11 Bit Studios isn't done with Anomaly, it seems. The studio has just announced a brand new follow-up, dubbed Anomaly Korea. It's a new chapter, complete with new units, player powers, and an "even more frantic race" to defeat the alien horde, which has bunkered in Korea instead of Tokyo this time around.
We don't know a lot more than these spectacularly vague details, unfortunately, but we do have some images of the game in action. And, boy, it looks great:
Anomaly Warzone Earth, for those of you who don't know, is a reverse tower defense game where you control the invading force. As the commander of this force, you're tasked with building and maneuvering a convoy of tanks and other mechanical oddities through a line of turrets. You can also deploy special powers, which can heal your stuff or even power down enemy turrets for a time.
Anomaly Warzone Earthwas one of our favorite games of 2011. It controls like a dream, looks amazing, and packs a punch in the strategy department. We're definitely excited to get our hands on its sequel as soon as possible.
With the release of one long-awaited tower defense game out of the way, it seems as if other developers are now stepping up to the plate, looking to ride the proverbial wave of increased interest in the classic iOS genre. Commando Jack [$0.99], from the folks at Colossal Games and Chillingo, is one such tower defense. However, while the majority of Commando Jack follows the general themes of tower defense rather closely, its ability to jump into the action first-person style does a good job of differentiating the game from the rest.
At first glance, Commando Jack plays like any other open field tower defense title. Players are given an enemy entrance as well as a base to guard (in this case, it’s Commando Jack himself) at the onset of each mission. Enemies are then set forth in waves seeking the most direct route to the commando. Players then utilize a combination of familiar looking towers (such as the mini gun, goop gun and laser) to serve as the line of defense between the baddies and the base. As this is an open field title, towers also serve as barriers and are best used to carve long and windy paths throughout the map for an effective defense. So far, Commando Jack sounds like a generic addition to the tower defense world.
Playing Bad Hotel, you can almost see the list of 'what ifs' that drives its development. What if, instead of defending a base with towers, you defend a tower with itself? What if every room you add not only serves a practical purpose, but also adds to a player-generated orchestra? What if all of that was even crazier than it sounded?
Bad Hotel is the answer to those questions, and that answer seems pretty great. You start with a little hotel, a single piece of tower jutting up from the ground. You can drag money-generating rooms onto every side of it and then onto each other, piling them up into the sky and bringing in the big bucks. If, that is, they can stand up to the efforts of Tarnation Tadstock, the Texas Tyrant. He's out to take your tower down, and has an army of rats, monkeys and dive-bombing seagulls to send against you.
The first, cheapest rooms generate money. The next are small guns, then mine launchers, then healing rooms that emit an unpleasant sort of healing gas. Each of these are layered on around the original hotel structure, which must be protected at all costs. Each bird or monkey that makes it through takes off a chunk of the hotel's health, and any structure that gets destroyed will collapse every other piece that's built off it. There's no mazing, no lanes, just the knowledge that whatever you do, your hotel will fall to shambles before you're done. It's kind of a relief to not need to worry about perfection.
I've been on the same map in Fieldrunners 2 [$2.99] for half the day and it's driving me up the wall. Like a textual Yoda, the in-game help keeps telling me the same thing, “Use the choke points.” I do but keep failing. When I attempt to save up for lasers, I find myself getting overrun. When I trust in bargain-bin Gatling guns, I find myself getting exactly what I paid for. The happy medium exists somewhere. I know it. I just need to figure out how to get it.
There is no delicate way to put it. Subatomic Studios' Fieldrunners 2, the sequel to their hit tower defense game, will eat your soul and have you thanking it for the privilege. Filled with all the things that made its predecessor such a hit with its fans, Fieldrunners 2 is the embodiment of the phrase 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'. You won't find unnecessary innovation here, no awkward attempt to blend genres – Fieldrunners 2 knows what it is. It's a tower defense game and a bloody good one at that.
If you can't tell by now, we've been really excited for Subatomic Studios'Fieldrunners 2 [$2.99] for quite a long time now. This morning, Brad and I took a quick look at it, but we've been following it for a long time, even talking to the developers about the game.
It's finally out now for the iPhone and iPod touch, an iPad version is scheduled for a future release. People in our forums are having a great time with the game, but if you want to hold on for our full review, that's cool. It'll be coming very soon.
Earlier this morning, Eli and I spent a good chunk of time with Subatomic Studios' mega awesome Fieldrunners 2 on iPhone. On the surface, it's a super smooth tower defense game that packs in just about any kind of standard tower defense mode, tower, enemy, and even special ability that you could possibly want in a tower defense game. Looking deeper, it has a flair and character that you don't see in other TD games. Super smart AI behaviors and an engine that can render tons of dudes on-screen round out the package.
Obviously, we'll be giving Fieldrunners 2 a much more in-depth look later when it hits worldwide later tonight. But, we did want to give you a little taste of what to expect. Our guess is that if you like TD games, this probably was already on your radar. If it wasn't, though, consider giving this a look:
As much as I enjoy standard tower defense games, it’s always nice to check out a title that tries to push the genre in a new direction. Strikefleet Omega [Free] takes the core defender mechanic and combines it with real-time strategy elements and succeeds quite well in doing so. In fact, the only major issue that sullies an otherwise great title is its pushy IAP scheme.
Strikefleet plays like a hybrid of tower defense and a real-time strategy. Each mission charges you with defending your main ship from waves of ships. You’ll defend your base by warping in various other ships which either launch fighters, mine ore (which is needed to warp in shapes) or launch projectiles at the enemy. The bulk of your time will be spent micromanaging the flight paths of your ships (with easy-to-use line drawing controls) while simultaneously monitoring resources and firing shells. At the end of each mission, you’re rewarded with alloy, which can be used to purchase ship upgrades, and experience which counts toward a leveling system (reaching new levels reward you with more alloy and unlock newer ships).
It’s been nearly three years since we checked out Boom Brigade [$1.99] and even back then we appreciated its ability to offer a decent action experience with strategy elements and an incredibly simple control scheme. With Boom Brigade 2 [$2.99], 10ton seems to have upped the ante with more levels, units and weapons. It all leads to an improved title and a great addition to the iOS strategy lineup.
For those unfamiliar with its predecessor, Boom Brigade 2 is a mission-based tactical title that’s best described as a combination of tower defense and real-time action. Each mission charges you with defending a structure with a predetermined number of units from five possible classes, each with their own weapons (Sniper, Flamethrower, Machine Gunner, Shotgunner and Bazooka). You’ll be defending against waves of enemies with various attributes and weapons of their own. At the end of each mission, you’re scored and assigned a rating based on how well you defended your structure and kept your troops alive.
You control your troops almost exclusively via a line-drawing mechanic. A simple touch and drag from your soldier to the location you want them to be at directs them to move. Each unit also has a shooting range and will automatically attack any units within it (you can also tap on specific enemies to focus fire, if you wish). Thus, the majority of the gameplay in Boom Brigade 2 focuses on micromanaging each unit by moving them within shooting range while simultaneously keeping track of their health ammo. While this sounds simple enough, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes that make each mission engaging and fun.
One of my most favorite aspects of Boom Brigade 2 is how deceptively deep the gameplay seems to be. A lot of the upgrades for each unit are actually viable, and it’s quite fun discovering what combinations work on which missions. Upgrades affect everything from power to range to even reload speed (weapons are automatically reloaded when empty). There are also a lot of different strategies that can be utilized for taking out the opposition, with turtling working well on some levels while others force you to balance protecting your base with charging forward and taking out enemies that cause more damage from afar. When you add in the random elements of power-ups there’s certainly a lot to take into consideration.
I place so much emphasis on Boom Brigade’s strategic elements because you’ll find a need to embrace them in order to succeed – especially at later levels. The campaign does a pretty decent job with its difficulty curve and introducing new weapon upgrades, but eventually the challenge ramps up and you’ll find yourself actually needing to pay attention to enemy types and matching up weapon upgrades to your opposition and tactics. The survival modes, meanwhile, significantly ramp up the difficulty and are a nice change of pace to the somewhat slower, more structured enemy waves found in the campaign.
One of the few issues we noted in the original Boom Brigade was the potential for issues on the small iPhone screen. Unfortunately, those still persist somewhat, but the inclusion of tactical mode, which pauses the game when you’re directing your troops, is a good inclusion that attempts to alleviate the problem. Of course, this issue is moot while playing on an iPad (by far my preferred device for this game). There’s also not much in terms of replayability once you complete the campaign (survival leaderboard chasers notwithstanding).
You won’t be blown away by any of the auditory or visual elements in Boom Brigade 2, but in all honesty that’s not what this game is about. Rather, Boom Brigade 2 focuses on a real-time strategy experience with loads of weapons and explosions. On this front, few people will end up unsatisfied. Fans of the original, and really anyone that wants to engage in a little alien annihilation, need to check this game out.
As a longtime fan of tower defense games, I’m continually impressed at the length iOS devs will go in order to try and breath fresh life into the genre. Human Defense [$1.99], for instance, charges you with defending various body parts from viruses by placing immunity system towers. While that alone offers some novelty in the genre, Human Defense goes a bit further integrating puzzle and reflex mechanics. This makes the game at the very least an interesting TD experience.
As a tower defense game, Human Defense is a lot more active than other titles in the genre. Yes, there are set spots to place your towers, along with enemies traveling down pre-determined paths. There’s also a standard three-star ranking and scoring system that seems prevalent in most games. But, you’ll also find some interesting mechanics such as multiple routes with switches, as well as a health system that requires constant supervision during a match.
In May, Subatomic Studios unveiled that it was in active development on Fieldrunners 2, the sequel to its original genre-defining tower defense game. What's had us so excited about the upcoming project is its guts. Subatomic isn't just adding new modes, new maps, and generally updating the original game and slapping a "2" on it. Instead, it's introducing new mechanics and concepts that will radically change up the core experience. AI has soul and brains now, terrain has actual depth, and the game's systems will freely interact with each other. It sounds like a much more emergent game.
A new engine is allowing all of this new stuff to become a reality, and you can get your first taste of the game's new planes, choppers, and ground vehicles below. At E3 this week, Subatomic is showing off concept images of several new vehicles, all of which will have a part to play in Fieldrunners 2.
Fieldrunners 2 is due out later this June on iPad and iPhone. You can check out our past coverage of the title here and a bonus interview podcast here.
Back in 2009, we saw the beginnings genre-defining game series. Look at Angry Birds—not the first of its kind, but the game that launched a thousand clones. Defender Chronicles [$1.99 / $4.99 (HD)] felt like one of those really important games. Yeah, it was tower defense, but it was a huge, sprawling vertical tower defense game, and that felt like something special. So it's kind of strange to be here in 2012 with few similar games to look at, and a sequel that hasn't had to outdo years of design iteration.
Not that this is strictly a negative. If there's one area where Defender Chronicles II: Heroes of Athelia [$1.99] shines the most, it's at being a faithful followup. It's shiny, new and improved, but its skeleton is the same vertical tower defense title we fell in love with in 2009. Whether you're coming at it fresh or looking for a blast from the past, it's hard not to fall for it fresh—or all over again.
We've been waiting nearly three years for a follow-up to Defender Chronicles, the title that popularized the "vertical tower defense" style of gameplay and was one of the most beloved games from a still young iOS App Store back in 2009. Well, the time is finally upon us, as Defender Chronicles II: Heroes of Athelia [$1.99] has just gone live in the US App Store.
Defender Chronicles II brings back all the things that made the original game such a hit, and improves upon them at practically every level. We took an in-depth look at the game in our preview from last week, and we'll be bringing you a full review in the very near future. However, if you were a fan of the first game you more than likely will be all over this new release anyway, and as always there are early impressions and discussion of the game rolling into our forums.
Frequent updates to Fieldrunners [$2.99 / HD] over the past few years has kept the tower defense title feeling fresh despite its age, but its upcoming sequel looks like the kind of continuation we've been dying for. Dozens new towers, new skills, new maps, new modes and new enemies are all part of Fieldrunners 2, which is due out on iPhone later this June and iPad "shortly after" this initial release.
The original Fieldrunners was an excellent tower defense game that managed to stick out because of some really sharp twists. From what we've seen so far, Fieldrunners 2 is going to push that bar even further, and that's really exciting.
The iOS platform is hardly lacking for games that allow you to send living things to their inevitable death, and Gratuitous Space Battles [$9.99 (HD)] satisfies the tactical itch with a capital T, while managing to bring some big eye candy and a light sense of humor to compensate you for all your hours spent constructing.
When you first launch the app, you’re driven towards a fairly anemic tutorial, which hardly deserves the name. A game like GSB has a lot of meat, layered on top of more meat, with a crust of meat at the center - a simple text-driven tutorial cannot even begin to prepare you for how many numbers there are to be crunched, how many configurations possible, and how many men are ready to die in your service. Inexperienced strategy gamers are going to be overwhelmed with the complexity, and while the tutorial does a competent job of getting you into the cockpit of the starter-ships, it does little to prepare you for the amount of ship-building you’ll be doing.
When you truly adore a game, sequels can be a scary thing. Sure, it's more of what you love—but what if they mess it up? What if they abandon all the things you love for the sake of novelty? Well, Defender Chronicles [$1.99 / $2.99 / $4.99 (HD)] fans, let us put your fears to rest. We've had a chance to spend some time with Defender Chronicles II, and it seems to have everything the original had to offer. And every little bit of it is bigger, better, and sexier.
I spent the summer of 2009 consumed by the original. I had a brand new 3GS and pages of games, but Defender Chronicles - Legend of the Desert King was the one that devoured my time. Its mix of vertical tower defense and RPG conventions was completely irrestistable, and Gimka Entertainment and Menara Games propped it up with massive updates that added to its already substantial content. Defender Chronicles II is looking like it will contain that same potential for time investment, so you might want to clear your schedule in advance.
This game is leagues beyond its predecessor in terms of visual appeal, and that's an achievement—as we pointed out way back in our review, Defender Chronicles was a looker in its time. But now every unit is more detailed and every animation is more fluid. And crisp—Retina support is in for iPhone, though apparently not for iPad. The game lives up to the rose-colored vision you may have of the original, but it's much more refined, more up-to-date.
The gameplay has been similarly preserved. You'll still spend your time turning flags into guilds and upgrading them through tiers of units, archers to rangers, squires to cavaliers. Strategy seems more important than ever before, with enemy units that take advantage of every potential weakness in your defense. Height and range are the biggest considerations as you scroll around massive, multi-tiered 2D maps. There are quite a few of those this time around, and they hit an almost Escher-esque level of complexity pretty quickly.
There isn't much that's changed outright, really. Voice actor George Ledoux returns to impress us with his Sean Connery impression, though he also pulls off an impressive lizardman. Heroes Melwen and the General return, but this time they're accompanied by two new friends: Lovell and Elwyn, an archer and priest. The brand-new story of the heroes and their defence of Athelia against the Orcs and Forsaken is told through gorgeous comic-book cutscenes once more.
From our brief time with the game, it really seems like you're going to be able to put in a ludicrous numbers of hours. There's so much here for the player that wants to go deep, with heroes to level up and customize, hundreds of artifacts to locate and five difficulty levels and game modes to work through. The difficulty curve also feels a bit steeper, so if you're already familiar with the game you shouldn't be underwhelmed. If you're feeling particularly cocky, you'll be able to challenge yourself with a huge list of Game Center achievements and leaderboards.
Ultimately, it seems like Defender Chronicles II will be the perfect sort of sequel. It updates already excellent gameplay for a new generation of devices, and brings in all sorts of improvements in the process. It's hard to imagine any Defender Chronicles fans being disappointed, and folks that are new to the series should be in for a treat. We'll be taking a closer look at the game over the next couple weeks, and we'll be back with our review after it hits the App Store on May 24th. In the meantime, the developers are posting regular previews in our discussion thread, so take a peek if your appetite isn't already whetted enough.
11 Bit Studios isn't done with Anomaly, it seems. The studio has just announced a brand new follow-up, dubbed Anomaly Korea. It's a new chapter, complete with new units, player powers, and an "even more frantic race" to defeat the alien horde, which has bunkered in Korea instead of Tokyo this time around.
