Reviews for Swamp Defense, TrickOrTreat and AppsPack, news on an OSR Unhinged update and trailers for Dragons vs Spaceships and Fatal Seduction are in this episode of The Indie Zone.
Swamp Defense – 80 :MSPoints: – Marketplace
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Swamp Defense is a Tower Defense game. You control ‘The Family’ a group of people with talents that act as turrets in the traditional sense of the TD genre. They are trying to get across the swamp and must repel the waves of enemies on the levels. There are 15 levels which unlock as you play through. The level design continues a pathway through the swamp over all the levels which gives the game a nice sense of progression. Each level has a varying number of waves to complete based on the difficulty of the level design. Each waves enemies are stronger than the previous so while the level design may be easy, the wave requirement may be higher and this means you are potentially facing powerful enemies in the later waves. The balance of level designs and difficulty seems to be about right, though it can be easy once you work out good attack patterns and apply them to each level.
The Family consists of five members, you have a gunner to give heavy firepower, a woman who throws kitchen utensils which provides splash damage, a glue launcher to slow down enemies, an electro beam and finally a rocket launcher wielding baby to offer massive damage. They can all be upgraded levels up to three times to improve their damage and range. Enemies come in several varieties, all are swamp monsters and have varying speeds and health. There are no flying monsters so you need not worry about building air support.
I have to admit I am a little fussy about Tower Defense games, sometimes developers like to experiment a little too much with the genre and it ends in a mess. Fortunately Swamp Defense sticks to the standard and I happily spent a good few hours working through the levels. The presentation looks fine with easily to use menus and help screens. The graphics are well drawn and have a cartoon style to them with decent animations. Music is non-existent during the game which is unfortunate as the weapon noises did start to annoy me after a while.
For 80 :MSPoints: Swamp Defense represents great value for money. You will be able to get a good four hours of play out of the game and there is a some replayability if you wish to improves on your scores or see how many waves you can complete on each level. While there is nothing to make Swamp Defense stand out from the many others, it is a very well made game – if it’s not broke, don’t fix it!
TrickOrTreat – 80 :MSPoints: – Marketplace
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TrickOrTreat is a Breakout/Arkanoid style game. If you are not familiar with the genre, you control a paddle at the bottom of the screen and must keep a ball in play while it bounces around the screen destroying any blocks in its path. Once all the blocks have disappeared, you complete the level and move on to the next.
TrickOrTreat follows a very loosely tied in theme of which I guess is Halloween. Destroyed blocks randomly produce candy that fall down the screen which if collected can reward you with a good or bad effect. Good bonuses include extra lives, invulnerability from missed balls and sticky paddles, bad bonuses include a slower paddle movement. There appears to be no clear method to identifying good or bad bonuses so you collect the candy and take your chances.
There are twenty stages to complete which may sound few in number but you get no continues and the game starts you back at the first level. This may receive a mixed reception, older gamers will welcome the challenge while current generation may grow tired of having to restart. Presentation is overall average with simple menus and basic in game graphics. There is nothing to make the game visually stand out among the many other Breakout clones. Music is a mixed bag, with a lively cartoon theme in the menus, but in-game a dull song plays which almost feels like it is slowing down the pace of the game.
TrickOrTreat costs 80 :MSPoints: which is fair value for money. I would recommend you try before considering buying and try a few other similar games which have more polish.
AppPack – 80 :MSPoints: – Marketplace
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AppPack is unsurprisingly a bundle of mini apps together in one download, a bit like the old Commodore 64 ‘100 games compilation’ tapes where 99 of them would be rubbish and one would be good. AppPack features 16 programs; 12 apps and 4 games. The apps you can skip straight over as they consist of a buzzer, a question answerer, a light, a basic massager and stop watch. They are all as useless and not really worth the effort to look at.
The 4 games offer some entertainment. Snake is based on the classic game of the same name where you collect fruit and your snake grows larger. The Never Ending Game is a simple platform game where the screen constantly scrolls and you must fall down the gaps in platforms to stay on the screen. Finish 3 Dual is a nice puzzle style game where you control two blobs with each analogue stick and must guide them to their respective zones. It is loosely based on Finish and Finish 2: Colors and is fairly fun if a little basic to play. Finally Orb Towers is a simple Tower Defense style game with a decent choice of turrets to choose from. It wont keep you interested for long as it plods along at a slow pace.
Presentation is OK, the menus do the job but the apps and games use very basic graphics. A little more effort on the games graphics would have worked well and improved the quality of the game. Music is done well, using tracks from previous games by the developer. AppPack costs 80 :MSPoints: which is not great value for money. You do get 16 apps, but 12 are throwaway and the 4 games are very basic. Save the points and buy a better version of the games found in AppPack.
News and Previews
OSR Unhinged title update news
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The fun stunt bike game is receiving a title update on June 21st. Changes include improvements to the highscore code both locally and globally, improvements to the menu layout and performance in-game, and general bug fixes. If you have not already got the game, check out our review here as it comes highly recommended by us!
Dragons vs Spaceships
Dragons Vs Spaceships is a top down shooter being developed by Game Production Studios and has been submitted to this years Dream Build Play competition.You get to travel across many words flying dragons which have three weapons types which can be combined to make a total of six. Watch the trailer below and visit the homepage at gameproductionstudios.com for more information.
Fatal Seduction
Silver Dollar games are back and have a new game which the cover art and images bears little resemblance to the real game. Yeah its good-looking girls on the cover and basic graphics and gameplay in-game. Judging from the trailer it is a sideways scrolling beat em up. Below is the trailer and there are also two teaser trailers (1|2) and a making of trailer if you are interested. Fatal Seduction is out early July for 80 :MSPoints:. Visit silverdollargames.com for more infomation.
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