Animated potatoes with a penchant for puns and wisecracks return in Holy Potatoes! A Spy Story?!, the latest instalment in home-grown developer Daylight Studios' Holy Potatoes series.

Like the previous three games in the series, the latest entry is best described as a resource-management game.

This time round, your objective is to manage a spy agency, which entails tasks like hiring the right mix of spies with diverse skills and creating wacky gadgets.

Send these spies on missions to infiltrate an enemy location and bypass its security.

In gameplay terms, it boils down to identifying weaknesses in the security detail. For instance, a locked door may be too sturdy to be easily bashed open, but its lock may be picked. A guard could be charmed by an agent or knocked out.

Picking the right course of action and having the right spy with the appropriate skill level will determine whether the mission succeeds or fails.

Of course, your spy may carry multiple gadgets to improve the odds of pulling off the caper successfully.

Thus the other aspect of the game involves building facilities to make better gadgets and to train agents to improve their skills.

The game takes place on an isometric map. Your roster of spies automatically moves around this map between missions.

A Build option pauses the flow of time, giving you ample time to decide what new facilities to build and where to place them.

Older buildings and decorative fixtures that are not needed anymore can be demolished to make space for new facilities.

Most of these buildings, however, can be upgraded multiple times to unlock new items or options.

The game gradually eases you into its gameplay loop, starting with a small roster of agents and limited facilities. Time can be sped up to make events proceed at a faster rate, especially when progressing in a mission.

As the game progresses and becomes more complex, I find it difficult to keep my agency solvent.

Every action in the game comes at a price - it costs $tarch, the in-game currency, to train spies, build facilities, create gadgets or decrypt acquired intelligence.

Perhaps a more experienced player may find it easier, but to me, the Normal difficulty is quite a challenge.

It also gets rather tedious and repetitive after a while because the gameplay remains the same.

I am not too enthused by the storyline. The game makes numerous anime, games and pop culture references, which are fun initially, but quickly get old.

The dialogue between the twins Ren and Rexa, who are leading the spy agency and using it to investigate the disappearance of their parents, is heavy on puns and juvenile humour.

It is not my cup of tea, though given that the series has now yielded four games, it clearly has its appeal.

• Verdict: Daylight Studios sticks to its tried-and-tested formula with another resource-management game, but the pun-laden humour wears thin in this fourth instalment of the series.