Sneak Peek: iDefend (Full)

by Eric March on September 29, 2008 at 8:03 pm

Those of you playing along at home will recall the small piece I did on iDefend Lite, wherein I pronounced it good but not perfect. Well, I like Tower Defence games, and Landolphia liked my review, so after exchanging some pleasantries and Q&A, he tossed over a full version of the game that has just been submitted to the App Store.

Anyone who has been on the internet for more than a year has almost certainly heard of Tower Defence, the Flash-based game that spawned dozens of clones and pretenders to the throne, some of which were most excellent. For the benefit of the uninitiated (both of you), I’ll briefly explain.

The entire idea behind the Tower Defence-style games that groups of increasingly strong enemies are on the move to attack you, following along set paths en route. Your job is to position towers of various capabilities and strengths at strategic positions along said path in an effort to rout them before they get to the other end. Depending on the variant, enemies can vary in speed, strength, and/or certain types of protections or capabilities. Also depending on the variant, your towers vary in weaponry, strengths, speeds and capabilities. In some variations, bonus items can be rewarded to assist in the battle. Towers can be bought, positioned and upgraded, provided you have the money, or sold if you want to build a tower of a different sort.

Until recently there were no Tower Defence-type games for the iPhone or iPod Touch. The first to the scene was a little ditty known as Mote Massacre, or Mote-M for short, which was released during the second week of August. It was a nice, well done game that earned high marks — though I suspect those high marks were earned in part because everyone wanted a Tower Defence game and this was the first and only one to turn up at the time. Graphically it had some nice touches, but it felt a little undercooked. Although the game is only a buck, there’s no playable demo, so it’s not one I ever covered in Frapstr.

Now, Landolphia has come up with his answer to MM, iDefend — and it does have a playable demo, which I’ve already covered. To look at it you might not think that there’s much to it, nor that the graphics are even worth talking about. However, iDefend’s look and feel takes more cues from the TD variant VectorTD than it does from the original, so its visuals are intended to look a little more retro and oversimplified. Don’t let the screenshots fool you. This is one of those times that still images can’t do a game justice. I’m not saying you should expect spectacular visuals when seen in action, but they’re not nearly as shabby as you might conclude from the images alone.

In terms of gameplay, there’s a fairly solid game of TD to be had here, but this is where its imperfections turn up. After the break, we’ll go over the pros and cons and toss up some screenshots for your consideration.

First, there are only three types of towers, and only three levels of upgrade per tower, so it’s scaled down a fair bit. That does limit the extent of gameplay somewhat — but only some, due to the way levels are handled here. Unlike other TD variants, iDefend does not present you with a continuous progression of levels through continuous progression of enemy waves. Instead, each level is encapsulated into its own individual mini-game consisting of a certain number of waves. You start off each level fresh with a predetermined amount of starting funds to begin building your defences.

This Memento-esque level progression is a bit disconcerting, and in the earlier levels doesn’t let the player feel like they’re achieving anything noteworthy; no sooner have you started to get a good line of defence going, blasted several waves of baddies, and made some cash than does the level end. It isn’t until you make it to the higher levels that things start to feel more like a longer-term, more traditional TD game — and that is where things really start to cook. The number of waves doesn’t generally increase to a tremendous degree — I’d really like to see more waves per level — but the strategies required to overcome them are interesting, which I’ll get into a bit later.

Finally, placing towers can be a bit tricky, especially if you have sausage fingers. Placing a tower requires a double-tap on the desired square. The squares are pretty small, so you have a limited margin for error when you position and tap. I found myself missing the square I wanted about a third of the time. Overall, the mechanics feel a bit like they were designed by an engineer: They all work just fine, but they could only be considered intuitive and friendly by another engineer.

But don’t let those negatives fool you. They certainly dull the iDefend’s shine, but that doesn’t mean you still can’t see your face in it. I’m just getting all of my gripes out of the way in one shot so that I can get to the good stuff, because for all of its faults it is still a great deal of fun. The basic elements you would expect are all there, the visuals are better than you might expect from simple screenshots, and there’s a very solid Tower Defence variant to be found here.

There may also be no obvious textual feedback in the game, but that’s because it’s hidden under the top and bottom bars — tap and hold on the top bar to get details on towers and buttons, and the bottom bar to get details on the current level’s enemy waves.

Perhaps one of the better aspects of iDefend is the fact that the levels and enemy waves are well thought out, and some require some unique strategies to overcome, so no single campaign strategy will work for all waves or all levels. Sometimes a few strong laser towers will work for slower enemies, but sometimes you need a lot of weak ones for the densely packed or fast ones. Sometimes that doesn’t work, and sometimes missile towers are too slow, so you need to populate the board with rows of stun towers to overcome large waves of fast, densely-packed enemies.

Trying out the different levels and getting stumped was sometimes frustrating, but I found myself coming back repeatedly to try new things, and finally figuring out which strategy worked felt like a proper accomplishment. Hard waves are often interspersed with easier ones to give you a chance to make some quick, easy cash and prepare for the next, almost certainly harder wave. Mechanical flaws aside, the gameplay here is well considered and goes a long way to make up for its flaws.

There are a few extra (though minor) cosmetic features in the full version that didn’t make it into the demo, such as particle explosions when enemies expire and icons on each level pane to tell you what you’ve completed.

Furthermore, Landolphia tells me he’s working on retooling the UI to make positioning towers easier, and give the ability to view individual tower stats, among other things. However, don’t expect the revamp to turn up in the next few weeks; Landolphia is being very 3D Realms about his development schedule by saying only that it will be done when it’s done. But at least it’s being done. (Cue Duke nodding his head in approval.)

iDefend was just submitted to the App Store for approval, so expect it to turn up there in the coming days for $1.99 well spent. That’s cheaper than Starbucks, and probably tastes better, too. Meanwhile, check out some nice screenies below.

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