Archive for August, 2009

Played some more of this last night. I’ve now played for over an hour. 1.16 hours, to be precise, according to the great in-game stat tracking. I finished the Hard level, then the Madness level.

I have two main problems, still.

1) I still keep selling towers by mistake. I’ve worked out why. When you click on a tower a menu pops up. On the left is Sell, on the right Upgrade, at the bottom a little X that lets you close the menu. All well and good. However, you can click on another tower without closing the menu first. This is a good feature, because when things are frantic and you’ve clicked the wrong tower, just being able to quickly click the correct tower without closing the menu can save you a valuable half a second or so. However, sometimes I click the wrong tower, then try to click a tower to its left, only to find myself clicking the Sell button. It’s entirely my fault – and the game wouldn’t work with a confirmation box for selling towers popping up every time you wanted to sell. I really just need to learn to be more careful, but in the heat of the moment that’s a difficult thing to do. Suffice to say, I’m at fault, not the game. I really don’t think the interface, which I actually very much like, needs to be changed to make allowances for my idiocy.

2) I don’t know what the strengths and weaknesses of the different alien types are. Some of the aliens have different hats. This indicates they’re strong against some weapons, weak against others. The game did tell me when I first unlocked them. However, I can’t remember and I can’t find any way to find out about them again. Either this information is completely missing, or I’m missing something. The Guide just shows the different weapons, as far as I can tell, with nothing about enemies. So, I’m just building a good range of towers and hoping that the combination will take out the aliens. Which, to be fair, is probably what I’d do anyway, but it’s annoying not knowing if I should upgrade a flak cannon or a laser from moment to moment.

Those are my problems with the game. To be fair, they are spoiling the experience a little, especially the problem I’m having selling towers by mistake.

Also, I’ve now finished all the levels in the game, after one measly hour.

BUT!

Don’t stop reading yet!

I could go back and try for high scores on the levels I’ve done. The game has all sorts of leaderboards – daily, weekly, all-time, for all the different levels… including the downloadable ones.

Downloadable levels?

Why, yes. I may have completed all the levels included with the game – with rubbish scores – but there are a load of levels to download. The developer left a comment on this blog last night saying that the built-in levels are more training than anything else and the downloadable levels are where it’s at. (Not using those exact words.) I’ll be very interested to try those.

If I can learn which aliens are which and can somehow train myself to stop selling towers by mistake I think I’ll be playing this for a while yet. It doesn’t seem like much at first glance, no, but it’s a real grower. I’m even using the zoomed-in view quite a lot now, despite being all sniffy about it in my initial post. Also, I’m finding it very easy to tell different towers apart now, partly due to being closer to them, partly just by playing the game.

I’m glad I downloaded this game for free. Of course, that promotion has ended and the game is back up to the regular price of £1.79. My current thinking is that it’s not a must-buy, but if you think it looks interested and you’re prepared to withhold judgment until you’ve played for an hour or so, I don’t think you’ll regret the purchase.

The fact that I’ve just written such a huge entry about a game I’ve only played for an hour must mean something, right?