Tower Defence

Isle of Arrows

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The Game

Isle of Arrows developed by Gridpop is a card based tower defence game made by a single developer. The game presents a fairly simple concept of randomised cards that allow you to place new paths or towers onto your island (also randomised each game) and defend against the incoming waves of enemies. There are 5 different classes that can be played, each with different abilities or lack thereof. Aesthetically it’s a pleasing simple low poly and pastel colour palette.

Between each wave you are presented with a new free card to place and can purchase more additional cards for an extra 2 gold. Some cards will have water tiles attached which require some forethought and strategy when being placed as removing them isn’t always easy. There are also random events and relics that can help or hinder you as you progress through the game. As you build up your reserve of cash, every 10 gold, you will earn an extra 1 gold per wave (ie if you have 10 gold, you will get +2 each wave, if you have 30+ gold you will get +4 each wave). There are 3 main game modes to play: Campaign which features 4 main areas, Gauntlet which presents increasing difficulty and challenges and a daily defence challenge.

Worth it?

Isle of Arrows is both an an aesthetically pleasing and beautifully simple game with a good amount of depth and some potential for further development and features. The PC version will set you back around £10, whereas the mobile version is around £5. The game has a few core levels and the gauntlet and daily challenge give some additional gameplay options after you’ve completed those – it would be nice to see even more cards and areas added in the future. Some more customisable game modes would also be interesting, for example custom card/event/relic selection or increased random event frequency. There is a slight issue when trying place paths that may end in a solid block (or blowing them up with bombs).

Overall the game is nicely balanced, providing a good challenge while also remaining fun and interesting. There’s a good deal of gameplay to get stuck into, the game can be played offline and in portrait – making it a perfect mobile game and definitely worth

Tips

  • Try not too spend too much money until you reach around 30 gold, then you can spend each turn provided you don’t dip under 30 gold, so you can ensure you’re getting +4 gold per turn.
  • Think about where you’re placing towers and paths and how they’ll be affected in by future cards.
  • When you get a 2nd or 3rd spawn point added, you can get away for 1-2 waves before you need to add more towers or paths to them – just ensure you don’t overinvest in them, but also be weary of leaving them unprotected – in an ideal scenario you want them to come close to your existing towers and paths.
  • Try and place traps on corners where they can hit at least 2 paths, likewise try and maximise the number of paths that each tower hits.
  • High ground can be very useful with most towers to increase their hit areas.
  • Not all cards are worth placing – gardens or cards with water tiles can make the late game quite difficult if you don’t have enough bombs to remove them.

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Idle Fortress Tower Defense (Updated)

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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.

Screenshot of Idle Fortress Tower Défense showing the card roll gatcha
In-game screenshot of the upgrade options in the main menu showing the upgrades available like attack, slow chance.
In-game screenshot of Idle Fortress Tower Defense, showing the player's progress and stats, as well as the upgrade options available for the tower.
Image of Idle Fortress Tower Defense gameplay, featuring a top-down view of the player's base and defenses, with waves of enemies approaching from the side.
In game screenshot showing overall progress and number of waves passed.

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

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Infinitinode 2

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The Game

Infinitinode 2 by Prineside takes tower defence games to a whole new level. The game is a follow up on the quite successful Infinitinode, taking a lot of what made that game great and improving on it. Amongst some of its most notable features are the mind-boggling research tree, the custom map creator and editor, regular updates, daily quests and seasonal leader-boards.

In total the game has 15 unique towers, each with it’s own set of in-game upgrades which allow you to specialise that specific instance of the tower. From Tesla coils to flamethrowers, cannons to lasers – this game has them all. The game also features 9 regular enemies and several bosses – each enemy has specific tower’s it’s weak against, so it’s up to you to place the right towers in the right places.

If all the defending wasn’t enough the game also has mineable resources on each map. You can build special excavation units on these positions in order to harvest said resources. You will need these to upgrade your towers.

The game offers a series of pre-made maps as a campaign – especially challenging towards the end. If you complete the campaign you will unlock endless mode, which serves as the “endgame” – offering better prizes, infinite waves, harder enemies and even more research.

Worth it?

The game has an option to watch videos to increase a level’s winnings by 25%, it also has a chest decryption element that will give you prizes over time, once your chest has been decrypted. Other than these two “gatcha” elements, the game does a very good job of keeping you in without bombarding you with ads or crappy micro transactions. It offers you daily missions with rewards, I even missed a day and it saved my progress allowing me to resume from the last day I completed. There are some purchase options around double gains, personally I haven’t purchased any of these but if you’d like to support the developer this is probably a good way to do so (and reduce your grind time).

Overall this is an amazing tower defence game with excellent RPG elements – the skill/research tree is a really addictive element, wanting to constantly upgrade and improve your towers, buying global perks or improving your resource mining capabilities. The custom map editor, daily challenges and endless mode give the game insane replay value and will keep you coming back for more and more. I highly recommend this to anyone who loves a good tower defence game.

Tips

  • Set up a custom farming map on which you can grind papers and resources
  • Make sure you progress the story branch of the research tree in order to unlock levels
  • Get the BOUNTY modifier tile as soon as you can, this will help you massively when grinding coins in game
  • Use the wiki and reddit for more advanced tips

Useful Links

Random Dice: PvP Defence

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The Game

Imagine Hearthstone meets a tower defense game completely reliant on RNG. Random Dice: PvP Defence by 111% is exactly that. The objective of the game is spawn, merge and upgrade dice in order to defend against waves of enemy dice. It features two primary modes – PvP and Co-Op and is based around collecting new dice with different power ups. There are various types and tiers of dice all with unique abilities.

As it’s a mobile game there is obviously the gatcha element, but very subtle it’s not very intrusive. Playing co-op mode allows you to collect cards to open chests which will give you new cards. The game also features an arena mode in which you have a random deck and 3 lives to go as far as you can. There is also a 1 game version of the arena that allows you to risk your gems for more.

Worth it?

Definitely a great time killer, although sometimes Co-Op games can go on for a while (I’ve had 25min games), but PvP is usually around 3-5 mins. The collection element is good and kept me coming back a lot, wanting to grind quests and co-op to get more dice.

They are still updating the game regularly with new dice and Crews are being added as well now. It’s a simple but effective game and can get pretty mental. There are some occasional minor performance issues, but nothing game breaking.

Overall would recommend as a casual mobile game.

There’s a huge collection of unique dice, with new ones being added regularly.

Tips

  • There are daily quests you can complete to collect gold and gems (the premium currency).
  • Once you complete a quest you can reset it (you can do this once).
  • Try and fill the whole board with dice before merging them.
  • Save up 40k gold because the shop occasionally has Legendary dice, you can also reset the shop more often by watching videos.
  • Spend gems on arena – the win potential if you go beyond 7 is maddive.

Useful Links

Wiki: https://random-dice.fandom.com/wiki/Random_Dice_Wiki

Discord: https://discord.com/invite/zQj6tCM

Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/randomdice/