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Chibi spin-off Assassin's Creed Rebellion out now, actually pretty good

Worth a stab.

Assassin's Creed Rebellion, Ubisoft's long-in-development mobile strategy game spin-off, is now finally available to download on iPhone, iPad and Android.

Is it worth some valuable space on your mobile device? Actually, yes - I've been playing and it feels like Ubisoft's best stab at a mobile Assassin's Creed to date.

Gameplay is split between Fallout Shelter-style base building - filling rooms in your 15th century Spanish headquarters with places where you can, for example, train your Assassins or gather intelligence - and then Assassin's Creed Chronicles-style side-scrolling missions.

Hay!

Each side-scrolling mission has you build a team of heroes with a mix of skills, then select which you want to tackle a specific mission area. So, for example, you may come up against a room which requires stealth to clear - you'll want someone talented at being sneaky for that - and then for the next room someone with strong DPS, or who can disable traps.

One of Rebellion's strengths is its enormous recruitable cast, which is at present heavily weighted towards the series' classic Renaissance-era heydey. The game's opening stars legendary Assassin Ezio palling up with Assassin's Creed movie stars Aguilar and Maria.

From there you can unlock a vast array of familiar and not-so-familiar faces - Machiavelli, Shao Jun, Rosa, Yusuf - with more exotic choices such as Assassin's Creed Odyssey's Alexios and Kassandra on the horizon. And, because more than three million people pre-registered to try the game, you also get gifted Ezio's comedy uncle Mario.

It's-a-me, Mario!

There's a lot to do in the game - a storyline full of missions where you take down a Spanish Templar leader, daily challenges, and plenty of free chances to add more heroes to your roster. You can also pay for more heroes if you'd like to speed things along, but at least initially this does not seem at all intrusive.

Assassin's Creed Rebellion is the work of Fallout Shelter developer Behaviour Interactive - which explains some of the similarities. You can download it free via the App Store or Google Play.