This week we look at some indie games on a mobile platform.
Tweet Defense
Developer: Promethium Marketing
Genre: Tower Defense
Available On: iTunes
Cost: $2.99
I have long been a fan of Tower Defense games. From Warcraft 2 custom maps to Desktop Tower Defense on the web down to Defense Grid: The Awakening on Steam, I've seen the genre grow from its infancy to the widespread place it has in gaming today. Tower Defense would seem to be a great fit for the portable device such as the iPhone, with it's sharp graphics and touch screen capabilities. There are dozens of Tower Defense apps available out there, and not much to set most of them apart. To really stand out from the crowd, a new TD game has to have an innovation.
As the name would imply, the innovation in Tweet Defense is integration of everyone’s favorite 140 characters or less social networking phenom, Twitter. When you first fire up Tweet Defense, you can sign in to your Twitter account, and the game inputs all your statisitics, like followers, or number of tweets. Each of these gives a bonus to one of your towers in the game, the Booster Tower. For a modest Tweeter like myself, the bonuses conferred were pretty small, along the lines of ten to twenty percent, in attributes like damage, range, etc. These bonuses apply to all towers in range of a Booster Tower.
One other Twitter integration is the “Booster of the Day”. If you follow this designated Twitter member, then your Booster Tower gets other, often more substantial upgrades. Sometimes the Booster is one of the developers, other times it’s a fan-nominated choice. To be quite honest, I was a bit disappointed in the Twitter integration. The Booster Tower is but one of many towers in the game, and as the most expensive, I didn’t really use it that much. Twitter really didn’t seem to make too much difference in gameplay.
As far as the rest of the game goes, it’s a solid if unspectacular example of the Tower Defense genre. The graphics are very sharp, with a humorous style. Towers are made up of everyday items like lawnmowers and nail guns. The zombies themselves are more icky than scary, and leave a nice sized puddle behind when they die (again). Many maps are straight forward mazes, but a few allow for creative maze building. I found the game to be fairly easy, even on normal difficulty. Still, it’s Tower Defense, and if you like the genre, you’ll probably enjoy Tweet Defense as well.
Wrap-Up
Tweet Defense is Geared Towards: Tower Defense fans with a Twitter account
The Co-Op Experience: It’s somewhat cooperative, since others do “help” you, but really, it’s a glorified single player game.