Toss-Up Thursday: Upgrading the Towers

It’s time again for our whatever-we-want-to-talk-about Toss-Up Thursday. Today we’re going to use this blog post how I had initially intended to- as ‘Throwback Thursday’, where we’ll take a look back at recent developments related to something previously addressed on The Appcast. Today we’re going to take a look back at what’s happened in the world of iPhone Tower Defense Games since we did our show on them a few weeks ago.

Fieldrunners

Probably the biggest news in the world of iPhone Tower Defense since the Appcast focused on them has been the Fieldrunners 1.2 update that dropped the first week of February. Adding two new towers accessible in a new ‘Extended’ mode which is unlocked after you’ve beaten a map as well as a new even more challenging map and a new enemy to deal with on that map (a very fast-moving air unit), the Fieldrunners update seems to be pretty much exactly what everyone had been hoping we’d get out of the update.

I’ve not had the chance to test out the new map very much, but I have played through on the older maps a bit with the new mode so I could try out the new towers, and they are awesome. The flame tower does a whole lot of constant damage in a small area, and the mortar has a slow firing rate and an unusual attack area, but does devastating damage to a large area when it hits. There has been some argument that they unbalance the older maps slightly too much in your favor with just how devastating they can be, but I believe that the intent was more for them to be used on the newer on anyway, where especially the mortar has a good use in covering the three different entry points the enemies come in from.

The 1.2 update is all the more reason why Fieldrunner is one of the best Tower Defense games on the iPhone, and probably one of the best games overall.

INKoming!

One of the other notable Tower Defense games from our review was INKoming!, which also recently got a nice update as well as a price drop (though it’s unknown whether it’s going to be a temporary or permanent one) from its usual $4.99 down to $1.99. The update improved the tutorial, made some graphical changes, and added in sound effects which were lacking in the original release. The sound effects really aren’t anything to write home about, but they do add a bit to the gameplay and are a welcome addition. INKoming! takes some different and interesting approaches to the Tower Defense genre, so if you’ve been curious about it now looks to be the time to check it out!

The Creeps!

Wrapping up our updates on the games we looked at before, The Creeps went on sale yesterday for $.99, a steal compared to its usual $4.99- and this is for a game that we determined was solidly worth the $4.99 that they normally ask for it. It’s a fun, somewhat more cartoony but also deep tactically take on Tower Defense, and for the price of your average fart app you’ll doubtless get many hours of fun out of it.

Dragon Defense

Finally, there was a new TD game released this week- Dragon Defense ($2.99). It looks to be a fairly standard fixed-path tower defense game with a medieval theme, 5 towers, 8 enemy types, and 5 difficulty levels to play at. It looks like it could be a decent addition to the iPhone TD stable, but there hasn’t been much in the way of feedback yet on it that I’ve seen, so we’ll have to wait and see.