I was very chuffed with myself and decided to see how well I’d done on the global leaderboard for the level.

Oh.

Anyway, I had a few tries of the second Medium level and died horribly each time.

I know I nearly had it last time I tried, but I can’t remember how I had everything set up. Sigh.

It’s a great game and all, but it hates me.

Of course, now the second level is beating me down over and over again. The lack of laser towers and the high cost of all but the standard green towers is presenting an interesting challenge.

Incidentally, I don’t tend to completely change my tactics very often in this game. I normally settle on a rough layout within two or three goes and then the rest of my attempts are spent tweaking it, slightly changing a path, shifting the balance between upgrading existing towers versus building new towers, etc.

I failed.

I got up to wave 19 a few times and might have made it if my towers had decided to shoot at the enemies right by the exit, instead of ones only half-way round the maze.

Irritating, but not a fatal flaw. I just have to come up with a better plan.

All except the final level, but that’s because it’s an endless level and thus unbeatable. I’ll be trying it for high scores, but the OpenFeint system used for scores seems to be amazingly flaky. It keeps logging me in when I start the game, but then fails to upload my scores. I’m not sure why, as I can go into the system and I seem to be logged in. It’s a pain.

Great game, though, even with the problems with the leaderboards. It’s one of those “everyone with an iPhone should own this” titles.

I did complete level three last night, even though I thought I didn’t. I must have, because I was on level four when I started the game today.

Did that first time.

Then went to level five, which I did first time.

Haven’t tried level six yet.

Lovely game, though. Only problem right now is that it’s not publishing to Twitter. It says it is and there’s no error, but it’s only ever published one event to my Twitter feed, all the others have silently failed. Odd.

I also almost beat level three, but didn’t. Not sure why. It was getting late and my memory is hazy.

I love the difficulty level in this game. I’m very much up for a challenge. I just wish that some of the difficulty didn’t come from my towers being completely idiotic when it comes to choosing targets. So many times enemies amble past my final defenses on tiny slivers of health while my towers decide to fire at enemies that are miles away from the exit. It’s very frustrating, but I guess it’s just something you need to allow for.

Stuck in submission hell for weeks, geoDefense Swarm has finally come out for a mere 59p. Given how good the original game was, that looks like a bargain.

Swarm looks more like a companion to the original game rather than a sequel, being very similar but allowing for maze creation rather than working with set paths. I only managed to do one level last night, but everything seems okay so far.

This is probably my most-played iPhone game now. I adore it. It’s just a shame that I really haven’t got anything new or useful to say about it. It’s a great tower defense game and, well, that’s about it. Just at least try out the Lite version, okay?

But not frustratingly stuck, no. Happily stuck. I try different things – in this case I was trying a few high level towers, rather than lots of cheaper ones – and I enjoy myself. I don’t get annoyed with the game or myself, I just shrug and try again. Over and over and over again. I’ll beat it one day, then it’ll be on to the next. I hope I get stuck on that level for a while, too.