Towerland for iPhone: Sweet Strategy Game

Towerland [rating: 4/5]

Play your cards right to defeat the Lord in this sweet strategy game

In order to become a Higher Spheres University student every challenger has to show his skills in a special card game, which requires to think wisely, to benefit from natural and magic forces and to see opponent’s weaknesses. Battle Mages liked this game so much that for their fights they changed battle sticks for cards.

While there is an initial learning curve to this game (make sure you read those instructions folks) this fairly simple strategy game will take ages to master that is high on entertainment as it’s longevity. While things do start out slow and agonizing and the game often beats you, later levels when played well can be an amazing and satisfying battle especially when stringing a sequence of attacks that defeat your opponent’s tower

Gameplay centers around a battle between two towers, yours and the other belonging to the mysterious “Lord”, you are given cards, that have effects on either tower or increase your resources when cashed. Te battle ends when a tower is completely destroyed or reaches 200. Attacks are influenced by 3 different elements, Magic, Spirit and Material which defines how effective your attack is by the ground the tower is on, the attack’s alignment and the kind of element allegiance your tower and outer battlement has.

Towerland iPhone image

There are dozens of towers to be conquered on the game map so this is not a game you are going to breeze through especially as each time you conquer a tower the difficulty increases a little but thanks to it’s non linear game map you can approach tricky levels by completing others first also letting you spend your hard earned points on upgrades. The game map is joy to use treating itself as one large image that you navigate as one ala the photo app, with a single finger but tapping on a tower to select it then again on an enemy tower to engage a battle. In the top right is the key legend and the top left “encounter battle” which gives you a random battle to help build up your stats found above this button and then Mage menu button which is your initial start screen on first run of this application. This screen lets you enter your name and add a picture from your photo library (even letting you change them at any point during your game) here you also have your medal (upgrades) tree and a series of buttons below it for settings, quests (achievement system basically), medals (upgrades where you can spend your well earned points) and game map.

On the downside, there is no sound track and little in the way of sound effects other than a flick noise when you draw a card and an annoyingly loud ting noise when you discard a card (thankfully you can turn this down). Sadly the instructions are in broken English which doesn’t help a lot when trying to understand the game mechanics. I also find the backgrounds to be a little dark for day to day usage and considering it effects your gameplay they really need to be brighter and this game is in good need of some special effects on your attacks to help liven the battle up. The only major niggle I can think of is that discarding a card is a little troublesome, sometimes the card you wished to remove might get played if you are not exactly on the discard vortex.

Presently there are no two player battles but I have read it’s in the works and I can imagine it to be an absolute killer feature and if allowed to play with a lite/free version would help promote this app via social circles

Price: $1.99

official-app-store-badge_touch_4

(as of 07/08/09 ver 1.1)

The Good

  • Addictive
  • Sweet strategy game
  • Long life lots of levels

The Not So Good

  • Bit of a learning curve
  • Instructions in broken english
  • Attacks lack special effects

Reviewed by: TylerDurdan

Towerland – iPhone/iPod touch

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