I died the first time, but made it through second time. The secret? Nothing special, really. Just a good mix of towers – including dedicated anti-air – and nukes. Lots of nukes.

At the end of it the game uploaded my score and I was 50th in the world! Amazing!

Well, amazing until you realise that’s only on the daily leaderboard. Hmpf. I’ve still got a long way to go.

Anyway, despite still not really knowing about the alien types (though I’m slowly starting to learn just by playing), I had great fun. Most importantly – I played for an hour or so without selling a tower accidentally. Not a single one. Maybe I’ve finally learned not to do that. Let’s hope so.

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?

Hang on a second!

I started this up to give it another chance, finished the (incredibly easy) Medium map, which unlocked loads of new towers and new enemies. It also unlocked the Hard map, which is very difficult indeed.

Now, I still have concerns. The different enemy types and your own weapons all look way too similar to each other, which is a major problem. And it’s still far too easy to sell a tower by mistake. But this is now looking more interesting.

The title pretty much says it all. It’s a tower defense game in 3D. Which means you can zoom in, so it looks like this.

That, however, isn’t the most useful view, so you’ll no doubt be playing it like this.

I haven’t played this much. I went through the Easy level and didn’t have any problems, then a day or so later tried the Medium level. I placed some towers in the wrong place, which wasn’t too annoying, but I when I sold a powered-up tower by mistake I got angry and quit out. I’m not sure how I manage to sell towers by mistake, but I did it several times.

Also, I can’t find a way to find out about my towers after I’ve placed them. Maybe I’m missing something. I just feel that there’s a bit of a barrier between the game and me – and that it might not be a very interesting game even if I could get past that.

As I said, though, these are very much first impressions based on very limited play. I’ll have to try again, see I can get comfortable enough with it to see inside.