Foursaken Media's castle defense third-person hack 'n slash mashup Heroes and Castles [$1.99 / Free] has just received another massive update adding all sorts of new goodies to the game. You might remember that we thoroughly enjoyedHeroes and Castles when it came out in January, and the very next month a huge version 2.0 update hit which sweetened the deal even further by adding a competitive multiplayer mode, a single-player Siege mode, and a trio of brand new character classes to play as.
Today's update, which is significant enough to be called version 3.0, again adds a trio of new characters. First off is a female Assassin which gives you a sneakier way to dispatch your enemies. Next up is a Barbarian who has a unique "risk vs reward" attribute that seems him getting stronger as his health gets lower, which should make for some interesting tactics. Finally there is a Druid who uses nature and various kinds of spells to augment the units under his control. The Assassin comes free for everybody, while the Barbarian and Druid are unlocked using gems like the rest of the characters in the game.
In addition to the new characters, a new 20 mission campaign has been added which continues on from the end of the first campaign, and is balanced for players who have beaten the first. It features a new beach environment and new enemy types. There are also several new ally units that you can utilize, like a long-ranged Hunter, heavily armored Dwarves called the Iron Helms to beef up your front lines, two new types of Wizards, and a very powerful (but very expensive) Dwarven Tank which sounds pretty bad ass. Speaking of ally units, you'll be able to level up your buildings and units by 3 additional levels thanks to the new update.
All of this new Heroes and Castles version 3.0 content will be available in versus and co-op, and there's a new multiplayer map to battle it out on as well. If you have a higher-end iOS device you'll also be treated to real-time shadows, and Foursaken has lowered the RAM usage on lower-end devices which should help with of the crashing issues some people had been experiencing. Of course, there's many other tweaks and fixes under the hood in this update too.
Heroes and Castles just keeps getting better as time goes by. There is a full-featured free version which will let you give it a spin risk-free, though the version 3.0 content in that version had a slight hitch and is still waiting for approval from Apple. Seriously, Heroes and Castles is truly awesome and players in our forums have been loving it since day one, check it out if you haven't done so already.
Foursaken Media's Heroes and Castles [$1.99] is a castle defense style game that also lets you jump right into the action yourself and beat the snot out of some bad guys from a third-person perspective. It's a more hands-on approach than your typical defense title, but still takes all the strategy and planning that's a hallmark of the genre. Basically, Heroes and Castlesis awesome.
If you have yet to experience the game yourself yet, Foursaken has released a new free version called Heroes and Castles Free [Free] which essentially gives you the entire game, including all online multiplayer functionality, without dropping a single dime.
Here's how it works. The regular paid version of Heroes and Castles comes with three playable hero types unlocked from the start, with three additional heroes available to unlock using the premium in-game currency, which is earned through play or bought as IAP. This version also costs two bucks right out of the gate.
Heroes and Castles Free is the same as the paid game in every way but one: rather than having all three starter characters unlocked from the start, you'll choose just one of those three to unlock as your starter character, and the remaining 5 characters are all unlocked using the same premium currency setup as the paid game.
So if you're alright with only unlocking a single character at a time, you can get in on the fun of Heroes and Castles totally for free. In my own experience, I've been plenty busy working my way through the campaign with just a single character type anyway. Each character is incredibly different from one another and requires learning their different strategies and nuances. For the time being I'm content sticking with my Knight, and by the time I get around to wanting to explore another character I should have stockpiled a good amount of currency anyway.
If you were on the fence about Heroes and Castles then you should jump all over this free version. I wasn't sure about it at first myself, as I'm not usually big on castle defense games, but about ten minutes in and I was hooked. It really is a game that needs to be experienced to be appreciated, and now it won't cost you anything to check it out firsthand.
Heroes and Castles [$1.99], Foursaken Media's visceral blend of 3rd-person action and castle defense, is already getting a huge content update, the studio has revealed.
First up is a brand new Siege mode that flips the script on the regular game and has you playing as the Evil forces trying to assault and take down the castle's defenses. This leads right into a new competitive multiplayer mode, where one player is Good and defends the castle and the other is Evil and tries to break through the defense.
This new competitive multiplayer mode will complement the current cooperative game style, and it sounds like a ton of fun. The Evil faction will come with four new classes of hero as well as their own unique economy system.
There are two new heroes coming to Heroes and Castles too. One is the Elven Ranger, which you can see below, and the other will be a Mage character. The current heroes will also be getting alternate skins, one of which you can also see below for the Knight.
On top of all the new content, Heroes and Castles is also getting a ton of all around fixes, but specifically in the area of making the cooperative and endless modes more stable. If you're curious to hear more on Heroes and Castles, then check out our review of the game or our forums for discussion from the community. This latest update has already been submitted so look for it to hit within a week or two.
We've been watchingFoursaken Media'sHeroes and Castles [$1.99]Â ever since we got wind of its existence shortly after the release of N.Y. Zombies 2[$0.99]. Departing from its comfort zone, Heroes is certainly its most ambitious title by combining both third-person action gameplay with castle defense and resource management. That sort of combo on iOS would be intriguing on its own, but Heroes and Castles also does an excellent job implementing it, making it another winner for the developer.
Simply put, Heroes and Castles is a game of third-person combat and castle/tower defense. Players control one of three heroes (each with their own attacks and moves) against a horde of undead looking to destroy your keep. As you play, you continually earn gold, which can be used to purchase buildings and recruit armies. Units come in various types, such as the archer which stays on your wall shooting from afar, the pikeman which has piercing damage or the peasant which are cheap but plentiful. Meanwhile, buildings range from essentials such as the gold mine (which increases your rate of gold accumulation) to arrow towers and ballistas (which target enemies) to even support structures which improve your units.
Liv Games' excellent strategy defense title Legendary Wars [$1.99] received a massive version 2.0 update back in November, adding fan requests, fixes, tweaks and heaps of new content that had been bubbling up since the game originally launched in January of 2011. Now its follow-up title Monster Wars [$0.99], which offers a lot of the same style of gameplay as Legendary Wars but from the bad guys' perspective, has also received a big update. And, since both titles had launched in January, both Legendary Wars and Monster Wars are celebrating their two and one year anniversaries this month, respectively. Because of these milestones both titles will be free over the weekend.
Now, this update for Monster Wars isn't quite as massive as Legendary Wars 2.0, but it's welcome nonetheless. The biggest addition is full iOS 6 and iPhone 5 widescreen support for the game, along with a lovely new icon and some new in-game graphics for loading screens and menus. There are some new Tier 4 monsters in the game, and you can now play the "Hero" campaign from Legendary Wars right from the main menu of Monster Wars. Finally some additional optimization and fixes should make Monster Wars an overall better performing game, especially on older devices.
It's been an interesting ride watching both Legendary Wars and Monster Wars release and evolve over the past couple of years. Legendary Wars really brought a fresh approach to the fairly stale castle defense genre, offering tons of content and variety as well as a great art style and a fun story. Monster Wars basically took those ideas and improved upon them, while also tying things into the original Legendary Wars in a lot of cool ways. The two games really complemented each other, and after so many updates and improvements that feels more true now than ever.
If you don't own either Legendary Wars or Monster Wars yet, definitely take advantage of this freebie promotion and pick them up, as they should keep you entertained well into their next anniversary milestones.
In January of last year, Liv Games released their inaugural iOS title Legendary Wars [$0.99 / $1.99], and changed what we should expect from a castle defense style game. We really enjoyed the game in our review, as it offered a fantastic visual style, heaps of content, and a variety of different types of gameplay. Legendary Wars proved popular with gamer, too, and since release it has seen a ton of update love as well as an excellent pseudo-sequel called Monster Wars [$0.99].
Last week, in celebration of the success of Legendary Wars and its impending 2-year anniversary in January, Liv Games released an absolutely massive version 2.0 update to the game. It's something that's been in the works since Monster Wars came out more than 10 months ago, and includes just about every fan request the developer has received since the game initially came out.
"In 2012, USA launched a secret proejct. To wake up Japanese people from being too peaceful, their new weapon was sent into Japan. Code name "Battle Cats" Japanese people are too kind and nice to use cruelty weapons to the Battle Cats… By the way, I Saw the developer of the Battle Cats was interviewed on TV… I know, it's insane."  [a thousand times sic.]
That glorious, brain-hurting pile of Engrish is only part of what lurches Battle Cats [Free] into the title screen. There's more to the "story," like how the unknown narrator tried to write a letter to someone and got distracted by their own terrible handwriting and then forgot who the note was meant for so they trashed it. It's all superfluous, crazy, silly, and completely unnecessary because, again, this is all before the game even starts. It's just there to set the scene.
All of this is to say: PONOS' newest game is long on charm and spelling errors, but is still tons of fun. It's a tower defense game but with a couple of key twists: Yes, there are cats, but also you focus more on dispatching units from your single tower instead of upgrading the structure itself. You can improve your tower, but the points you earn are mainly spent to upgrade your troops.
Oh. Yeah. All your troops are cats. Cute, adorable, black-and-white scribbled kitties. Each level starts off with your tower and a slowly increasing wallet. The more you earn, the more cats you can send out. Or you can decide to increase your wallet's capacity, with a button that also speeds up how quickly you accumulate money. The idea is: more, more, more. Earn as quickly as you can. Send cats out as quick as you can. Win as quick as you can.
Each level is set up like a standard showdown: Your enemy's tower is across the way a little bit and they also can send enemies your way. They don't have cats. They have a cat's natural enemies: hippos, stick figures, and dogs. Eventually you'll hit a wall and can't keep up with the enemy onslaught and you can opt to either go back and earn more experience from previous levels or pony up some moolah for in-app purchases to cheat and increase your guys' stats quicker. It's your call, but, you'd have to be the most impatient million-dillionaire to take shortcuts in a game gushing with whimsy about war-driven cats.
There isn't an astonishing amount of depth to the game, which seems more forgivable since it's a free title, but it is a great time-killer. Each level is essentially the same, although the backgrounds change, along with your enemy's towers. (I especially loved the Sapporo beer tower, for example.) So, there's the micro-repetition of each stage and the macro-repetition of leveling stuff up.
There's a lot of different elements to level up (make your tank cat's reach greater, your tower's laser more potent, make your accountant cats able to earn money quicker, etc.), which means Battle Cats (read: not a Thunder Cats knockoff, in case you were wondering) has staying power if you so desire it. Why, you could almost say it has nine lives, but according to Battle Cats, once a cat is killed it dies in a poof of smoke then you have to wait a few seconds to earn $50 to regenerate another one.
In January of last year, Liv Games’ debut title Legendary Wars [$0.99 / $1.99] really redefined the side-scrolling castle defense genre. It had a huge cast of interesting heroes and enemies, a fantastic art style, tons of humorous dialogue, and a huge single-player campaign to play through. But what really made it stand out was how it used so many different iterations of the strategy defense formula, making it feel like many different games in one and a fresh experience throughout.
Exactly a year to the day after the release of Legendary Wars, Liv Games put out its pseudo-sequel Monster Wars [$0.99], which we really liked in our review. It took basically everything from the first game but re-imagined it from the bad guys’ perspective, letting you play with the monsters as the protagonists. Also, it dumped heaps of new content, improved visuals, and lots of new odds and ends that made it an even better overall experience.
Today, you can grab Monster Wars for free for a limited time. In addition, Liv Games has sent over some details of what to expect of the next new 1.2 update which will be hitting soon, along with a teaser image of some of the new tier 4 armor:
-11 New AWESOME Tier 4 Monster Armors! Each with a more powerful special designed to destroy heroes!
-Monster Arena! 12 New Challenges and 2 new bosses!
-NEW LEVEL featuring the Unisis boss (Pegasus Unicorn)
-New Sky Angel boss in 6-2 and Arena.
-New 'Hero" Difficulty designed for Tier 4 Monsters.
-New Fear status that causes heroes to get scared, miss and run away!
-11 New Tier 4 Achievements and 1 new Leaderboard.
Definitely don’t miss the chance to grab Monster Wars while free, and if you like the game and find yourself curious about what it’s like for the heroes in the game, then definitely check out Legendary Wars at some point too.
We first checked out Liv Games over a year ago with Legendary Wars [$0.99 / HD], a great take on castle defense. Now the developers are back with Monster Wars [$0.99], the latest addition to the genre. Billed as a ‘follow-up’ to their previous game, Monster Wars succeeds at preserving the same great gameplay of its predecessor while tweaking elements and offering a new story complete with a load of new units.
For folks that played Legendary Wars, Monster Wars will feel very familiar. The majority of campaign missions still feature the same castle defense-style gameplay where you collect resources, build units, defend your own castle from the opposition while simultaneously moving forward attack units to take out the opposing fortress.
There’s nothing more frustrating than a game that has good core gameplay that is ruined by missteps and issues in all the other game elements. Such is the case with DvO [$1.99 / HD], a castle defense game that’s heavy on the gameplay depth, but falters in its visuals and slow execution.
DvO (a.k.a. Dwarves vs. Orcs) plays very much like a classic castle defense title. Players send units down five battle lanes taking down the resistance until they reach the opposing castle (with the enemy doing the same to you, obviously). The side that takes down the opposing castle first wins the match. Littered throughout the lanes are crystal patches, which must be mined by your mining units and are used as the currency necessary to build supplemental units.
When I hit up the Sega preview event this past Tuesday, there was definitely a running theme. Held at the Kabuki hotel in San Francisco’s Japantown, there was an overwhelming amount of Asian decor in the lounge Sega had reserved as well as a delicious spread of gourmet sushi, pork buns, and veggie spring rolls. It turns out that this choice of venue by Sega was deliberate and fitting, as the main title they were showcasing at this event is a game called Samurai Bloodshow [$1.99].
Out of respect for Sega’s embargo wishes, we weren’t able to talk about Samurai Bloodshow until now, but the game has been available in Japan since June and we have even had a thread in our forums for discussing the game since then. Due to the popularity of the title in Japan, Sega has now officially brought the game to the US App Store. (more...)
Following their successful co-release of Zen Wars [99¢] a couple weeks back, Liv Games put their noses to the grindstone to finish up a humongous update that’s been over 3 months in the making for their previous iOS title Legendary Wars [99¢/Lite/HD]. We certainly enjoyed Legendary Wars in our original review, but the game has been updated fairly regularly since its release in January and now includes all sorts of nifty new features like Retina Display support, Game Center, a native iPad version, and tons of gameplay tweaks and enhancements.
This latest update for Legendary Wars stands to be the biggest one yet. Liv Games has revealed that they recently passed the one million downloads mark for Legendary Wars, and all the hard work they’ve been pouring into this massive update is really a way to say thanks to the many fans of the game for their great support.
So for all intents and purposes, consider your initial download of Ballistik Wars a trial period. If you like it, you can get rid of the ads for an affordable price. It's as simple as that.
As far as the actual game is concerned, Ballistik Wars is a stylized, cartoony castle defense game. As you play through you'll unlock new unit types and you can upgrade your castle and units as you go along. It's not just defense though, it's also attack -- so when you break through the enemy defense you still have their castle to think of.
The bulk of the game is going to be recognizable to anyone who has played a castle defense game, but the upgrade path means it's easy to get stuck unable to beat a level. Unlike most castle defense games, Ballistik Wars doesn't coordinate your energy consumption and unit type unlock together. This means that if you don't upgrade the proper components at the right times, you will be stuck unable to spawn a good counter-strategy. If you could grind, it wouldn't be a big deal, but losing means game over where you can only restart the level or start again from the beginning.
That said, once you get the hang of how everything works, Ballistik Wars is a surprisingly deep game with simple mechanics. Strategy is almost more important than most castle defense games because it's not just about surviving against an enemy onslaught, it's also about attacking their defenses. You need to strategize with multiple stages of attack and defense in mind.
The interface, unit selection and upgrade paths means you'll have a lot of information to store in your brain to get the most out of Ballistik Wars. Thankfully, the visuals are clean and the cartoon graphics keep things simple even in the chaos of battle. Most importantly, the unit types are diverse, so what you're selecting or what you're up against won't confuse you.
As you'd expect with a castle defense game, the units are each with their own strengths and weaknesses. There are also certain units that work better together than others, meaning you'll want to save up and launch two unit types at once to take advantage of the synergy. As you're attacking, you'll get bonus points for completing small meta-goals and the higher your score, the more points you'll get to distribute to upgrade your units.
Ballistik Wars is a good castle defense game with an interesting attack layer to it. If it wasn't so easy to get permanently stuck by upgrading the wrong units, it'd be an easy recommendation, but as long as you're willing to pay special attention to what you're doing, you'll get a lot out of the game. It might look like a casual title, but there is a lot more strategy to it than a glance can reveal.
Last month, Backflip Studios unleashed Army of Darkness Defense [Free/HD] into the App Store. Based on the campy B-movie Army of Darkness, a particularly popular entry in the cult classic Evil Dead franchise, the video game incarnation is a castle defense game with some very light RPG elements. The castle defense premise plays perfectly into the movie plot itself, and Army of Darkness Defense is filled with plenty of fan service.
Now for a limited time, you can grab Army of Darkness Defense for free. There is an IAP component to the game that will allow you to advance your character building more rapidly if you choose, but it’s certainly not necessary to enjoy the full game. Gameplay is a bit on the shallow side, but everything is done so well with the art style and sound effects that it’s actually a really enjoyable experience.
You can check out our full review for more information, but really if you're a fan of the movie in any way, or even just a fan of arcadey castle defense games, Army of Darkness Defense is an easily recommended download while free.
When it comes to campy, over-the-top horror movies that should theoretically make good games, nothing really tops Army of Darkness. Despite its seemingly perfect fit, its cult following and its pedigree, there have been very few games based on the Evil Dead universe. Thankfully, Backflip Studios took on Army of Darkness: Defense [99¢ / HD] with their own spin on the castle defense genre slapped with a thick layer of fan-service paint.
At its core, Army of Darkness Defense is a casual castle defense title with light RPG elements. Despite those RPG elements, you're not going to get a very deep experience here, but if you're a fan of the series you'll probably be happy with the end result. Most notable among the fan-fodder is the massive collection of voice clips found throughout -- something around the ballpark of over 100 different clips from the movie are included and scattered randomly about. Even with that many clips in the mix, they do get a bit repetitive as the game moves on, but that's what the mute button is for.
Foursaken Media's castle defense third-person hack 'n slash mashup Heroes and Castles [$1.99 / Free] has just received another massive update adding all sorts of new goodies to the game. You might remember that we thoroughly enjoyed Heroes and Castles when it came out in January, and the very next month a huge version 2.0 update hit which sweetened the deal even further by adding a competitive multiplayer mode, a single-player Siege mode, and a trio of brand new character classes to play as.
Foursaken Media's Heroes and Castles [
