App Profile: Tactical War: Tower Defense

Al in Austin

Rating: 5/5

Well built game. Addictive. At this point there are 20 levels. I finished them all in about a week. I really appreciate that there was an option for an in app purchase to remove adds. Once that was done, the game was much better. I also appreciate that you can complete all 20 levels without having to pay for any additional in-app purchases. I also liked that it worked well on my iPhone 11. The only suggestion is that once you figure out which towers work for which enemy units, the Levels become somewhat repetitive. Need to figure out a way to mix things up. One bug: mainly impacting level 20, is that the mine/teleport status panel on the lower left, makes it hard to place a tower in the area of the map behind that panel. Looking forward to more levels. One suggestion to maintain playability after completing all levels: add a timer to track the player’s best time. Would also need the ability to send the next round early. This way I can replay the levels to try to beat my best time. Another addition would be to add an unlimited option, where the levels are not limited to 20 waves. That option would keep sending waves of increasing strength until you run out of lives.

gfcjfdgb

Rating: 2/5

The scaling is horrible- it’s often necessary to replay previous levels for coins. explosions don’t do splash damage?? this wouldn’t matter if it was possible to target specific enemies (first, strong, weak, etc). next- the ads. i like everything this game is TRYING to do, except the popup ads after every round, win or lose. the best type of ads to maintain retention are “gift ads” that are COMPLETELY OPTIONAL and give the players a reward for their time. buuuut nope not in this game, plus there is no coin reward for a loss/restart. you won? great! here’s an ad! you lost? aw, sorry! here’s an ad! you misplaced 2 sec into the first wave and need (yes, NEED) to restart? WELL HERES AN AD! the ads should be easy to fix for quality of life. for the gameplay loop however, some serious changes should be made. first, as a player i dont want to be replaying old levels just to upgrade to beat the new one. second, it feels like there is only *one* way to finish the level perfectly, no room for creativity in the early game with no unlocks. this of course ties into it’s unforgiving game loop as a whole, which basically becomes place tower -> pass wave -> place tower -> lose a life -> restart -> close app because of ad. it doesn’t feel like there’s much room to breathe or experiment as a player, and if you insist on not losing any lives your first play-through you’ll lose your mind :)

PrufrockJ

Rating: 5/5

Had to search for a long time to find a game I liked. Most have way too many ads to make the game enjoyable, even if it’s a good game. This is a classic tower defense game with some twists that make it interesting without all the flashy confusing stats and hubub in many other TD games. You have to clear your own areas to have room for new defenses—a simple mechanic, but adds a whole new layer of strategy. Also, you upgrade towers separately for each of their power levels, which adds another layer of strategy. But the interface is very simple and intuitive. Also, there is one ad after each level, and the levels last a good couple minutes each—that is totally reasonable. And there aren’t 15 different forms of currency that the game nags you to buy online—you beat a level, you get money, you use that money to upgrade, you play the next level. Excellent game—well done!