tower-defense posts(Subscribe to this feed)

TGS 2009: Impressions: Toy Soldiers (XBLA)

by Xav de Matos { Sep 25th 2009 at 2:00AM }

While it has become an extremely popular style of game over the last few years, tower defense titles have always struck me as a boring concept, personally. Perhaps it's my penchant for firing weapons at moving targets in first-person, but I can't really articulate my lack of enthusiasm for the strategy-style gameplay.

My initial reaction to Toy Soldiers -- a tower defense game in a World War I setting -- in a behind-closed-doors Microsoft demo? Snore. Imagine my surprise, then, that I soon got genuinely excited to play the game when it lands sometime next year.

Gallery: Toy Soldiers (XBLA)

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Watch one frame of Gratuitous Space Battles being rendered

by Xav de Matos { Aug 30th 2009 at 7:30PM }

Indie games developer Positech Games caught our attention again with more footage of its upcoming tower defense title Gratuitous Space Battles. In the latest video, Positech shows off the process of rendering a single frame in one of the game's marquee deep space standoffs. If you're a fan of tower defense titles -- or some kind of time-lapse photo enthusiast -- check out the clip after the break.

[Thanks, Cliff]

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Defense Grid protects XBLA on Sept. 2

by Alexander Sliwinski { Aug 25th 2009 at 3:30PM }

Developer Hidden Path has shown the way to Defense Grid: The Awakening's release: it hits XBLA on September 2. The tower defense title was well received in its PC incarnation and will cost 800

($10) on the console.

The Xbox version of the game includes the Borderlands (not be confused with the other Borderlands) mission pack, along with a few new challenge modes. The game already comes with a full campaign and what appears to be a significant amount of content for the price.

Gallery: Defense Grid: The Awakening

[Via Eurogamer]

Crystal Defenders attacking PSP

by Andrew Yoon { Aug 25th 2009 at 1:30PM }

What's Square Enix's most prolific game this generation? Well, apparently it's Crystal Defenders, a 2D tower defense game that's appeared on iPhone, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii ... and PSP, according to the German USK ratings system. Considering the low-fi quality of the graphics (the Xbox 360 version is in the video above), it shouldn't be a very difficult game to port.

[Via GamerBytes]

Comic-Con 2009: South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! in action

by Justin McElroy { Jul 23rd 2009 at 7:15PM }

Update: Above, we've added our own footage form the Comic-Con show floor!

Whatever you've been doing for the past 15 minutes, we promise you it's been more productive than us. See, we've been trying to make heads or tails of UGO's gameplay footage for South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! you'll find after the break.

It looks sort of like a typical tower defense game, except the kids seem to be building the towers themselves. Also, they're sort of like mobile towers of their own, and it seems that several people are playing cooperatively. It's all very puzzling, but at least it can't be worse than Chef's Luv Shack.

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Gratuitous Space Battles is just that

by David Hinkle { Jul 7th 2009 at 2:30AM }

Indie games developer Positech Games has been quietly working on a tower defense game set in space, and has uploaded the first footage. Gratuitous Space Battles doesn't have any kind of tentative release date, and this video is more a brief demonstration of the game's goals, but we think it's kinda cool. And if that doesn't do it for you, squint hard and pretend you're watching Battlestar Galactica.

Head past the break for the footage.

[Via Offworld]

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How's Life as a Darklord?

by JC Fletcher { Jul 1st 2009 at 5:45PM }

"Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord may have a name that's similar to predecessor My Life as a King," Andriasang writes, "but the two games are nothing alike." So much for the dream of running an evil town full of evil adventurers.

Instead, Andriasang describes the WiiWare game as a unique variation of tower defense. As heroes storm your tower, you delay their progress by adding floors to the structure and filling them with monsters. The strategy comes not only from managing your resources enough to build as many floors as you can, but also in placing things so that there isn't too much stuff on one floor. If there is, the heroes can just skip over a floor!

See a video of the game in action after the break.

Gallery: FINAL FANTASY CRYSTAL CHRONICLES: My Life as a Darklord

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Joystiq review: Plants vs. Zombies

by Griffin McElroy { May 15th 2009 at 8:30PM }

Something terrible happened to the Joystiq staff in the spring of 2007. Our desire to work was leeched by some uncanny force, some primordial vacuum of journalistic motivation. These sapping energies could be easily identified by scanning our browser history -- there, a repeated phrase, a moniker for our destitution: Desktop Tower Defense, Desktop Tower Defense, Desktop Tower Defense, Google, Desktop Tower Defense -- and so on, et cetera.

Two years (and a hundred thousand Pellet Towers) later, our thirsts had been quenched, and our diligence restored. Then, on May 5, the minds at PopCap gave birth to a new source of blogger work ethic poison -- as is their nefarious custom -- titled Plants vs. Zombies. Yes, those monsters combined our two biggest interests (the undead and household horticulture), and wrapped the whole package up in a neat Tower Defense crust, which they then sprinkled with humor, and roasted until brilliant.

Also, there's probably some crack (or equally addictive narcotic) in there as well.

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Midnight movie: Plants vs. Zombies, the music video

by Randy Nelson { Apr 2nd 2009 at 12:15AM }

In the battle to determine which is more bizarre -- a game about plants battling zombies or a music video about a game where plants battle zombies -- the latter has prevailed. Ladies and gentlemen, for tonight's bedtime snack we present Plants vs. Zombies: The Music Video, based on PopCap's upcoming (and if you hadn't guessed, totally weird) tower defense game for PC ... Plants vs. Zombies.

What's your favorite part? The zombies with butter on their heads? The zombie dolphins? The whole mad thing? It takes a company like PopCap -- purveyors of unicorn-infused digital crack like Peggle -- to invent something that just has to be an April Fools' joke but, we swear, totally isn't.

Brace yourself, then click through after the break for animated insanity.

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Comet Crash hits PSN tomorrow for $9.99

by Andrew Yoon { Apr 1st 2009 at 9:00PM }

Tomorrow's Spring Fever game is Comet Crash. And guess what? It's yet another tower defense game. Debuting on the PlayStation Network tomorrow, the game will feature 28 stages, and two multiplayer modes: a 3-player co-op mode and a 4-player offline battle mode. Not only will the title feature 1080p visuals, but you'll be able to play your own music thanks to its XMB music support.

The PlayStation.Blog has more details on the upcoming game, but for now you can watch the trailer. We know there are many that are hankering for some more tower defense, but we feel like this might be too soon after Savage Moon. Check it out tomorrow for $9.99.

Crystal Defenders R1 site opens with screens and trailer

by JC Fletcher { Jan 22nd 2009 at 9:00AM }

Just one day after the WiiWare version of Crystal Defenders (now Crystal Defenders R1) was revealed by (early) Famitsu scans, Square Enix has opened the official Japanese website for the iPhone/mobile remake. Not since Lock's Quest have we been ... even slightly excited about a tower defense game!

We saw blurry, small screens of the game in those scans, but the website features pixel-perfect screens, highlighting the colorful, somewhat retro 2D style and cute sprites. Even better, larger screens can be found at Famitsu. The official site also features a trailer and a rather large selection of wallpaper images -- all of which seems delightfully lavish for a WiiWare game! But, then, this is only the second (non-Taito, internally-developed) WiiWare game for SE. They can afford to put a nice website together for each one.

[Via Famitsu]

Crystal Defenders prepare to protect XBLA, PSN, WiiWare

by Alexander Sliwinski { Jan 21st 2009 at 12:41PM }

Crystal Defenders, Square Enix's mobile and iPod* tower defense game, is ready to make the move to consoles. Japanese mag Famitsu reveals (via IGN) that the WiiWare version will be known as Crystal Defenders R1. Aside from the fact that it'll offer "Wi-Fi connection support," little else is known about the title.

Crystal Defenders R1 will be ready to protect the Wii in Japan on January 27 for 1,000 Wii Points. The XBLA and PSN versions, which will allegedly be updated forms of the original game, currently have no price nor release date. Check out a trailer of the mobile game here.

*Regular version costs $8, Lite version is free.

Wii Fanboy Review: Sandy Beach

by JC Fletcher { Jan 7th 2009 at 10:00AM }

While not all of Hudson's WiiWare offerings are necessarily successful in terms of sales or critical response, they've been responsible for some of the best, and best-selling, games on the service. And even when they don't do so well, effort is evident. So why can't Hudson's parent company, Konami, take a lesson from their subsidiary? Since the launch of the service, they've released only two games: Critter Round-Up and this. So they've released, like, one and a quarter games.

Sandy Beach is a baffling release -- in that I can't fathom how Konami saw this and decided there was enough game to be worth releasing. It's really two games, but the sum fails to provide enough value for the 500 Wii Point cost.

Gallery: Sandy Beach

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Dungeons & Dam: Two great structures in one game

by JC Fletcher { Oct 1st 2008 at 10:48AM }

Acquire's Dungeons & Dam, or "Dandam" for short, is a pretty strange concept. We don't know how some designer got the idea to combine dungeons and rushing water, but it seems like it could work. We first saw this game in Famitsu last week, but this is the first actual information we've been able to figure out about it.

We were just talking about how great it is to have controllable characters in a tower defense game, and it looks like Acquire agrees. Well, this isn't "tower defense" so much as dungeon defense. During the day, you'll recruit adventurers who will mine for materials and build defenses around the city, including dams. At night, creatures will come, but so will flowing water which, depending on how you have directed it with your dams, can help hold back or defeat enemies. At the same time, you'll be traversing the dungeon and fighting. We fully encourage more developers to experiment with defense-type games!

DS Fanboy Review: Lock's Quest

by JC Fletcher { Sep 30th 2008 at 8:00PM }

I hate tower defense. I've tried to play tower defense games numerous times, giving it my best try after MTV's Stephen Totilo's nomination of Desktop Tower Defense as his Game of the Year, and failed to clear even a single round every time -- or to have any fun trying. There's nothing fun (to me) about running out of money trying to build reinforcements and then sitting by helpless as entropy, in the form of enemy soldiers, destroys all of the work I just did.

Lock's Quest solves my tower defense problem, creating something that is playable by even non-crazy people. In the process, developer 5th Cell has added something that seems rather difficult to add to this kind of game: a story, and a good one at that.