Review by ABBUC
After the game is loaded, you are greeted by a great, very colourful title screen.
Along the way, a very nice melodic music is played that uses a second pokey when available.
In the title screen, you can now press Space, Start or the fire button on the joystick to get to the start screen. Here you can choose, for example, between Instructions or Play. We decide on Play. Press Fire, Start or Return to start the game.
The game can be played with the joystick or completely with the keyboard (WASD + 1,2,3 and U). The playing field of the first level now appears. A level consists of several waves. The first level has 5 waves of attackers.
The simple task of this game is: Protect your castle. Easier said than done. Only one path leads to your castle. At the other end of this path a portal with a connection to another world materialises. From this portal hordes of various creatures pour out, as if they came from the underworld. Now you have to prevent these horrible creatures, such as goblins, skeletons, zombies, snakes and sorcerers, from conquering your castle.
This can be prevented by placing different types of defensive towers along the path to the castle. There are three different defence towers to destroy the infernal creatures.
In the first level, our castle is at the top on the right and the portal to the other world is at the top on the left. In between is the path of the infernal creatures. You can see some circles with a centre on the side of the path. Defence towers can now be placed on these circles. In the first level, 11 placements are possible. Around one of these circles, there are now 4 small corners. This is the "cursor", which can be moved with the WASD keys or the joystick. A tower can now be placed with the fire button or an existing tower can be upgraded. If you press the fire button or Return, a small overview of the three different towers appears.
Instead of Fire or Return, you can also press the keys 1, 2 or 3. Whereby 1 is the first tower in the overview. The overview contains some data about the different towers.
KEY is the key to place a tower. LEVEL indicates the expansion level of the tower. If you build a new tower, it is level 0. Three upgrades (1-3) are possible per tower. DMG (Damage) indicates how much damage a tower inflicts on an opponent per hit. SHDL (Shield) indicates how much shield energy is deducted from the enemies per hit. RNG (Range) indicates the range of a turret's weapons. The fire interwall of the weapons for the turret is indicated with RATE. And lastly, COST, indicates the construction cost in gold of a tower.
For example, tower 1 in level 0, has 2 damage per hit, 0 shield energy deduction per hit, a weapon range of 15, fire interwall of 63 and costs 140 gold. Tower 2 in level 0, for example, does no damage to enemies, but reduces shield energy by 4.
If you want to upgrade a tower, you can do so with the fire button or return. Here, too, a small overview of the next possible upgrade appears. You can also press the U key for the next upgrade.
An upgrade for turret 1 to level 1 increases the number of damages per hit, the range and the shot interwall. As a tip: Tower 1 can reduce shield energy on enemies at level 3.
It is not possible to replace an existing tower with another type of tower.
Here you have to think strategically about how to place the towers. Note: The shields have to be removed first so that you can hit opponents.
Let's now take a look at the number chaos around our playing field. Let's start on the left side, with the status bar. Under STATS it says L20. You can let a maximum of 19 hell creatures through into your castle. More defenders are not available in the castle. With the twentieth monster that reaches the castle, it is conquered and the game is over. The counter counts down from 20 to 0. Under L20 is G000280. G stands for gold. With this we can build or upgrade towers. Gold is given for destroyed enemies. The last item is S000000. This is simply the score.
Below the playing field, the hordes of attackers are displayed. The first monster from the left, in the first level in round 1, has a strength of 14 and 0 shield units. To destroy it, a type 1 tower must hit the monster seven times. The second monster has a strength of 20 and 0 shield units. To the right of the monsters, the left number indicates the strength and the right number indicates the shield energy. In later waves and levels the strength increases and shield energy is added.
On the right side of the board, the current strength of the monster closest to the castle is displayed. Under ENEMY, for example, it says +14, (shield) 0 and (6 pixels) 34. This means that the closest enemy to the castle has a strength of 14 and 0 shield energy. There are still 34 monsters to be destroyed.
When a wave is over, you get some gold and bonus points. There are five waves in the first level. Once a complete level has been successfully defended, a completely new scenario appears. The castle and the dimension gate are now located somewhere else on the new playing field. All towers have been removed and there are new building sites for the defence towers. The counter L on the left side of the board is also increased to 20. The difficulty level in level 1 is still quite easy but increases noticeably in level 2. In level 1 you can place 11 towers. In level 2 there are 10 towers and in level 3 there are 9 towers.
The graphics are high-resolution in Graphics 8, with a colour background. Everything is very finely drawn, quite sufficient for a strategy game. Music and sound effects are very good. The little melodies in between are not annoying. There are passages where you just wait until the enemies are destroyed and you get gold. Here you can press the space button. As long as the space button is pressed, the game speeds up. If you get stuck with the towers and can't see another chance to defeat the monsters, you can press the Start, Select and Option buttons at the same time to end the game.
Conclusion: A great game in which you have to proceed strategically. You have to work out where and when to build or upgrade which tower.
81 %