Continuing a series of posts looking at free games for the iPhone, this second part focuses on Tap Defense, Maze Finger, Topple, and Space Deadbeef. If you’re interested in reading the first part of the guide then you can find that
here.
Tap Defense
As it is only the second Tower Defence game I’ve played on the iPhone, Tap Defense has a lot to live up to considering my last journey with the genre was with the sublime Fieldrunners, however, this game can more or less hold its own comparatively speaking.
In Tap Defense your role is to defend the gates of heaven from hordes of demons, all intent upon gaining entry into the Promised Land. As is the norm with the genre there are a variety of towers to choose from ranging from the basic Arrow, Bomb and Water towers; to more specialist varieties such as Storm, Ice, Magic and Earthquake, but unlike the basic towers these more powerful variants must first be researched – using awarded halos – before they can be picked from the build menu. All of them can, as you may expect, be upgraded for a price to increase both there power and effective range.
Tap Defense features a number of hellish creatures like Gremlins, Succubae, Hell Hounds, and of course the Devil, but it’s a shame they’re all quite hard to differentiate between and sometimes merge together like a muddy mess when swarming because of there minuscule size and lack of detail. Visually, Tap Defense is passable, and in no way does the average appearance detract from the overall playability, but it does compare unfavourably with Fieldrunners which is in an altogether different graphical class.
The levels in Tap Defense use one of three different maps depending upon the difficulty chosen. The path to the gates of heaven is predefined and knowing the route the demons will traverse leaves you free to concentrate on the strategic placement of towers, but personally I miss the freedom and flexibility of being able to design “rat runs” for the hordes to wander through. Speaking of the level design it must be mentioned that Tap Defense not only features a Classic mode, but it also offers five Challenges that alter the game rules dramatically like “Sudden Death” which gives you just the one life, and “Ten Towers” that limits you to ten towers - unsurprisingly.
In addition to the normal tower defence game mechanics Tap Defense also incorporates an interest rate - awarding you additional gold per round based upon the amount saved in the coffers. It’s a great little feature which promotes money management and strategic depth as you to balance spending versus saving – the more you save, the more you will have available during the latter rounds when the difficulty curve really spikes.
Although Tap Defense may not have the presentation and the overall spit and polish that Fieldrunners has to offer, it’s still a very playable and enjoyable tower defence game and is well worth investigating.
Rating: 
