The Appcast #3: January 25, 2009 – Tower Defense Games

This week’s core topic: Battlestations! A look at Tower Defense Games.

You can find the full show notes below the cut. Episodes can be downloaded by clicking the Episodes tab above.

Intro/Outro Music: Borderline D.U. Mix  from Mixter Two – I Don’t Know What I’m Doing by Brad Sucks.

Show Outline:

1. Introductions
2. Ustream-ing the Innauguration
3. Clippy and hClipboard bring Copy/Paste for Jailbroken iPhones
4. New Apps for the Week
5. Core Topic: Tower Defense Games

New Apps discussed for the week ending on January 25, 2009:

1. Sho Chiku Bai – Free Lite version or $2.99 Premium version – A pachinko game that was originally released a month ago, but this Lite version has just arrived. All the same features as the Premium version, except for saving data. Colorful, quick, and certainly unique to the library of apps.
2. Archibald’s Adventures - Free Lite version or $1.99 Premium version – A puzzle platformer with some really nice graphics and fun gameplay. Very basic, but still of very high quality. The presentation of the cut scenes is fun and the whole theme of the game was especially enjoyable. Gameplay is somewhat unique and focuses a lot of figuring out ideal placement. If anything, check out the lite version and perhaps you might be surprised.
   
3. VOID Lite – Free – A fun space shooter reminiscent of Wing Commander Privateer though in a top-down fashion rather than in first person. Though a full version is coming February, this Lite version is a welcome addition and features some halfway realistic space physics that require the player to worry about inertia. With a pleasant upgrading system, we’re waiting for the Premium version (due in February) so we can pick it up (if the price isn’t too high).
4. Jetset: A Game for Airports – $4.99 – Originally a gag flash game, Jetset has made a great transition over to the iPhone. Get ready to investigate carry-on baggage for dangerous items and strip search suspicious travelers. Great fast-paced gameplay and sharp graphics make this an admirable choice, but the $4.99 price tag is a bit much for what was once a free game.
5. Rev Lite – Free Lite version or $49.99 Premium version – OBDII data analysis/tracking app for cars- requires wireless OBDII interface for your car. Very full-featured, and probably worth it if you can use the data properly, however the car interface for it is another $250. The lite version of Rev does have a G-force tracker and a GPS tracker.
6. iDodge Space Ninja Lite- Free Lite version or $2.99 Premium version- Tilt the iPhone to move your spaceship through harrowing obstacles and past bullets all while being able to hold down on the touch screen to engage slow motion and weave through the danger. Great music, decent graphics, and really tight controls make this a huge winner. If you haven’t checked out Space Ninja by this point, we urge you to check out the Lite version and see what all the fuss is about.

Picks of the Week:

Melody Match Lite (Bob) – Free Lite version or $3.99 Premium version- Audio-memory card-matching game with a lot of sound clips & music. Brings up the question as to whether they paid to license all the audio or not… though little enough may be used to not require it/be ’sampling’. Overall very well done and polished app (with awesome water effects during the Load screens & gameplay).

1112 Lite (Kevin) – Free Lite version or $7.99 Premium version – Though certainly hard to blind buy given the high price of $7.99 for the first episode, this Lite version really shows off what most of us have been missing. For those that love adventure games, this is right up your alley. Add in the great graphical presentation, an intriguing premise, and some wonderful puzzles (that don’t become too wrapped up in confusion) and you’ve got a fantastic game that makes you wonder if this is the start of a new era of adventure games on the mobile platform. This is DS quality and at a fraction of the price. Definitely pick up this Lite version and discover what you might have been missing.

Silly App of the Week:

iFight (Bob) – $0.99 – Think of iSaber but with swords, whips, and fists and you’d have iFight, a silly motion-based sound app that works for those of us not as attuned to the Force. Definitely cheesy, but there should be no other way to describe the silly app of the week.

Jelly Car (Kevin) – Free – A wonderful tech demo that I originally discovered on the Xbox XNA marketplace, this quick game involving bouncy physics and crayon graphics is amusing despite the frustrating gameplay. Sure, you get stuck a lot. But the fun is in the crazy bouncing and destruction.

Core Topic: Tower Defense Games

During this episode, we discussed the majority of the Tower Defense games available on the iTunes Application Store. We did not cover every one of them, but we tried to take a look at all of the games that did seem the most polished. For those unfamiliar with Tower Defense games, we urge you check out Desktop Tower Defense – a free Flash game.

Tap Defense – Free – The only free, full-featured TD game, Tap Defense is pretty standard fare for the genre though the updates have been encouraging. As a static path TD game, it plays fine and is a good introduction to those that are looking to get into the genre and possibly upgrade to a paid game. Worthwhile at the start, but a bit difficult to get into once you’ve had a taste at some of the other priced TD games.

Fieldrunners – $4.99 – the big guy. At $4.99, you get a very polished tower defense game that is based entirly on mazing. While in god mode, you can build the standard types of towers, gun, slime, rocket, and lightning, and you level the towers with money. The graphics are especially nice, employing a cartoonish 2D look out of a children’s book. Animations are smooth, sound is excellent, and the additional level support updates are nice. Originally Fieldrunners came with just one map, but an update added a second map that involved two targets to protect. If you want a basic TD game with overall strength, Fieldrunners is it.

7 Cities – Free Lite version or $4.99 for Premium Version (NOTE: On sale for $2.99) – a TD game that is structured very much like Pixeljunk Monsters. The attackers appear in the form of boats on a preset river and you must build towers along the river to destroy the attackers before they reach the target city. Leveling is automatically granted based on how much a tower has attacked an enemy. Adding to the strategy, each time a tower levels up, you receive blue gems that can be exchanged for even more upgrades to a tower of your choice. The game also presents bonus gems at the end of each successful map that can be used to unlock more upgrades for future use. Graphics are clean and the skin of boats going down a river is clever. Animation is also good, as is the pace of the gameplay. The number of maps is especially pleasing, but also expected since the playing field is static each time.

Retro Defense – Free Lite version or $3.99 Premium Version – Though graphically it feels like the usual wireframe retro fare, Retro Defense was a mess of choppy animation, confusing menus, and ultimately standard fixed path gameplay. While the game is built to be a solid, standard TD game, we were still very much put off by the frame-rate issues, especially since Fieldrunners and 7 Cities do much more without the same problems.

Crystal Defenders – Free Lite version or $7.99 Premium Version – One of the big issues we had with Crystal Defenders was the poor implementation of its port from the cell phone to the iPhone. We both had problems with the fact that the actual game screen occupies only half the screen when in portrait mode and that the accuracy of the touch controls was difficult without use of the big and ugly touch control pad that occupies the bottom half of the screen. Overall, the sprites, gameplay and polish of the game is certainly prevalent, but we just could not accept such a terrible port from the already well-respected Square Enix. At $7.99, we definitely can’t recommend it. If Square Enix ever does get on the job and does a proper port to the iPhone’s capabilities, then we’d be much friendlier to the game.

The Creeps – Free Lite version or $1.99 Premium version (NOTE: Price increased to $4.99 on Jan 25) – We were immediately impressed by the great graphics, but we were even further impressed by the new gameplay mechanics in this static path TD game: (1) the ability to destroy the environment to gain money and open areas to build more towers and (2) the use of premium towers. Switching between opening up the environment and defending against creeps was very fun and very, very tense. For the cases where a huge boss monster approached, the premium towers were an especially welcome idea to shift the gameplay towards a new and unique mechanic each time. Truly worthwhile for the price.

Zombie Attack! – $1.99 – Defending a shack from oncoming zombie assaults is quite fun. This is actually a 3D title and it involves controlling a character on the field with freedom to build wherever possible on the field as well. The towers are interesting in that they involve weapons that usually are used to kill a zombie (axes especially). A few nice differences are the ability to stand next to your towers to give them a power boost and the need to dodge zombies with your character. Tilt controls to move your character seemed like a bad idea at first, but they’re actually quite solid and rarely did the control feel out of place. A very pleasant surprise.

INKoming – $4.99 – One of the newest TD games, but also one of the most strategic. All of the towers in the game use ink as their ammo, but the ink supply is limited and each tower needs to be adjusted to decide how much ink each will use. The strategy shifts from the usual fare and becomes very dependent on supply management for most of the game. Additionally, the player is given the opportunity to destroy the actual path that the creeps advance on, but doing so can be risky and difficult. Very much the most different of the TD games we played.

Besiegement – $3.99 – While the graphics feel dated and the price is pretty high, Besiegement holds its strengths in the retro PC game look and the solidity of its gameplay. The campaign is interesting enough for a static path TD game and there’s a very nice variety of towers. Pacing goes fairly quickly and the game plays smoothly as well. Definitely fun for a hardcore TD gamer or even someone looking for a bit more of a retro TD game, but the extra dollar for 7 Cities or Fieldrunners is a better investment overall.

Mote-M – $0.99 – Though very plain, Mote-M gets some points for trying to do something different with the leveling-up structure. Placement becomes a very key factor in this open field TD game, though a lot of new players are going to find themselves having to make mistakes and learn along the way because the menus are incredibly difficult to understand and the instructions give hardly any help. Hard to recommend at $0.99, but there is some potential here.