Blizzard has been mentioned on our sister site TamsPalm quite a few times due to the incredible mess also known as World of Warcraft customer support. WoW, however, has had a predecessor known as Warcraft 3. This program was popular especially because of its rich map creation possibilities. Tower defense(aka keep critters from reaching a point by building guntowers) has been a recurring topic in these self-generated maps - Resco Defender brought the game to the PocketPC. Now, a smartphone version is available - can it stack up?
Most tower defense maps are designed for XGA screens; Resco thus had to redesign the gameplay a bit. The boys divided the screen into two parts - the bottom part contains the castle, the top part contains a grid.
Selecting one of the grid cells allows you to build various structures - if you can afford to do so:
Each tower has special capabilities - some attack all critters in a defined area, while others slow critters down without actually damaging them. All towers can be upgraded to become even stronger.
Once the first structures are built, the first wave of critters comes in:
Should your towers fail to eliminate all of them, the remaining critters damage the castle. After 20 critters reach the castle, the game is over:
The waves(called mobs) are mostly balanced - however, some of them have special and annoying capabilities. For example, flying critters don’t care much about your walls; bomb critters just tear them down.
At higher levels, the grid can become pretty crowded with literally dozens of critters and towers.
Last but not least, the game also contains a tutorial that teaches beginners how to play:
This review looked at version 1.20 of the game on a QTek 8500 running Windows Mobile 5. The game needs approximately 3MB of memory and can be run from an external memory card.
Overall, Resco Defender is one of the few games that are really really dangerous and should be prohibited by law - once you start playing, there is no way you will put your smartphone down. The folks did a great job at adapting the game’s controls to the smartphone platform. If you love great games, get the game over at the TamsShop!
Further reading:
Interview with the developer
