tower-defense posts(Subscribe to this feed)
How's Life as a Darklord?
by JC Fletcher { Jul 1st 2009 at 5:45PM } 
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.
Joystiq review: Plants vs. Zombies
by Griffin McElroy { May 15th 2009 at 8:30PM } 
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.
Midnight movie: Plants vs. Zombies, the music video
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.
Comet Crash hits PSN tomorrow for $9.99
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.
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
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
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
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
Dungeons & Dam: Two great structures in one game
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
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.
Gallery: Lock's Quest
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Lock's Demo now available on Nintendo Channel
The DS demo section of the Nintendo Channel is usually swamped with bland Touch! Generations fare, but it now looks like Nintendo has abandoned that policy to bring us some potentially interesting games to try out. What a novel concept! Top of your "to download" list (if you haven't already bought it) should be Lock's Quest, 5th Cell's ace tower defense/real-time strategy, which reviewers have been throwing superlatives at from every direction (stay tuned for our review later this week).Spore Creatures is there also, and while it may not have attracted the same loving critical response as Lock's Quest, it still piques our curiosity, simply because it's not the Spore everybody else has been banging the drum for. There's a demo of MySims Kingdom as well, which looks adorable, and an anagrams demo for sdrsorsCwo SD. These all expire October 5th, so don't delay!
Gallery: Lock's Quest
Hanging out in Ninjatown
Come my ninjaCome come my ninja
You're my defender
My wee ninja
Oops, wrong town. Today, we're on about Ninjatown, the adorable Tower Defense-style game which uses cookies as currency. In fact, we've got ten cutesy new screens. Even though Ninjatown is based on time-honored gameplay principles, it takes such a fresh approach that we're always happy to see something about it. The enemies, the minions of Mr. Demon, can't resist the Ninja Baby, and neither can we.
PAX 2008 hands-on: Defense Grid: The Awakening
Click to enlarge
I have to confess this right off the bat: I don't have a high end PC gaming rig. Heck, I don't even have a PC, I use a Mac. Sure, I could load Boot Camp on this thing, but frankly my hard drive is far too crammed with music, photos, and scant room for anything gaming related. I even had to delete my free copy of the "Chess" app to make room for more.
However, that is going to have to change. Early this morning I spent some quality hands-on time with Defense Grid: The Awakening. It's a tower defense game that starts out fairly easy, and then quickly gets hard. In fact, I had my ass handed to me pretty squarely when I tried out the "hard" level, and I'm going to have to grab a PC to game on so I can beat the damn thing. They have an Xbox 360 version in the works, but it will come out some time after. Check out the gallery of screenshots below, including two new exclusives, and then hit the break to find out more about the game.
Gallery: Defense Grid: The Awakening
E308: Lock's Quest strategy goodies attack E3
After getting our hands on Lock's Quest, we've decided that tower defense fans need to take a look at this one (stay tuned for some impressions later!). While the trailer above doesn't do too great of a job of selling the game (sans the phrase "robot invaders"), gameplay clips make Lock's Quest look hectic and fun. Oh, and don't worry if you hated Drawn to Life, since that connection is just being played up by THQ for marketing hype.
Check after the break to see what we're talking about in terms of gameplay. Oh, and hey, whaddya know -- there are new screens in the gallery, too. Make sure to give those a look before (or after) feasting your eyes on video goodness.
Gallery: Lock's Quest
E308: A sneaky visit to Ninjatown
I don't know a thing about Tower Defense, so Ninjatown was scary and alien to me. But, unlike most strategy things, the world is so super-cute and appealing that it motivated me to try to play it. The game begins with an adorable cutscene in which the mayor, on his way to a good cower, entrusts Ol' Master Ninja to defeat the incoming minions of Mr. Demon.Playing Ninjatown is like a sort of strategy Actraiser. You pick a square parcel of land and place the ninja group of your choice there; the building gets built, then ninjas of whatever kind come out and start working. Wee Ninjas beat up on enemies, Sniper Ninjas shoot peas, and Snow Ninjas freeze enemies with snowballs. You can also build training centers and other enrichment buildings nearby. The ninja fortifications can also be leveled up for more stamina and attack power. All of these use cookies, the official currency of Ninjatown, which are replenished by defeating enemies.
Gallery: Ninjatown
IGN and 5th Cell boss construct Lock's Quest interview
5th Cell co-founder and creative director Jeremiah Slaczka has taken time out from working on Lock's Quest to chat to IGN's Matt Bozon about the forthcoming construction/Tower Defense game.In the resulting interview, there's plenty of discussion about 5th Cell's commitment to innovative games (something we can totally believe, considering 5th Cell created Drawn to Life), and also some concrete details passed on. Slaczka reveals that Lock's Quest's story mode should last for around 20 hours, and also clarifies the game's multiplayer for us: apparently, there'll be no Wi-Fi play, but wireless local play for two players, in the form of a Vs. mode.
On an unrelated-to-Lock's-Quest note, Slaczka also appears fairly keen to distance 5th Cell from THQ's licensed Drawn to Life spin-off, Drawn to Life: SpongeBob SquarePants Edition. "With SpongeBob for example, that's our IP, but we didn't make it," he points out. "That's cool that THQ wants to move in that direction, and that's fine, but that's not something we're interested in personally."
