The Game

Idle Fortress Tower Defense is a mobile game by DD Games. As suggested by the fairly generic name it’s a simple game with a simple premise – upgrade your fortress and defeat an onslaught of enemy waves. The concept of an idle tower defence game was something that intrigued me, however I was a little disappointed that this game isn’t really what I would call an “idle”.

The game has quite a typical mobile cartoony art style that works quite nicely. The core gameplay loop is doing runs in which you see how many waves you can last. You can upgrade your tower heavily throughout the battle with silver coins that you earn. During your run you will also earn gold which can be used to permanently upgrade your tower at the factory or research lab. Every 10 waves a buffed up boss will also appear, providing a significant challenge. There are plenty of upgrades to unlock including a variety of shot types, satellites, health and defence upgrades.

Worth it?

The game is free to play and still in development. A lot has changed in the game since it first came out. Ad watching is there to increase the amount earned from a run, revive you if you die and generally something you can choose to do. I wouldn’t really call this an “idle” game due to the fact that you actually have to be quite active when doing a run and being selective of what gets upgraded. The only idle element is the gem mine which awards you gems every so often. You can also perform research tasks while offline.

The game is quite good for active play sessions, which can last anywhere between 5 and 15-20 minutes depending on how many waves you manage to get, as you progress there are other ways to speed up fights. The game has become quite monetised with various subscription or purchase options. Overall it’s a fun game and is has built on a solid base. It would be nice to know when the second area is actually unlocked as it feels like it’s quite far away and can be a bit of a struggle to reach. The game is actually quite challenging and ramps up its difficulty quite early on.

There isn’t that much in the way of idle mechanics, perhaps if the tower fought off waves with it’s permanent upgrades and restarted every time it died or some sort of auto-buyer it could be more of an idle (while afk). Another option would be some sort of idle farms or mechanics that tick while you are away from the game. Either way as an active-play game there’s a good amount to get stuck into, it would be nice to see more cards and card slots and possibly even more upgrades, secondary turrets, areas, enemies and maybe even some more truly idle mechanics.

Tips

• Focus on upgrading gold and coins per level as early as possible – coins per level are no longer available, but gold is still quite useful but you can and should now pour more into dodge chance, multishot and attack. You can still get coin per wave bonus via research so do boost it there
• Life-steal has been nerfed somewhat but still useful for getting past bosses
• Regeneration is generally useless as the tougher enemies will just wipe you out
• Unlock all card slots and cards asap, keep purchasing and upgrading cards with your gems
• Get the second research tab and run longer research tasks in there (thanks to cory for that one)
• The maximum game speed multiplier is 3x
• Try to unlock all attack perks as the last one is an instant kill shot chance, paired with a high attack speed this can be very useful
• Claim free coins, gems and research shards every 4 hours from the top of the home page
• Lookout for the little creature with the bag full of gems that occasionally appears – tap it to gain a few gems
• Shield spawn time is quite quick and easy to max out

Useful Links

• Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.idlefortress.towerdefense
• App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/idle-fortress-tower-defense/id1601958372