The tower-defense genre seems to be vastly under-represented within gaming. The only titles that immediately come to mind are Plants vs. Zombies and Defense Grid: The Awakening. I was recently given the opportunity to try out a new entry in the genre from Mana Bomb Games Studio, Colony Defense. While PopCap’s quirky tower-defense game seems like a far cry from Colony Defense, both in art style and gameplay (and budget), the two games do share one thing in common: they are both unique.
At first glance, Colony Defense appears to be generic at best, and to be perfectly honest, from a gameplay perspective, it is to an extent. Similar to Defense Grid: The Awakening, aliens are invading, you must build towers to defend your colony, etc. etc. However, there’s one glaring aspect that has to be taken into account. Rather than placing towers on a single plain, players must place them on a spherical planet along a predefined path the aliens follow. It’s tower defense in 360 degrees. A simple enough concept, but when you actually start playing, it becomes challenging.
There’s a wide selection of towers players can build – 10 in fact – but they have to be unlocked first. Towers include flamethrowers, stasis turrets, ricochet lasers and artillery cannons. Another interesting aspect of Colony Defense is the fact that if you place too many of a certain tower, invaders will build resistance to it. This leaves you with two options: sell unwanted towers for credits or upgrade them. If you’re really in a squeeze, you can use the orbital ion cannon to take out enemies. It has a cool-down though, so use it wisely.
Colony Defense uses an upgrade system that allows you to spend talent points on damage, rate-of-fire and other improvements. As with towers, talent points are unlocked as you progress through the game. Although the unlocks help, they aren’t substantial enough to keep the game from suffering the same issue that plagues other games in the genre: repetition. The 34 planets to defend offer hours of content, but sadly, things quickly become redundant, even with the diverse range of paths the invaders take on different planets.
Nonetheless, the 360-degree facet goes a long way towards giving Colony Defense a fresh spin on the tower-defense genre. It forces players to think in three dimensions rather than the usual two-dimensional take on tower games, and despite what you might think, it isn’t gimmicky. Gameplay is simple, and the game itself is presented in an easy-to-use fashion, albeit generic. The mouse and keyboard combination as well as the Xbox 360 controller worked well in the game, but I can’t help but wonder if the iPhone would be a more appropriate platform for Colony Defense.
The Lowdown
7.0
Final Thoughts
Colony Defense offers a genuinely enticing experience but ultimately falls short of greatness due to its repetitive nature and generic gameplay mechanics. I’ve done my best to avoid comparing it to “big-budget” titles like Plants vs. Zombies, but it’s difficult when both games are at the same price point. That said, if you’re a tower-defense fiend, I’d definitely suggest taking a look at Colony Defense. It has a demo, so why not? Colony Defense might not have an immersive narrative or revolutionary gameplay, but tower defense in 360 degrees is an innovation I can get behind.
