Arrow Defense: Shoot down the invaders and defend your kingdom!
There’s always the odd occasion when indie games developers send games through to us and we choose not to review them… for their sake and yours. But without showing these subpar games it’s hard to understand why we’re sometimes so critical. Now we’re going to show you a semi-decent game and explain some of the flaws…
Gameplay: This is the best part of Arrow Defense because it’s clean and simple. You press your finger onto the screen and the big crossbow in the middle of your fort will shoot arrows towards your touch point. The aim is to shoot anything that moves and that’s all there is to it. Once you’ve pressed your finger onto the screen, the arrows will continuously fire out and after about three arrows then an imaginary guideline will appear. It’s hard to figure out if this shooting guide is good or bad – it’s definitely more interesting, but are people really too retarded to be able to fire correctly over a 40 degree range? Hmmm… not sure…
Of course there’s more to this game and it’s in the form of a rather decent upgrade system. If you buy some heros then you can occasionally get special shooting powers within the game. For instance you might have a powerful shot, a multi-shot, or an ice arrow etc. Alternatively you can just spend your hard earned points on upgrading your tower so that you can pass the levels.
More good stuff: The animations are half decent and the cute enemies are clean images. Overall all the menu pictures are quite impressive and they set in the mood for a decent action game.
Space Invader patterning: The enemy spawning patterns should be given praise here. When the soldiers approach the fort they’ll come in a particular formation which allows you build up methods for shooting them down faster. This controlled attacking is definitely more beautiful and allows level difficulties to be more controlled.
So what’s wrong with the core of this game: Before we say anything bad about the game then we encourage you to go and download the game to have a play around with it first. Don’t just take our word for it… make sure you see it for yourself.
After you’ve downloaded it, then hopefully you see the good points we mentioned above. However, after a fair few rounds you’ll find the game seems to be all the same. In case you think there may be some hidden extras… there aren’t any. When you get stuck on one of the ridiculously hard bosses you’ll then realise that you can’t select any particular levels to play. Hence you need to grind through losing against the boss multiple times in order to build the cash necessary for upgrading your fort.
Game Imbalanced: This is the clearest example of a game where the “balance” is all wrong. In other words the mechanics of the game are not bad, but the level difficulties are over the shop. There doesn’t seem to be any progressive difficulty and no amount of skill can save you from the levels which are suddenly incredibly difficult.
Though we’ve spotted some other flaws, its probably better left for you to see instead. Overall the game is playable, but there’s no depth to the game and it becomes repetitive quite quickly.
Rating: 2/5 Arrow Defense is a good for playing in short spurts. But don’t trawl through it in long stints as you’ll easily figure out the strategy to beat the computer.
Arrow Defense Promotional Youtube Video
Arrow Defense Tips from Android Games Review:
- If you’re thinking of buying a hero, then go for the first one (power shot we think). We went for the multi shot hero believing that his spray fire would be significant help. However his range of fire is low, and if an enemy is hit with two shots simultaneously then it still only counts as one shot. Ideally we think you should just keep saving the tokens to get the more expensive heros which are usually more advantageous.
- If you’re stuck on a level then consider upgrading your tower before purchasing any hero. Hero abilities can help, but the frequency of occurrence in uncontrollable so the expenditure reward is difficult to justify. Also, the tokens are slow to accumulate whereas the gold coins are technically limitless. Thus your tower upgrades are much more worthwhile initially.
- If you’re stuck thinking about what to upgrade on the tower then have a think about where you’re losing. Are you losing because you can’t kill the enemies fast enough or is it because you’re losing energy too fast. In most cases you’ll probably find that it’s the latter and thus to buy yourself more time you should upgrade the fort energy.
- Upgrades to arrow speed and power are very iterative and the amount you spend can almost seem like it’s not beneficial. Therefore fort energy should usually be upgraded first.
Arrow Defense QR Code
(Click on the image or scan the barcode with your Android phone to goto Google Play)
Developers: WSW
