Robo Defense is a popular tower defense game in the Android Market. Just like all the tower defense games, the player’s job is to place shooting towers on a two dimensional map in order to prevent enemy units from crossing. Although simple in nature, the game contains many maps and an advanced system of rewards and bonuses that keep the player engaged and greatly increase the total game play time.
About tower defense games
First of all, for those unfamiliar with tower defense games, here’s a more detailed description: the game starts with a map where enemies try to cross from one point to another. The player starts with limited funds that can be used to purchase and place towers along the map. Depending on the tower’s capabilities it can inflict damage onto nearby enemies or slow them down. Cash is obtained for each kill. There is also a limited small number of enemies that can successfully cross the map before the game is lost. Enemies come in waves that have increasing difficulty levels. The idea is to strategically place the towers to inflict the best possible damage and also to force the ground enemy units to follow a longer path.
Main characteristics of Robo Defense
In Robo Defense the path for the ground units is variable, depending on the towers’ configuration. This allows the player to block the shortest path and force the ground enemies to go around. Depending on the map there may be more than one entry and one exit point.
Although not visible, all the maps have a grid layout. Each square can contain only one tower. Enemies can only move between adjacent squares (not diagonally) .
Although there are many enemy types that vary in strength and speed, there are 2 main categories: ground units and air units. The difference in gameplay is that the ground units have to go around your towers while the air units go straight to the exit.
There are 3 types of towers available: gun tower, rocket launcher and slow tower. The first two directly fire upon nearby units while the slow tower does exactly what its name sais: slows down enemies.
Maps
There are 7 different maps available from the start:
- Basic Level is the simplest map available. There is one entry point to the left and an exit to the right.
- Sky Tower has one entry and one exit on each side.
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** - The Roadway is a different type of map. The ground path is marked by the browns alley.
- VR Training is where the player can create a virtual map with obstacles and entry points using a random key (seed).
- The Courtyard has 4 entries and 4 exits. This is one that is quite complicated.
- The Factory has 3 entry points on the left and 3 exit points on the right. Fairly easy to merge the paths into a single one.
- The Ruins have only 2 entries and 2 exits. The graphics are a bit misleading because they mimic 3 entrances on the top and 3 at the bottom.
Gameplay
There are 7 maps you can choose from. Each map has a difficulty level that can be changed. This simply means that the enemies are stronger. At first there are only 10 levels available. Higher difficulty levels can be unlocked by playing and winning the game at level 10. These levels have no impact on the cash obtained after killing each unit but do affect the reward points.
Reward points are a type of score that is computed using the difficulty level, remaining cash and remaining health. These points are used for buying upgrades and unlocking game bonuses. For example, the player can increase the rocket explosive power or the slow tower effect duration.
Within the game, the towers can be upgraded. Although in most cases it is more cost effective to simply place new towers that to upgrade the existing ones when the available space runs out it becomes a viable solution. Upgrades can either improve the rate of fire and power or specialize the tower to attack only air or ground units. Although it seems bad at first, these towers have a massive range.
The game can be paused anytime but during the pause towers cannot be built. There is also a fast forward option, when the player feels confident that no enemies will survive and just wants to finish the game sooner.
Overall feeling
Although very addicting, Robo Defense is not very polished in terms of user experience. The menus appear very rugged for once. The sound effects are very repetitive and become somewhat annoying (imagine listening to tens of rocket launchers firing simultaneously over and over again). The in-game graphics are good.
The game mechanics are polished very well. There is always an incentive to keep playing and there are always challenges along. The award points and achievements are the main forces behind it.
Summary
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| name | Robo Defense |
| publisher | Lupis Labs Software |
| price | 2.99 USD |
| advertising-supported | no |
| version | 2.3.0 |
| size | 8.9 MB |
| developer contact | lupislabs (at) gmail (dot) com |
Other resources
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