iPhone App: Defender Chronicles
= 5 stars
Defend your homeland against waves of scary enemies in this tower defense style game.
The Good
- A compelling mix of tower defense, Warcraft, and a time-management game (the cartoony style of Sally’s Spa). One interesting variation is to eschew the tower defense standard top-view for a side-view; units look better in profile, and platforms with ramps and stairs leads to unique defensive strategies. The Warcraft similarity comes in the building and unit types, in particular, air vs. ground units. Archers are needed to take out the air units so you can’t rely too much on just soldiers. And lastly, there’s often a “swarm” situation where hundreds of enemies start invading your set-up — and all you can do is hope your buildings will hold — this was my favorite aspect of Starcraft.
- Simple controls: tap a pre-designated areas (indicated with a flag) and choose a type of building to place. Upgrades a performed by tapping on an existing building and choosing an upgrade. Battles and fighting are pretty much on autopilot, but all the complexity comes from the choices you’ve made in building placement, upgrades, and types of units.
- Lots of added elements and variety to hold interest. There’s a progressive game with a map of battles to soldier through, or an endless arcade style game. There are stores to buy stuff to improve unit effectiveness, advice from an advisor, and a huge variety of enemies from green swarming blobs, hugely strong bosses, and ogres on flying beasts.
- Smooth gameplay: The game runs really fast with no noticeable lag, even when there’s tons of units on screen. There’s even a “fast forward” button (think Sim City) that lets you zip along through the destruction, again impressive, with no noticeable lag.
- A “hero” guarding the final gate where all the enemies are headed, as a final defense. I suspect in future levels the abilities of this hero will become increasingly important, but I haven’t gotten that far yet.
The Bad
- Minor nitpick about having pre-designated areas for buildings.
Conclusion
Yes, Defender Chronicles is YATDG (yet-another-tower-defense-game) but with enough variations that I was instantly hooked. Highly recommended.
iTunes App Store Link (Defender Chronicles): 
iTunes App Store Link (Defender Chronicles Free):