I had been playing some GemCraft Chasing Shadows - a fun little tower defense game, sequel of a flash game I used to play a while ago - when I noticed that there had been another one of these that I hadn’t tried out, since I am a big fan I gave it a shot! I had a good time with it, but I ultimately couldn’t sink the time or effort required to complete the game because at some point it just became too tough for me and looking at videos or tutorials to beat every level I had issues with wasn’t part of my plans. Still a really interesting tower defense game!
I was a bit surprised to see a sequel to Infinitode already - since I had discovered the original only a small while ago - but this tower defense game is chuck-full of content with not too much of the usual free-to-play friction that appears in any game supported by that economical model. With tons of missions on each level, an addictive daily quest system, a bunch of upgrades, cool towers and a good difficulty progression, I had a good time with it still and played it a bunch.
Mindustry is a strange mix of tower defense and factory management where you have to build miners, builders, conveyor belts, research upgrades and collect resources while at the same time defending from enemies that attack your structures in waves using turrets and other means of defense. This game has proven too stressful for me, too unwieldy to play on the iPad, and ultimately too difficult.
Infinitode is a free tower defense game on iOS that boasts huge maps, a large skill tree with tons of upgrades, and a good number of tower and enemy types. I think the core idea is pretty interesting, but the monetization system kinda ruins the whole thing and makes it an extremely grindy endeavor that could’ve been better served in the game design sense if the game had been premium with tweaked balance. I had an okay time with it, but I just couldn’t see any light out of the grinding tunnel - and the progression was just so slow - that I stopped.
Gunhouse is a very strange mix of tower defense and puzzle game about matching blocks and using special weapons and abilities to protect your house from wave after wave of strange and unique enemies. With a very interesting visual style, great music and solid mechanics, I had a good time with this game, even if the core of the puzzle system felt a bit hard to grapple with for a big chunk of my time with it and the variety of weapons and powers left me more perplexed than anything else. I finished this one, so you know it’s at least up there in my book!
Arknights is an interesting take on the mobile gacha game where the gameplay is a tower defense instead of being an idle RPG or a slight tactics game. I had an okay time with it, but didn’t stick with the game long enough to see the depth of what it could offer. I was repelled almost immediately by the whole ‘free mobile game’ feeling that permeates everything about it. The endless menus, seemingly infinite number of different currencies to buy, grind and use to upgrade vague stats and skills. It’s too bad, because tower defense games are one of my favorite genres, and this could’ve been neat!
TurretZ is a weird mix between twin stick shooter, idle game and tower defense. I'm not sure which of these genres this game is supposed to be, but it isn't very fun. You have a planet in the middle of the screen with a whole lot of enemies around, and the planet rotates while auto-firing with various weapons, after you defeat a bunch of enemies, a boss appears. Defeat that boss, and you get to the next level, which is almost identical to the previous one. The planet is tough to control, your weaponry is unreliable, and progression is extremely slow, I didn't enjoy TurretZ much.
Wizard Swipe is an iOS game where you have to 'swipe' the screen to throw spells at waves of advancing enemies to protect your castle, using more powerful spells on cooldowns and upgrades to survive better. It started pretty okay, but the difficulty curve quickly ramped up to a point where I would have needed to grind too much in order to get further. It's too bad, since the game has a nice blend of challenges and upgrades so I wish I could've stomached to play some more.
SquareSpace ate my Frontier Defense review.
It's a neat tower defense cross idle iOS game, the premium currency is fast to get and there's plenty of stuff to do, heroes and shooting units to upgrade and buttons to tap in order to attack and unleash special abilities. I had a fun time with it.
Defense 2 follows much in the footsteps of its predecessor in the tower defense genre to bring you a game about protecting cores from aliens by building towers on their paths - sometimes even making the paths themselves. I had a good time with it, even if I was perplexed by some of its systems and had to tone the difficulty down to Easy in order to enjoy it. The story also kept me interested, which is a nice thing for a tower defense game where characters are usually not a huge presence.
Infested Planet is a neat little tower defense/action game where you control a bunch of soldiers and you need to complete objectives that most often than not involve destroying alien bases and taking them over while hordes of enemies move toward you. I had a good time with it, even if I'm not a fan of the upgrade system/general and that gameplay often felt confusing.
GemCraft is great, I remember the old days when I actually paid for the complete version of such a game on Kongregate, something that was unheard of for me back in that time - paying for flash games - but it's a nice tower defense game that might last you a long while. There's so much stuff in it and it all is based on solid core mechanics and titular gems. It's not an entirely flawless game, but after you get over some bumps in difficulty and some clunky UI, you'll have a solid game to keep you playing and unlock stuff, level, and get better at it.
Kingdom Rush Origins is an okay follow up to all the other KR games and it's entertaining enough as a tower defense title, albeit not saved by different towers, enemies and heroes. I suppose that's the main issue with these games; How do you keep making them and keep making them feel fresh and new? There are some things they could do, like add more tiers of tower upgrades, or tweak the hero system, or change the powers you can use, but it doesn't mean that KRO isn't fun to play. It just doesn't feel very new.
Bloons is a bit weird in the tower defense genre. You don't go through a specific set of maps, instead you can attempt any of them at any difficulties you've unlocked. You unlock better towers with a global level - and then you buy them during maps with cash you get from popping balloons. Some of the maps are weird and there are so many towers that it feels a bit like diluting the overall use of each types. I still had a fun time with it, but the lack of a clear progression made me stop after a while.
Space Run is a tower defense game where enemies go to you as you're flying a spaceship trying to deliver thing under time constraints. It's a fun game where the tower defense gameplay loop of having a list of things you can build allows you to complete maps not perfectly, but well enough to buy better things later on in order to go back and finish stuff you couldn't do before. It's also very interesting with the way it deals in tower construction and enemy waves.
Metal Slug Defense is not entirely hot garbage, but there is better to be found in the realm of defense games where you get resources constantly and build units to push towards an enemy base that you destroy. Two things that annoyed me right up top? Full-screen ads on the mission select screen and full-screen ads right after you've completed a mission. No matter how fun or charming a game can be, having a video ad for some other game block your device is awful.
Sanctum 2 is way better than Sanctum 1 was. I remember vaguely playing the first game, unbalanced weapons and towers against quickly impossible missions, things of the sort. This second game adds much to discover with level-gated weapons, towers and perks to equip to different characters in order to blend the genres of tower defense and first person shooting once again. I'm a big tower defense fan!
There is not much to say about Demons vs Fairyland as it reminds me of many other tower defence games with a few things thrown in there to try and change the basic gameplay structure. I can’t say that I’m a fan of some of these things and while playing on easy, I’ve found the game too difficulty - a fact that is only exacerbated by the pay-to-win items you can buy.
There rarely are games where you control obviously French Canadian lumberjacks fighting werewolves, especially with tower defence elements thrown in there for good measure. Sang-Froid: Tales of Werewolves has a neat concept and some interesting elements surrounding the core gameplay, but the act of actually playing it feels clunky and not very fun, so I couldn’t get very far into it.
Castle DoomBad is a tower defense game where heroes infiltrate your towers via the main door and windows to try and rescue a princess to bring her out of the building. Your job is to build traps and summon minions to kill the heroes before they reach her glass cage. Yes, there are two currencies and one is more premium than the other one, but I never even felt the specter of microtransactions ruin my fun.