Review Bloons Tower Defense – Review – Iphone/Ipod Touch

Title: Bloons Tower Defense (NinjaKiwi.com) Price: $2.99

Link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/bloons-tower-defense/id331271904?mt=8

Intro: I was first introduced to Bloons Tower Defense (BTD) after playing the original Bloons game on Ninja Kiwi’s website. I still remember when it was released and wasting a good number of hours playing the Flash version on their website. So I was naturally excited to hear that this great tower defense game was coming to the iPhone. The things I enjoy about this brand and game is the recognizable design across all of the Bloons titles. Icons, Characters, and Enemies are quickly learned and are transferable between titles regardless of what the core game-play actually consists of. In BTD, the game-play is as solid as their Flash game counterparts and a good port to the iPhone platform.

Game-play: (10-30 min. sessions) After selecting various options and finally selecting which level you wish to play on, the static game board appears. Each game session starts with a certain amount of money based on difficulty level which is the only way the game becomes hard or easy. As any other tower defense game you have different types of towers, or in this case “characters”, that do different things. The basic monkey unit fires darts at a relative slow speed and has a certain amount of range where they can pop the enemies, or bloons. This continues on to other towers being an Ice tower, multi-blast razor tower, boomerang monkey, catapult monkey, and a rocket tower. As the game continues on you have the option to unlock support towers and the super monkey which is a more powerful version of the basic monkey. Enemies come in the form of balloons, or bloons, and follow the level’s designated path. If the enemy reaching the end, an equal amount of strength they have is taken away from the player’s life. Each bloon you pop earns you points as well as bonus points for completing each round. You control when the round starts so there is plenty of time to setup, upgrade, and position all of your towers but once you start a round the bloons will continue coming until the round is over. There is a way to pause the game, however you can only place and upgrade towers during game play so you must resume the game from the pause to continue. There are also 1-use items such as monkey glue and tacks which can be placed at anytime but are only usable during the current round. The goal round to reach is 50 but the game allows you to continue on to an endless amount of rounds. Once you get past about the 60 round mark, you will have so many towers and bloons coming into the map that occasional memory will fall short and the game will crash but other than that it seems very stable. This crash doesn’t bring about too much frustration as it is handled exactly as interruptions which are discussed in the usability section.

Usability: The design and controls of this game were very thought out and implemented. Nothing frustrates me more than bad user controls and everything I touch responds in a fashion that I would expect. Input does become complicated when multiple towers are in close proximity to each other but the game will cycle through the highlighted towers as long as you keep pressing in the general location. Breaking up the game play with watching the cartoon action helps keep fatigue down as well as allowing for interruptions to not be an issue with the game. When phone calls or texts come into the phone during game play and you decide to take them, the game will reset to the end of the previous round so even though you have to replace any towers you did during last round, the functionality is very helpful. There are a few different ways to handle those situations but the way BTD handles it is very adequate.

Pros: Fun game to pick up and play, especially for fans of the Tower Defense genre 10-30 minute gaming intervals make for quick and long term sessions Flash versions of game to try before you buy.

Cons: In an oversaturated genre on the iPhone, BTD can get lost with no real difference besides the brand. Does crash when lots of towers and bloons are on screen

Score: 8 out of 10

Written by Mark “Jazz Malang” Gugler http://www.twitter.com/jazzmalang

Personally Purchased

Popularity: 57% [?]