist strategy game" Painted Kingdoms combines these trends to promising effect. It takes place in a living book, where each chapter is illustrated according to a different cultural heritage, extending from Europe to China.

As a roving general-hero, your job is to build a settlement by filling in the blank pages with your magic brush, giving rise to both fortifications and lovely wild spaces. Then, you must fight off waves of badniks who threaten to set the paper alight, reducing your pop-up terrain to ash.

It's a fun blend of lightweight RTS combat – you'll grow forests for cover and station critters such as deer at chokepoints – and firefighting, with lakes slowing the flames as they make beautiful inroads on your dominions. During the combat bits, you can swoop around wielding your magic brush like a firehose.

Each game starts out as grey waste, but the more successful you are, the brighter, more detailed and (by the sounds of it) more culturally specific the structures and their surroundings become. There are also boss battles in the shape of Cinder Lords, "each embodying the myths and fires of ancient civilizations". I like the idea of a videogame that's a playable anthropological history of flame, though I don't think Painted Kingdoms is going that far.

There's a demo for Painted Kingdoms on Steam, if you fancy it. Alternatively, you could check out Ancient Greek defend-me-do Minos, in which the architect Daedalus must create the absolute best labyrinth to stop those damn fool kids slaying the minotaur. Julian gave Minos a try earlier in the month and was keen, declaring that "each map isn't just a puzzle, it's a puzzle that reinvents itself before your eyes." Mark was also enthused when he sampled the demo last September, even though he's a damn fool kid himself who has never played Dungeon Keeper.