Review: Tower Defense

I’ve said before, some applications (more specifically, games) lend themselves more easily to a mobile platform such as Windows Phones. The trick for software developers is to create an immersive gaming experience without making the game difficult to use or compromising performance. Tower Defense from Color Stone does an admirable job of entertaining the user while still being perfectly playable.

Click on through for the full review.

Concept

The idea behind Tower Defense is that you have to defend your base (or Tower) from the enemy units. As you successfully complete waves, the units become faster or stronger. The goal is to strategize in the way that you defend your base in order to defend against the different combinations of units that you will face.

Features

There are a couple of different things that make the game somewhat complicated. First of all are the different towers that you can build. Different towers provide different firepower, and affect the enemy units in different ways; such as slowing them. As you progress the enemy units begin to move faster, taking them out of firing range faster; they also begin to be stronger, allowing them to take more damage; and you begin to encounter enemy units that fly, meaning they don’t have to maneuver around your towers and through a gauntlet of your towers.

Game Play

The nature of the game is that it is played in waves, or groups of enemy units. Once the wave has passed, and all of the enemies are destroyed or they reach your base; there is a break before the next wave begins. The Tower Defense interface offers controls to speed up the game (both the enemy units and your weapons), because the waves can be a little slow to progress at normal speeds. Game play can also be paused in order for you to build complicated paths for your enemies to navigate.

The strategy of the game comes into play as you attempt to steer the enemy units where you want them to go in order to inflict the maximum possible damage. Different types of towers have different costs, and as you successfully destroy enemy units you earn money in order to upgrade the quality and quantity of your defenses.

Conclusion

Tower Defense is one of the better games that I’ve seen for Windows Mobile. It can be a little repetitive after a while, but in order to effectively master the game you have to continually reconfigure and upgrade your defenses.

One caveat for Tower Defense is that you must have a device that supports VGA or WVGA resolutions. If you’re device meets those requirements, this really is an amazing game. Tower Defense is available at the Windows Marketplace for Mobile or if you prefer, the WMExperts Store.