Android Game App Review - Defender by DroidHen
Defender by DroidHen is a tower defense game, where you have to protect your tower from waves of attacking monsters, aiming your trusty tower crossbow and throwing spells of three different kinds on your enemies who range from lowly trolls who bash your tower walls with clubs to dragons who breathe lethal fire over your fortifications.
The game is fun, easy to learn and certainly addictive, the graphics are fun and colorful and the creatures, especially the boss creatures are interesting but in the experience of all but a few our testers, you can't advance beyond a certain level, namely circa 100, without spending real money to buy crystals for upgrades and powering spells.
Don't get us wrong. The game is certainly fun. Throwing fireballs, freezing monsters solid and fighting hordes of enemies with different configurations of crossbows (selecting a different upgrade to see which works the best) is very fun and certain strategies work best, aiming for increasing shooting frequency, strengthening the ice spell to freeze monsters for a longer time, having a strong fire spell for damage and even a week lightning spell helps to fight monsters while the stronger, main spells recharge.
The main problem, however, is with the boss fights. Once about every few dozens of levels a big boss fight comes up, with trolls, giants and dragons. The only way to beat them is by a massive usage of spells but blue crystals, mana, are used to cast spells and purchase upgrades, such as stronger spells, vital for survival. The end result is you reach the boss fights with too few crystals to win them, ever.
So, in order to win the boss fights you have to shell out a few bucks and buy enough crystals to survive the boss fight and purchase the needed upgrades later. This means once in a number of levels the gamer must buy mana with real world money.
The opinions among our testers were mixed, but most didn't like this arrangement. Testers said it was very frustrating to work your way through the levels and find out you can only advance by paying money ...
To sum things up, our testers liked this game. It's a standard Tower Defense game with nice graphics and interesting spells and effects. The way DroidHen charges money for upgrades, like buy more mana, and makes it necessary for gamers to buy it in order to pass some boss battles made quite a lot of our testers to eventually stop playing and uninstall the game
- Score: 4 out 5. A fun and addictive game, but the way it forces the gamers to buy upgrades and mana with real money was a turn off for many of our testers.
- Description: A standard Tower Defense game where the gamer protects his tower against hordes of invading monsters, from trolls to giants to other creatures, using an upgradable crossbow and three types of magic spells. During hundreds of levels the monsters become increasingly harder and tougher.
- Good Points: A very fun and addictive game. An advancement table both for the crossbow and the magic, to get more powerful weapons and spells with increasing power and duration. Interesting boss creatures, some even flying ...
- Bad Points: Actually, our testers pointed out one major bad point. In order to pass certain boss levels you have to shell out real world money to buy mana, otherwise passing those levels is next to impossible.
- Experience: All our testers reported great enthusiasm at first, some even playing hours playing the game, rising up through the levels, amassing weapon and spell advancement, Then, when the tougher boss battles come, and when the stockpiles of hard eared mana are all used up to win the battle, most testers became discouraged.
- Longevity: Medium. Since higher levels almost always require real money to pass the tougher boss battles. quite a lot of our testers stopped playing and uninstalled the game. Only some die hard fans kept playing the game.
- Google Play Link - Defender by DroidHen
- Google Play Score: 4.6
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