Battle Mages: Sign of Darkness is the sequel to Battle Mages, a game released in Europe by Russian developer Targem that never found its way here to the US. Sign of Darkness is still in beta, but I was able to play an early build to find out what this title was all about.

You play a floaty spirit guy who takes up the lower portion of the screen at all times, and the game is an RPG in that your character learns spells and gains experience, but most of the combat takes place by purchasing units from towns and having them go out and fight for you. Sign of Darkness tries to be an RTS but comes up short on a few counts. Usually, when I’m given a minimap, I expect that I can click on it and move my view to wherever I clicked. However, in this game I have to manually fly my spirit character around, which gets more and more cumbersome as the game wears on.