Is it okay to "rip off" a game

This is something I expect people to be heavy in one direction or the other, its a controversial topic and that's fine sometimes you need to push doors to see where they stand, so I ask you, the reader this.

Is it okay to "rip off" a game. What sparked this idea was the game Paladins, its a Free To Play  Moba/CartPush/fps/MMO, think OverWatch which is what this is going to be about the way i look at it is like this and I'm going to give my thoughts and both pros and cons.

Firstly I dont think there is anything wrong with taking inspiration from a game when making a new one, that's how ideas grow you take from different areas and put together to make something new, and that there is a difference in taking inspiration from  game, and straight re-skinning it which is what a lot of people think Paladins is to OverWatch.

I haven't played much over watch in fact I only played the beta for a day,it just didn't interest me it seemed like a concept for a game that would just be team fortress 2 all over again but with a $60USD price tag, that's to high for me to just buy it especially considering I dont enjoy that style of game, But the beta was free and open so i gave it a shot.

It was okay,I had some fun for the game or 2 I played. I dont really remember who I played and that's not important what is important is the impression it left on me, it wasn't a sour taste but more of a "meh" I simply wasn't invested into it as I wasn't going to buy it to play at the time,

Skip forward 6 months to paladins launch, I first herd about it on twitter someone I followed re-tweeted something about it and I was curious so I went and had a look and lo and be hold it was free, and I like free, I'm all for free to play games I think its a great way to get people into gaming and more gamers having fun is never a bad thing right?

Well kinda, if the game is truly free to play its going to be riddled with micro transactions and that's okay for an MMO type of game that's free to play they have to keep the servers up somehow, and paladins do it quite well they took the valve approach to micro transactions and just sold skins, well skins and voiced packs the point is what you can buy doesn't effect how the game plays at all only the way it looks, unlike some other game out there that are riddles with micro transactions even thought they make literal flying jet-pack loads of cash ever year.. hint hint



So where does the whole "ripping off a game" come in, well it comes in here while talking to some people we all agreed that Paladins and OverWatch are pretty much the same game with almost identically the same play style down to the "play of the game" cam at the end of a match, which led me to the idea that taking a popular game.Taking your own spin on things and releasing it as a free to play game isn't a bad business model, you take what people are loving and tap into the market of people who dont want to spend $60 on a game only to then spend another $60+ on skins to look cool in game, its an extremely large market of people, if you look at steam and look at the top games they are mostly free to play with the exception of cs:go because well its counter strike and its like crack.


But is it wrong to do what they did legally and morally, legally its fine, they made the game themselves and from a legal stance they aren't in competition with OverWatch, morally however its different, they know exactly what they are doing and its competing with Overwatch and I dont think its a bad idea, more people doing the same thing over all leads to a better experience for the player in both cost and game-play as each are trying to one up and keep the audience the most.

Another way to look at it is this" hey mum I really want to play this game but it $60 can I have some money to buy it" said young billy as his eyes filling with joy " No I'm sorry billy we have to eat this week and your sister needs that new heart all we can spare is $5" billy's mother says with despair " okay mum I understand Sarah gets to live I guess" billy proclaimed as he took the $5 and ran back to his PC to pick up paladins, the same game but free and spend that $5 on a couple crates an got some cool new cards and skins.


^^^ That right there is the exact market they are tapping into and its a market that not many people are hitting, most free to play games are just crappy time wasters with wait timers that can be passed with cash effectively screwing you into this idea that to keep progressing you need to either A) spend hours upon ours waiting, or B) spend $5 now and have it done now only to have to be back in the same spot 5 minutes latter.


So what are your thoughts on the whole thing, are you okay with taking a game that's buy to play, mixing it up with your own flair and ideas and selling it as a free to play game with micro transactions? let us know over on twitter our link is down below.


Lucas
www.twitter.com/thelarrylazz
www.youtube.comlarryplaysgames


contact info:

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Top peripherals for Gamers who want to take it to the next level

How often do you watch a set up tour of some guy on line ? that's what I thought, they are a guilty pleasure of most of us, its just cool to see what everyone else has, human curiosity.

Now out of those set up tours how often do you see cool peripherals that they all have, there are the basics like mouse keyboard mouse pad but that's the same with a normal PC, we are gamers we do more than just click funny cat memes and eat Doritos, so why dont we go over some cool must have peripherals that every gamer should have if they want to take it to the next level.


First off a mouse, everything you can do on a PC can be done with a mouse, think I'm wrong? I'm not the on screen keyboard is a thing, it might be utter garbage but its a thing so its obvious we have to start with a mouse, but it doesn't have to be some razer naga with 12 billion buttons on the side for the most part any mouse will do, we have come leaps and bounds in the past 10 years with eBay and cheap Chinese products, hell for the longest time I used a $5 mouse form eBay and only replaced it after I got a new mouse for Christmas last year, I'm a big fps guy absolutely love them, my main focus being Counter strike so when I tell you that you dont need a stupid good mouse to still be competitive,I'm not just trying to sell you something. In-fact I encourage people to give the cheap stuff a go, if you dont like it big whoop you spend $5 on something you can on a laptop when you go away, a home media PC,Which would you rather do spend $5 on something that might be great and if its not your only out $5? or spend $80+ on something your not sure about also? I know what I chose...

Keyboards, since we can all agree the built in on-screen keyboards or the worst thing to every be considered a feature you kinda need one,But I want to bring up my point again about not having to drop $100's on a fancy ducky shine or a razor black-widow, I my self actually use a Dell keyboard, the kind you would find in an office and it is hands down the best thing i have ever typed on, I've used mechanical switched, I've used cheap $5 store brand keyboards, I've used laptop keyboards and its hands down the best I've used, now that's not to say its the best their is in the world but typing is something you have to feel for your self.

Displays are something most people claim they have the perfect monitor or monitor's and for the most part they probably are right,A monitor is something you cant really just have the best of because people have different needs and wants, some need that 144+hertz refreshrate, while others really want the deep blacks and crystal clear images of a really nice ips panel, I my self use a mixture of the 2, I have a nice high refresh rate display for my main gaming monitor, but have an absolutely beautiful ips display as my second monitor for everything from watching movies, to editing my videos.

A MouseMatt/Pad this is a simple one, do you play on a high sense or a low sense? high sens? get a small mouse pad  you dont need the room, play on a low sens? big Mousematt give your self alot of room to sweep your arm across, okay it does get a bit more technical than that but if your going to that level your beyond just looking to play games that level is a level of nerd that is just... nerdy for the sake of being nerdy.







Headset/Headphones+Mic, Who uses Skype,team speak,discord anything you use to talk to someone you are going to need a mic and a set of head phones,As I make videos I use a separate mic and headphones my main headphones as of late have been a pair of onyx trilogy headphones that i got as a gift, my mic, again back to the " not all eBay specials are shit" idea is a BM-800 eBay special, with the mic+boom arm+ pop filter+cables+sound card+shipping all came out to just over $50. is it the top of the line best you can get? no the noise floor is a little louder than id like but nothing a 5 minute fix in post cant fix and its perfect for VoIP chats.

Speakers if your not a big headphone user maybe a good pair of speakers are more your thing, have your set up plugged into a nice 5.1 surround set up with come outstanding bass and the crystal clear highs while your chilling out playing that next level of super-meat boy or some other plat-former of your choice.

Now onto the ones that a little more out there..

Controllers, now the most common controller to be used on PC is the Xbox 360 controller, and rightfully so it has out of the box connectivity with your PC and that's amazing, the ability to use a controller in some games is blissfully superb, not everything needs you to be hunched over a screen, some games are better spend kicking back on the lounge hooked up to your 50"+ TV having a laugh with friends, or hell even platformers work 10X better on a lounge as apposed to in your battle station with a keyboard and mouse.


Driving wheels, bit of a tough one here, on the one hand a controller will do for 99% of people who are playing driving games, but what about the 1% who want to take it that further? build their own cockpits, triple monitor display setups, should they be stuck with an 11 year old controller to set their lap times? nahh didn't think so that's where racing wheels come in, they range from couple $100 to well over $1000+ and come with everything from a plastic wheel and peddles to fully hydraulic breaks and hand breaks. it's serious stuff this racing sim stuff.

Drawing pads it might sound like a crazy idea and you are probably sitting there reading this going " a drawing pad ? huh I thought this was a gamers list ?" and for the most of you reading like the other things i have mentioned you probably wont need one, but for those who do need them they are ideal for rhythm tap games like OSU where you need the quick precise movements that a mouse cant give you, if you haven't watched a top level OSU player play stop reading right now and go look them up what they can do is truly amazing

Mouse bungee, a lot of you probably dont even know what a mouse bungee is... and that's fine if you need to use one you'll most likely be able to figure it out on your own, but for those who dont know a mouse bungee simply put is something to hold your mouse cord so it doesn't tangle or drag across the table top, mostly used in competitive settings where you need to as quick of a reaction as possible, others just use them to keep their desk tidy, I my self dont use one at the moment but in the past I have, they are all pretty much the same they just look a bit different.

So these are just a few of the mush have ideas that me and a couple other people could come up with for the gamer looking to take his set up to the next level, if you have any suggestions be sure to let us know over on our twitter page as always links will be below.

----Lucas
https://twitter.com/thelarrylazz
https://www.youtube.com/larryplaysgames



contact info:

Email us here at---spotlightgamesreview@gmail.com
follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/Spotlight_gr
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Awkward Dimensions Redux.. its not... all bad?

I dont like visual experience games, if I wanted to watch a story unfold, I watch a movie, if I wanted to make my own choices I'd play a RPG , if I wanted to follow a linear game if play a plat former. Their are very few people who can make a visual experience game and make them well, most notable is telltales, i absolutely love telltales games they are what should held as the pinnacle of how to tell a story in video game format. Awkward Dimensions Redux is not.

I'll start this off with this, I took an art class in high-school, did it for 4 years. I still dont understand artist and how their minds work, and that's okay I dont need to under stand everything in the world and I've come to terms with that, but when you take your art work and push it into video games and try to hard to make it more art than a game.. that's where i have a problem.

The games free I get that it probably isn't the best as its a second game the dev has published, but its okay for it to be bad its the second game they have published not everything is a 10/10 when it starts, but this isnt even a 5/10 hell i wouldn't even give this a 3/10.

WARNING SPOILERS.

So the game is about a guys dreams, cool concept I liked it that's why I got a copy of the game and for the first 6-7 levels its a really cool game where you go through and play through some cool dreams, and it does have some pretty cool mechanics to it, one level you are in an art museum and you must look through a painting to see whats really there. that's something I like.

What I dont like is when the artist in this case tries so hard to make it into an art piece with a meaning and subject to it that during my play-through, which can be found here ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3UoE93-fmU) I actually got genuinely angry at the game and had to skip a couple of levels because I couldn't deal with the devs self pity wow is fucking me bull shit that took up an entire level that I couldn't even finish,all I have to say is that thank the lord there is a skip button.

My other major complaint about the game is the lack of direction. I'm all for not spoon feeding the player to the goals, but when a level has no end and no indication of if your doing the right thing or not and than randomly will end without telling you what you did to make it end? come on now...

Now an argument to this is " but its art and you're meant to intemperate it how ever you want " you want to know what i got from the game? what i got from it was this.

It started off great the concept was cool, the art style was nice and the game played good, easy to follow controls all that jazz, but when I got to the level about 3/4 of the way through when I'm in the middle of a clearing in the woods in the dark in a semi demolished factory and all I have as things to do are;
A) pick a shoe up and look at it
B)throw it around
C)look at a mill of some sort and only look at it or
D) listen to the dev go on and on about how crappy their life is and how no one liked his first game and how he doesn't think he is going anywhere in his life forgive me if I call you out on your bullshit, during the level the he goes on to talk about how he has no choice in what makes him happy or not and if you watch my video you can see my answer to what he says.

Self-help is fine I get that some people are a bit touch and go in life and need a pick me up sometimes, but the self pity" wow is me my life is so bad nothing makes me happy" " no one liked my last game even though I thought it was good" that doesn't fly with me if something isn't making you happy or you cant bare to keep doing it, nothing is stoping you from leaving it or doing something else that does make you happy.

This isn't the normal type of post we wanted to put up here, we like to stick to cool games and fun things like interviews, cool gaming news and other things we find cool, but I had to write this to let people know just how bad I thought it was, as I said I genuinely got angry at a video game, not the sort of anger like when you die on a last life kind of angry, but the kind of angry you get if someone were to say, kick your dog on the street and i dont want anyone else to have to feel the sort of anger I felt if they dont have to and if only one person who was looking at it and wanted to know if the should download it or not ( it is free after all and a good way to kill an hour or so of your life if you skip the bull shit) then they can check here ,see that it has some of this crap in it and not waste their time.


Lucas Cause
www.twitter.com/thelarrylazz
www.youtube.com/larryplaysgames


contact info:

Email us here at---spotlightgamesreview@gmail.com
follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/Spotlight_gr
check out our youtube channel over at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RoOKJBv1BU3yRQFV20ejw
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Skybreak the No Man's Sky that isnt shit?

Sky break is one of those games that come along once every blue moon, they are really well put together, they look outstanding and they dont break the bank. it one of the games that im kicking my self for not knowing about earlier in its development because i would have loved to support these guys in anyway i could to get this out sooner.

the game is made by FarSky Interactive the same people who brought you far sky a couple of years ago back in 2014 and it shows they haven't just been sitting on their thumbs the whole time they have been hard at work.

So picture this, the earth is dying, a new virus has emerged and has started wiping out the human population , what does our world government do? why they send people into space to research and find a cure of course, but wait... somethings gone wrong your ship has crashed and you have been flung from the debris, you awake with a crushed ship and no clue where you are, you must battle the elements and the "Wild Life", now i use quotation marks because the wild life are robots.. or mechs i should say, picture wolves but robot wolves really angry robot wolves.

the guys over at farSky Interactive really do know how to do survival games and after the recent outrage from the community over the whole  No Man's Sky ordeal its amazing to see devs not shying away from exploration space type games, its a bit of a leap to compare the two but i do feel they share a similar approach in the type of game they are going for


Gameplay

controls are simple and intuitive, WASD to move,space to jump,mouse to aim and shift to run/sprint.you have an endurance bar that limits how long you can run for, this is also uses a 1/4 at a time by jumping, you have an inventory that stores your items and an ammo pouch type bag that holds you ammo, kind of self explanatory i know but it also hold your hacking tool, i like to think of it as a hacking taser as it shoots out like a taser would on to the mechs in the world, speaking of mech, ever wanted a pet robot that is also a bad-ass killing machine? yeah you do who doesn't want a bad-ass killing robot? well sky-break has them, this is the main function on the hacking tool, to hack into the robot after yo beat them in battle and they begin to listing to you, the do things such as follow you, and attack enemies to help you, they can be upgraded from the sky ship with fragments you collect form beating other mobs, the same goes with your self you can upgrade your Armour your blaster, your endurance just like any other sort of rpg type game. 8/10 its a very well done approach to a very saturated market but they managed to break through and make something great here.

Visuals

Outstanding, simply amazing, beautiful. For a game made in the unity engine, an engine that alot of indie devs have used and not been able to pull much off with, FarSky have done wonders, it is hands down one of if not the prettiest games i have played in 2016, and the optimization holly balls, i was able to run this game on a 6 year old gpu in full HD on high with 60+ fps, which is the bare minimum these days for a quality experience, 9/10 just because of the fact nothing can be a perfect 10 as there is always something wrong.. i just cant find it yet.


Fun
Again farsky are hitting all the right boxes, at the time of me writing this I'am only 3 hours into the game,( I've died a fair few times and had to repeat alot of stuff) and I'am loving it, i dont see myself putting it down until its finished which is something i dont do often, normally with games like this ill play it for 6-7 hours and get bored but this games has the potential to hook you and be a classic, i can see it being something people will speed run, i can see it being something you will come back to in 5-10 years when you are looking for that rush of excitement of a nostalgic game 8/10 in the fun department.

25/30 or an 83% in our scoring its the highest i think i have ever scored a game and that's just because its the best game i have played in a long time, it has me wanting to play more, to explore more, to go and find this dam cure for the virus and save the world and i love that about it, its making games fun again,something people seem to miss when they make good games, the focus to much on the micro transaction instead of just making a good game as always links down below to where you can find the game and the devs web page, I've also linked to my own personal channel where i have started a play through of the game if you guys would like to follow me on my journey through the world that is SkyBreak.


Lucas Cause

sky break
http://www.farskyinteractive.com/skybreak/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/405370/

Personal Channel with play through https://www.youtube.com/larryplaysgames
Video playthrough can be found here https://youtu.be/RtBXijSJMY4

Email us here at---spotlightgamesreview@gmail.com
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Orwell Being the Big Brother you wish you could

Privacy and safety... two sides of an extremely sharp sword, the idea of the government always watching and keeping an eye on you is a scary thought, I dont need the head of the country knowing if i scrunch or fold, but at the same time, If something were to happen to me, Id want the full extend of the law brought down apon the people in question, But that cant happen if there isn't enough evidence.

Which is where the idea of this game comes in.. you play as a new member of an information gathering group called Orwell, think Oracle from the Batman Comic books, the all seeing eye of Gotham, except instead of Gotham, its the nation. You take the part of a new recruit to this organisation on his first day and are given a "training "case as they call it.

You are tasked with digging into the life of Cassandra Watergate, a suspect in a crime, you start of as if you were any other detective, knowing nothing more then whats in the police report, this is where the game takes the turn into something i think is pure genius, they manage to mix puzzle and story telling together in a way that no one out side of tell tales has been able to do in a long time, games today spoon feed to much , and this game does as well to a certain degree.

But no where near as much as other story driven games that walk you right into the path of the next puzzle answer. Instead you have to use your own logic and understanding to figure out where the pieces fit in relation to each other, now this being only episode 1 with 4 more to come over the next coming weeks you are only given the opportunity to explore Cassandra's life and back story, despite being given information on other characters and their relationships with Cassandra. 

The way you gather the information to Cassandras backstory and find out about her relationships with these other people is by digging through new paper articles , Web sites ,Blog posts, Social media accounts to find any mention of her that you can, from there you can take that information, lets say a social media handle, and look for that online  and from there you might get a link to a blog post she made about someone, you are now given a blank profile on that person, and you must build the back grounds for these people to help prove weather Cassandra is guilty or innocent of the crime in question.

So remember when i said this game doesn't spoon feed you as much as other games do? the extent isn't as bad, they do spoon feed you in the sense that you cant put the wrong info about say cassandra, under the profile of her mother, that being said if you have 2 bits of conflicting evidence you do only get to decide on one piece ,and this can either save cassandra from jail or send her away for a nice sleep in a cold cell.

GamePlay

Its a point and click puzzle game, there is no getting around that so if you were hoping for am open world first person detective game, might want to look else were,(if you find one id really like to play that so let us know) what it does offer is a sense of exploration, you may not see it as that but its what it is, you are sifting through piles and piles of useless information in hopes to find that one link to a webpage, or that one text where they incriminate themselves, now most of the game is payed out through the " Reader" tab, think of this like your go to bag of tricks, it has all the links to everything you have uncovered about every one, from the news headlines, to the personal portfolio of cassandra, 

You are also given a tab called " listener" which is what it basically Orwell doing some magic tomfoolery and tapping the phones and social media accounts of the person they are investigating, giving you full access to spy in on their private conversations they are having with people, there is another labeled " insider" but as this is the first episode this is still locked, i speculate that the insider may be a way to tap into the suspects computer in latter episodes but this is just theory at this point so dont take it as fact. 

So along your travels you will uncover more and more info to put together the suspects life, back story, personality and other personal facts to develop a profile on said suspect.My first run through took about 45 minutes to an hour to complete most of which being the tutorial and walking you through how the game works, which is good, a game that explains how to play it is amazing, unfortunately 

The music behind the game-play fits the tone the devs were going for perfectly, the slow intense resonance off the bass combined with the energetic liveliness of the mids melds together to really set the tone for a serious story.

through my play through i found no bugs, no glitches nothing, it was polished and a great example of what a game studio can do if they want to put out a good game my score for game-play is n 8/10

Visuals

The UI is outstanding, its the right amount of cluttered and organised to fully immerse you in the the idea of being swamped with information, it really made me feel as if i had piles of papers stacked around me , not knowing where to look for the next clue, That being said the colour scheme didn't quite match for me, its not that it didn't look good, i personally dont think the only blue tones they chose worked with for 90% of the background was a good choice, they proved they know how to do colour with the rest of thee game be it the web pages or the character profile shots, if they had of gorn with something in more of a deeper shade it could have worked well but with just the dull lifeless pale blues they weren't winning me over with visuals sadly, which hurt because they did such a good job everywhere else , 5/10 

Fun

Now im the sort of guy who loves digging into things, always have, i like to understand why people do what they do, why things work like they do, and knowing what people are doing gives me a sense of reassurance that nothing will surprise me, so when i got to dig through page after page looking into Cassandras life and figuring out what made her tick and why she is the person she is... oh boy did i get excited, its the most fun playing a detective puzzle game i have had since playing L.A Noir years ago , which to this day i hold as the greatest puzzle game i have ever played, so it should be a surprise when i give Orwell a 7/10 

 Basic napkin math will tell you that's a 66.6% repeater of a score, which looks pretty low but dont let that fool you, the game lost a lot of score in the visual department, but if you can look past the dull lifeless colour of the back ground long enough to get engulfed into the world that is Orwell i dont think that will matter to you which is why i strongly recommend that you head over to either their 

website http://orwellgame.com/ 

their indiedb page http://www.indiedb.com/games/orwell 

or even the steam store http://store.steampowered.com/app/491950/ 

to go and get your copy of Orwell right now i know ill be on the edge of my seat for a week waiting for part 2 to come out 

------Lucas Cause

Follow the writer on their social media below

https://twitter.com/TheLarryLazz

https://youtube.com/LarryPlaysGames

contact info:

Email us here at---spotlightgamesreview@gmail.com

follow us on twitter at www.twitter.com/Spotlight_gr

check out our youtube channel over at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7RoOKJBv1BU3yRQFV20ejw

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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...