First, let me start with a quick review & comparison:
Well – finally it’s here! My favorite tower defense game for Windows Mobile has just been approved to the Apple mobile platforms. What is more, it only costs $1, which is quite a steal for this game – particularly if you take into account that I paid some $10 for the Windows Mobile version – when it was at a 50% sale (the regular price was, IIRC, $20).
In my opinion, this title is one of the best (if not THE best) tower defense titles for the iPhone. I might be a bit biased, of course – after all, I’ve played the WinMo version quite a lot before any game in the genre has been released for the iPhone and, consequently,
iPhone Note: the following tutorial is based on the Windows Mobile / desktop version (released in Summer 2008). The iPhone version isn’t at all different when it comes to the available tower types, game modes and the creeps. The only (slight) difference is in the operation: it’s far more finger-friendly, as opposed to the Windows Mobile (and, of course, the touchscreen-less desktop Windows / Symbian) version.
First, now, it’s far easier (and safer!) top upgrade / sell towers. In the previous versions, you needed to pay special attention not to tap / click the wrong side of the (very small) tower upgrade / selling interface. The iPhone, on the other hand, a much bigger area of the screen is dedicated to upgrading / selling as can be seen for example in the following (8k) screenshot (look for the 100 (upgrade price) / 40 (selling price) icons in the lower right corner):
That is, tapping (selecting) the wrong icon is much- much harder. This means accidentally selling a tower, which, when there is a massive surge of incoming creep attack, can have lethal consequences – remember you can’t place a newly-purchased tower when there’re any creeps over the position you’re going to place it.
Note that there are two ways of placing a new tower. First, if you start dragging in the new towers from the bottom-most screen area. Then, your finger won't cover the place you're going to drop the tower – it’ll be displayed about an inch (2-3 cm’s) above your finger. This, however, doesn't work with the bottommost two or three rows on the map; there, you need to tap the final place without dragging. This can, sometimes, result in misplacing if you don't tap-and-hold (but quickly tap instead) and, while holding the screen, look for the colored bars moving around on the X / Y axis showing the final placement of the tower.
As you can see in the screenshot below, Web high scores are also implemented:
(a 8k screenshot; I’m also on the list ;) )
Speed-wise, unlike on Windows Mobile when running on high-resolution (VGA) devices (as opposed to low-resolution QVGA ones), even the 3G (let alone the 3G S) runs the game just fine and you’ll only encounter severe slowdowns if you let some 15-20 waves of creep on the field at the same time. When not doing so (that is, at most, letting 2-3 waves of creep on the field at the same time), the game remains perfectly playable – unlike on Windows Mobile and VGA devices.
Note that there are some (slight) changes in the game limits too. For example, the 8k game now “only” has 81 enemy waves as can also be seen in the following screenshot (showing my having beaten the AI on the iPhone 3G):
Incidentally, this is how my set-up looked in the last wave:
All in all, my existing WinMo / desktop PC / Symbian strategy guide will be just fine with the Apple version too – taking the differences outlined above into account. Here it is:
Towers Trap Strategy Guide
In my
latest Misc News collection, I’ve already recommended
Towers Trap, a brand new game on two mobile (Windows Mobile and Symbian S60) and desktop Windows platforms.
GameZoneProject‘s official page is
HERE. No matter what platform you have, I really-REALLY recommend giving the trial a try and play through the (initial) tutorial. (Again, you’ll have text rendering problems on VGA Windows Mobile devices). I’m pretty sure you’ll like the game.
In this strategy guide, I give you a far better and more thorough introduction to the game than the demo tutorial of the game. This includes explaining the difference between the available weapon types, the enemy (the “creeps” ), how the maze should be constructed etc. That is, first, make sure you play through the demo. After this, either start the Easy mode - or the 8k one so that you actually have a chance against the creeps. In a nutshell: creeps, your enemies, enter from the top and left. They must be stopped from reaching the other side. If they do, you lose lives. You only have 50 lives to start with, meaning you can only let 49 creeps reach the other side before the end of the game, which, at least in the 8k mode, consists of 80 waves of creep invasion.
The game is very well playable on touchscreen-enabled mobile platforms (and, of course, desktop Windows with mouse / stylus). On touchscreen-less ones like Microsoft Smartphone (Windows Mobile 6 Standard) or Symbian S60v3, playing the game is a little bit more complicated as the cursor moves pretty slow through the field. Hope a future version adds hotkeys for quickly jumping for example half a screen in a direction (utilizing the currently not used buttons). On the other hand, these platforms support quick weapon selection (using the numbers).
Now, let’s take a look at how the weapons can / should be used.
Weapons at our disposal
Sniper. Very useful, ranged, anti-ground&air, non-area-damage (non-splash) weapon with multiple functionalities. In the beginning of the game, it’s what you’ll need to buy (unless you play in the 8k mode) to successfully defend yourself against at least the first few waves of creeps until you can purchase more advanced weapons like
Shocks and, even better,
Earthquakes and/or
Cannons.
However, its usage doesn’t end at this! It’s not just an early game weapon. Actually, I’ve found it much more useful than the
Cannon &
Air combo when talking about ranged weapons. (That is, I’ve lost almost all of my 8k games when I’ve gone mass-
Cannon &
Air, unlike with mass-
Snipers. Both using the recommended three-wide vertical structures, mostly
Earthquakes being outside and
Cannons /
Airs /
Snipers inside to be protected from the lockdown of Ice creeps.
Rocket Launchers. (Referred to as Luncher.) Much better (almost twice as long) initial range than those of
Snipers. It’s also somewhat stronger. However, it costs double the price and can’t be used against air opponents.
Cannon. This very expensive, (only) anti-ground weapon has pretty low (2) damage and moderate range (between that of
Sniper and
Rocket Launcher).
Shock. While it’s pretty weak (5) and has as bad a range as
Sniper, it has a very useful feature: it slows down all creeps it manages to shoot at for quite a lot of time. This is essential. However, as it’s mostly because of this (pretty much permanent) side-effect that it’s worth using and, otherwise, has low damage, I don’t recommend going for mass-deployment. In most cases, 10-14 will be sufficient even in end-games: 4-5
Shocks at both entrances and, if you have a long (ground) path, some additional
Shocks when the initial shocking effect is eliminated.
This only anti-air weapon,
Air, is much stronger (strength: 20 vs. 8) than the other anti-air-capable one,
Sniper and has a much bigger range (10 vs. 6). However, in practice, I’ve found going the mass-
Sniper (with some
Shocks, placed at both entrances, to slow them down right at entering the field) route better in games. Remember: if you absolutely don’t use
Airs and go the mass-
Sniper route, it’s only the last two tides of creep airplane ships that may have a chance to get past of your defense (in 8k games).
Earthquake is an anti-ground weapon only. You will want to go the (mass-)
Earthquake route as soon as possible as it has excellent splash (that is, damaging several creeps at the same time) damage (70; compare this to the 2 of the
Cannon, the 8 of
Sniper or 10 of
Rocket Launcher). Its range isn’t very good (6) and upgrading it is very expensive (compared to, say,
Snipers); therefore, you’ll want to place them to the creep path as closely as possible, while backing them up (mostly against the icy opponents) with
Snipers and, possibly, some (very few)
Cannons to easily get rid of closely-packed creeps /
Shocks to make sure the initial slowdown / shock delivered to the creeps is safely repeated.
Radar. This is a passive structure with the only aim of showing invisible creeps. As is described below, in the “
Enemy creeps” section, in general, it suffices to place only two or three of them (fully upgraded) onto the battlefield. Note that the icy creeps also block
Radars; during this, invisible creeps will creep in undetected. Therefore, make sure you protect them in the same way as ranged weapons behind
Earthquakes.
The (initial) stats of all these weapons is presented in the stats area:
This shows the strength in the top left corner (10 in this case), build cost (20) and range (10; bottom left).
Enemy creeps
The most notable creeps you need to pay particular attention to:
The bombs,
, have the bad habit of jumping over empty corners like the following:
The solution is not leaving any empty corners on the field; always use “covered” or “filled” corners like this:
or this:
The satellites,
, are very fast.
Shocks are essential for slowing them down.
The airplanes,
, are the only air enemies. In my 8k practice, I’ve found that while “simple”
Snipers deal less considerably damage to them, even a battalion of 8-10 upgraded
Airs (the dedicated anti-air weapon), placed in the center of the gaming field, won’t stop at least the last two, most powerful tides of then-superstrong airplanes. Just putting at least four columns of
Snipers and one column (as recommended) of
Shocks (in the entrance) will almost completely stop even the last two tides of them.
When I tried placing a massive amount of
Airs in the center of the battlefield, I generally lost my 8k games because it’s very important to have as many anti-ground ranged weapons in there . These means, most preferably,
Earthquakes backed up (where ice can’t affect them)
Snipers as
Rocket Launchers can’t be used for anti-air and
Cannons, while excellent against enemies coming in a bunch, aren’t as powerful as the mass
Earthquake +
Sniper combo.
The yellow guys,
, come in a group as in
. This means
Cannons (which do splash damage affecting very adjacent enemies) and, to a lesser degree,
Earthquakes are especially useful against them.
The invisible folks,
, make it necessary to build
Radars on the field. Fortunately, splash damage done by
Cannon /
Earthquake is effective against them even when invisible if there are visible enemies (very) close to them. I recommend putting two radars in the two entrances (and upgrading them entirely) and another one in the lower right corner to get rid of the remaining ones.
The boss (a black ball - remember the one - see for example
THIS - in Epyx’
Impossible Mission?) is worth trying to eliminate at any rate as it gives at least 100 points. That is, try not to bring it to the field with the other enemies so that all your weapons can shoot at it. Also, if the field is doesn’t have many other creeps making it hard to guarantee you can build the tower back, use the tricks like quickly altering the path of these balls by quickly removing a tower - and, when the have come sufficiently close, re-building it. With a loss of 2 dollars a time (if you use a non-upgraded
Sniper for the trick), you can give the AI a hard time and keep the two bosses in the maze for quite long, until they indeed get destroyed.
Finally, Ice,
, is by far the worst enemy: it disables all kinds of weapons (even
Radars!) in its close vicinity. A very good counter-measure is not using columns of single or even two weapons, but - horizontally - group your weapons into groups of three. The two external weapons should be
Earthquakes and the inner one a
Sniper. The majority of my screenshots show exactly this setup. This way, even when the Ice creeps disable the outer
Earthquakes, the inner
Sniper will still be able to shoot at them. Nevertheless, be prepared to see some of them pass even the strongest weapons. Fortunately, this will only be an issue with the last about two waves - at least in 8k games, if you quickly build up your structures - not leaving out the three-wide walls of weapons as can be seen in the following screenshot:
(Note that the full-screen screenshots have all been taken on a desktop PC to make my life easier (compared to all the hassles of taking screenshots on phones...). The game looks exactly the same on VGA devices. On QVGA ones, the sprites aren't high-res and the non-active (game) area is much smaller.)
An example screenshot of showing these creatures locking down the nearby towers (showing a massive attack; that is, swamping the maze on purpose. Of course, you won’t want to do anything like this, particularly not at the end of the game, where not even splash weapons like
Earthquakes or
Cannons will be able to destroy most of them)
Here, locked-down towers are white.
Tips & tricks
* in 8k games, it’s worth deploying
Shocks right at the beginning in the first row so that the enemies are slowed down right at the beginning, giving your weapons much more time to take them out. Also, make sure that if you manage to build up a multi-column defensive structure like the one in the screenshot below:
then, place some additional
Shocks in the points far away from the start because the shock (and the consequential slowdown) goes away after a while. In the above shot, there’s one in the lower right corner and the path is built up in a way that it takes the enemies back to the upper block of several long-range
Shocks, making sure that all your enemies are slowed down (again). Of course, the artificial intelligence of the app gives priority to shooting at enemies having been further on the field; that is, in a structure like this the
Shocks will shoot at the enemies coming from down and not just entering the field. Of course, this is what one would expect.
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