Beast Towers Spotlight

Tower defence games, over done? used up ideas? nothing more to give to the gaming world? these are all things one might say when they are told about such a game, But i was lucky enough to try out something a little different, something new, something interesting… something French.

I got in contact with Baptiste Largaiolli the creator of the brand new tower defence game for mobile devices,
“Beast Towers”, and when i first herd about the idea i thought to my self a lot of the things you are
right now, “how is this going to be any different then all the rest”. But after a little back and forth with
Baptiste Largaiolli i got the go ahead to try out his game and was given a test copy to do this
Spotlight with.

But first a little back story shall we? get us in the zone for this game, let us get to know the real Beast Towers. development of Beat Towers was started back in April 2014, with the developer only really working on it on weekends as he is a free lance Unity3D dev , so in total time, he spend about 4 months worth of time developing the game, but he first got the idea to start working on it as far back as the Ipad 1 days. With this device clearly not being powerful enough for what he had in mind he decide to wait until devices were at least as powerful as an Ipad2, these features that he wished the game to have included full 3D,and to have both enemies and towers animated.

The project was a one man team, but Baptiste has hopes to work with a 2D or 3D artist for later updates and later games, and with the introductions out of the way lets get into why you are really here huh? the game play.

So the game starts off like any other, a simple menu screen, with deep classical music giving a very dark med-evil tone to the game, with its bright torches lighting the door way and surrounding bricks, it almost makes you feel like you have discovered a secret under ground chamber in a large old castle from the middle ages, this is added upon by the small bugs crawling and flying around the screen leading you to believe that no one has been down here in a very long time, the skull that makes up the door gives the impression that a dark evil power is sealed away in there.

With 4 touchable button on the screen you have the option to turn off the music, turn off the back ground sounds, start the game or quite, which is good, while a lot is going on in the back ground the foreground is kept simple and clean.

Selecting the start button will bring a pop up block, with the option to create a new game or play an existing game, once a choice has been made the door behind the box is opened and both the box are pulled into it.

The first thing you will notice is the music change, it becomes more uplifting, more adventurous, the next thing will more then likely be the first stage,a small brick square with a platform i the middle surrounded by a pit which to me look like a Lazarus pit( a little comic influence maybe?), You have 3 buttons around the sides in the corners, starting from the top right corner you have a button that will take you back to the main menus screen, moving over to the top right, you are given list off all possible towers to play, the music is toned down a little more calming, gentle, soothing almost but still with a hint of adventure lingering in its tone. the third and final button is a “shop” where you can buy upgrades for your towers. Now don't worry, these aren't micro transaction, these upgrades as bought with in game “money” and by completing levels.

To start a level simply click on it and another pop up window appears, giving you the option to play or exit the screen, another button is there but locked at this point, this is called the tsunami mode, where it is one continues wave , this is locked until you have completed the level.

Now I'm not going to be going over how to play the game, if you want to know that you will have to play it for yourself, but what i will do is explain some of the core elements in the game and use them as sub categories to explain each.

Upgrade able towers

Now this isn't anything new to a tower defence game so its not as thought its ground breaking stuff, hope ever with the full 3D animations on all sprites, the upgrading becomes a lot more fun, to be able to see a tower start out a level 1 sprite doing no damage and with in 3-5 waves be fully upgraded to basically doing all the work, and have him flailing his arms around, nice touch in my eyes

Controlling the enemies path

this isn't something you see at lot of in tower defence games, in fact its the first tower defence game i have ever played that implements this, the ability to control where the enemies can walk greatly aids you in being able to create the most efficient design, being able to decide whether you make the path out of towers, walls, or a mixture of both

tsunami mode

this is basically the best part of a tower defence game, seeing how long you can last with out dying, that's right its an all out assault, mass waves of mobs, progressively getting harder , you start with a lot more money then you do in single player mode, but that goes by really quickly.

But now we get into what a lot of the people who are reading this are looking for, my score rating, the thing that tells you if you should get the game, because i know that's why you were reading this… don't lie i know you were ;), so i will do this in my normal fashion. Break the score into 3 parts GamePlay, Visuals and Fun and then give each a rating out of 10 for a possible score of 30

So GamePlay, it played like any other  tower defecne game i have played, challenging at first but once you unlock some of the latter tier towers it becomes a lot easier, the smooth inter face, the fluid controls, the way it just worked is one of the finest examples of a tower defence game i have seen/used on the mobile platform, to give it anything less then an 8 would be a crime.

Visuals, this is where the game really shines, the 3D aspects of this game set it apart from the crowd, it brings something new to the table in this genre, yes i know other 3d tower defence games exist, and i have played a few of them, but this one is something that i felt was special, the dark and gloomy but yet friendly and somewhat cute nature to both towers and mobs takes a different approach on the style of game play, that said a 7 seems very fitting for this game.

And finally Fun, arguably the most important part of any game is how fun it is, that is why its also the hardest one to give a score for, because everyone who plays games plays them a little differently and everyone has different likes and dislikes,but for me? i liked it, i thought it was something i could sit down and play, i had a flight i caught just the other day actually and spend the whole 3 hours playing this game. so is it fun for me? you bet it is, but being that i have to give it a fair score, being that i loved it as much as i did I'm going to give it a 9.

So for those of you who just wanted a number a 24/30 or an 80%.

My final thoughts on this game are that you should defiantly go and check it out over on his web page

www.beasttowers.com or head over to his indiedb page at http://www.indiedb.com/games/beast-towers and let him know what you think of his game...