Tower Madness: 3D Tower Defense, Limbic Software’s first release in the app store, is an enjoyable new game that avoids the trap of becoming just another TD game by including some unique attributes that really enhance the gaming experience.
Tower Madness is based on a fairly comical storyline. Aliens have invaded, bent on abducting 10 sheep in order to make a scarf for their Emperor. Your task is to prevent the multiple waves of attack from reaching those sheep, which are penned up at the bottom of the screen. To accomplish this, you will place weapon towers around the board to blast the aliens as they fight their way toward the sheep. Most levels are open field, meaning that the enemies do not follow a set route, but dynamically change their behavior based on your tower placement. Tower Madness includes a set of arrows to indicate the aliens’ current path, so that you can better anticipate where to place towers most effectively.
There are 4 included maps to choose from: Easy, Medium, Hard, and Madness. All but the first must be unlocked by achieving a certain score on the previous map. Also, each new map offers greater difficulty, as well as new enemies and weapons. On Easy, the aliens will enter the open field from a single access point. Medium provides two access points, which will split your focus and make defending against them more difficult. Hard and Madness each employ three access points, but in Madness, the access point area is completely open, unlike the previous maps that funnel the enemies through hedgerows. One of the great features of Tower Madness is the available add-ons released by Limbic. In addition to the 4 maps available within the game, 3 additional downloadable maps have been released to this point. The add-ons also include a fixed path map, whereby the aliens must follow a narrow path cut through the hedges, greatly limiting their options for movement, but similarly limiting your options for tower placement.
Tower Madness offers 16 unique enemy types, including tiny aliens, gigantic aliens, bugs, flying aliens, and more. There are 9 different tower types, each upgradeable up to five times for increased speed, power, and effectiveness, which allow you to really tailor your defenses to the enemies. Tower Madness supports up to 5 profiles, so you can let your friends play the game without affecting your scores. A global online leaderboard not only tracks the top scores, but actually allows you to watch a full replay of the games that achieved the top scores, so that you can study the strategy involved. This, in our opinion, is one of the more innovative features we’ve seen in a tower defense game. There is also a feature called Towerpedia, which contains an extremely detailed breakdown of all of the weapon towers available with all of their relevant attributes.
The graphics are pretty polished and the overall aesthetic of the game is pleasing. You can choose to watch the action from afar or pinch down to the point where you are fully immersed within the field of play, which is kind of a trippy sensation and certainly a unique and enjoyable option. Movement within the game is extremely fluid; simply drag your fingers around the board to see different parts of the field and touch on any open area to bring up the tower placement options. Tapping on an existing tower gives the option to see or upgrade, provided you have enough gold to do so. A ticker runs along the bottom of the screen indicating the enemy types for the next half-dozen waves. You can also speed up play or send all waves at once. There is no soundtrack, only the sounds created by firing weapons and destroying enemies. This was a bit jarring at first, as we weren’t sure that our headphones were working properly. It really feels like there should be some type of background music. Also, we do not believe that there is currently an untimed, or unlimited waves, mode, which always adds a lot to a TD game.
At any rate, replay value abounds. With several maps, tons of weapons, new add-ons, and global leaderboards, there are countless reasons to keep coming back for more. Tower Madness is priced at $2.99, on par with many of the other TDs in the app store and justifiable given its depth and quality. An update is currently enduring the slow approval process at Apple. Hopefully, it will address the music and unlimited waves issues. At present, Tower Madness is a solid 4-Dimple success.
Tower Madness: 3D Tower Defense gets our AppSmile 4-Dimple rating:
Video by LimbicSoftware
