Surprisingly, a search of the App Store won't reveal much in the way of Tolkien's epic high-fantasy trilogy. We've seen many other movie adaptations converted to games, but nothing in the way of the Fellowship's desperate plight to Mt Doom. It's strange then that Glu Mobile has championed the well known licence on the App Store, and has done so in the form of a tower defense game, The Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense [$6.99 / HD].

Thankfully, Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense isn't your typical tower-defense clone. Obviously, this is largely due the vast source material it draws from, using the entire Lord of the Rings adventure as a tapestry to bind each of its 18 levels together. You'll encounter goblins in the Mines of Moria, fight with the Rohirrim in the Battle of Helms deep and fend off Nazgûl a-plenty on your way to defeat Sauron. There are 7 iconic battle locations all up and a host of familiar enemies to mow through.

As far as the gameplay is concerned, what really sets apart Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense is the way it uses the heroes of the fellowship as your typical TD towers. Maps in Middle-earth Defense aren't comprised of static paths bordered with designated areas where you place your towers. Instead, in much the same way as Fieldrunners handles TD, the path the enemies take can and must be manipulated by you to succeed. To do so, you'll be able to build a variety of different barricades with wood earned after each wave. Barricades each have different abilities, such as slowing or damaging creeps that pass by them. Though you are limited where you can build, it is up to you to decide what paths to open or close.

Once your path is determined, you must then place your heroes. Ranged heroes operate much like your typical towers, attacking from static positions. Melee heroes however, roam around their area picking fights, and so can get up close and personal with a creep wave hitting them constantly as they pass. Heroes can be upgraded with earned gold, improving their attack power, speed, range or skills. The latter is unique to Middle-earth Defense, as each warrior Hero (there are support heroes too, such as the hobbits) has a skill that can be periodically activated to dramatic effect. Effective use of skills such as Gandalf's meteor shower or Gimli's axe tornado are pretty much essential for getting past the harder levels, as the game does get quite difficult at times.

The individual creeps and heroes in Middle-earth Defense are a mixed bag-- some look terrific, whilst others are barely recognizable. This can be attributed to the somewhat jaggy models and darker textures experienced on the 3GS device we tested the game on, though we're thrilled (and surprised!) to see that a Retina patch has already been released which sharpens things up significantly. Unfortunately, this doesn't remedy the fact that animations are only just serviceable, and that heroes are sometimes indistinguisable and easily lost amidst the chaos.

Glu Mobile have otherwise done a great job of maintaining the standards of the license. The musical score is not overstated, and is actually worth listening to as you're battling wave after wave. Short cutscenes describing each scene and text dialogue between characters abridging each level are well written and give context to your encounters. There is also a Challenge Mode which is unlocked after completing the tutorial that allows you to attempt each of the Story Mode environments with unlimited enemy waves, in an attempt to post your best Game Center or Facebook score.

Finally, there are a host of trophies (achievements) to earn in Story Mode that unlock additional characters and environments in Challenge Mode. We're happy to see that Glu Mobile haven't skimped on content, as there's a heap to do here; and with 3 difficulty levels you can honestly expect several hours worth of gameplay all considered. Certainly don't expect to breeze through your journey to the Black Gates.

Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense is an interesting take on the saga for its first journey to the small screen. Though an unusual use of the licence, it is not an unwelcome one, as Middle-earth Defense does enough different to make it stand out from the very crowded tower defense market, not the least of which is provide great context for your battles and an interesting and well-known story to keep you engaged. There is one minor setback though-- while we don't usually comment on price, it is obvious that use of the Lord of the Rings licence does bring with it a slightly elevated hit to your hip pocket. If that doesn't phase you, we can certainly recommend Lord of the Rings: Middle-earth Defense as a challenging and entertaining TD clone that should pose a pleasant surprise to cult fans and fans of the genre alike.

Guns'n'Glory was released in late August and our review reflected just how surprised we were with just how fun the game turned out to be. Unlike many tower defense games where you place a tower and it stays there until you sell it, Guns'n'Glory almost plays closer to an RTS than a TD because you're able to move all of your units around whenever you please. This allows you to adapt your entire defense to each incoming wave of, well, innocent settlers attempting to make their way west.

Another thing that is amusing about Guns'n'Glory is that you don't control a faceless set of towers that attack an array of geometric shapes, monsters, or aliens. No, instead you control a team of bandits that quite literally position themselves on bridges and over mountain passes, slaughtering entire families of people trying to settle out west. It's a silly and entirely unexpected premise for a tower defense game, and I'm more than a little surprised that it didn't seem to offend anyone.

Take a look at the trailer, and take a peek at our review if you'd like, but really you should just download this game as quickly as possible while it's still free. The mix of tower defense and realtime strategy elements really makes for a fun game. It's a little short on content, but that's hard to get worked up over while the game is free.

Trudging through the forums of TrendyEnt's Dungeon Defenders, an upcoming game on PC that recently caught my eye, has upturned some pretty juicy developments. Apparently, Dungeon Defenders' release in November and a console version on the way hasn't prevented the busy developers at TrendyEnt from finding the time to post their work on an iOS port of the game, too. And it's looking mighty fine, even at this early stage.

The Dungeon Defenders website describes the game as a hybrid between a Tower Defense game and a Co-op Action RPG, where 4 players take on the role of heroes tasked with defending the onslaught of enemy creep waves by building defenses and directly attacking the horde themselves. There seem to be rich underlying RPG concepts driving Dungeon Defenders, as heroes collect loot, level up, lay traps and even get their own familiars along the way.

It seems as though Dungeon Defenders' iOS release may not be too far away, either. A video released by the developers on YouTube (below) shows Dungeon Defenders already being played co-operatively on 4 different iOS devices. On initial observation, it looks to have many of the features of the PC version, with the touch interface effortlessly replacing the standard point-and-click and the bright, colorful, cartoon-like graphics remarkably in-tact in its translation to the handheld device.

The PC release is described as having an extensive campaign, lots of planned DLC, detailed stat tracking and the ability to seamlessly mix both online and local participants, all features we'd love to see carried over to the iOS port too. Little information is actually known on the project so far, beyond what has been released in alpha demonstrations. We have contacted the developers to see what else we can get from them, and will keep you up to date on any further developments.

Here's their non-iOS trailer:

It was just about this time last year that Apple introduced the 3.1 firmware update to the iPhone that allowed developers to access the built-in camera for games and apps. What followed was an avalanche of “Augmented Reality” games, or in other words games that utilized real-time images from the iPhone camera and added digital graphical effects over those images to create gameplay out of the environments in front of you. Unfortunately, nothing too spectacular ever emerged from this technology, and most games consisted of shallow gameplay with Space Invaders-type graphics slapped over the camera's view. There have been some interesting uses of Augmented Reality on the iPhone just to be clear, but as far as gaming was concerned it never amounted to more than just a gimmick.

Now it seems that developer Int13 is trying something a bit different to bring a more authentic Augmented Reality experience to the iPhone (and camera-enabled iPod touches) with their upcoming game ARDefender. The way ARDefender works is that you'll print out an image from a PDF file available on their website, and this special image will be read by the camera and create a tower where the image is placed. The goal of the game is to defend that tower from waves of enemies by moving your device around the fixed position of the tower to take aim and blast away at them. It may sound a little simplistic gameplay-wise, but what I really like is how convincingly the tower and enemies seem to actually be on the table, which can be seen in the video below.

We previewed a technology very similar to that used in ARDefender way back in March of last year at GDC, but at that time use of the iPhone camera APIs was off limits to developers. The technology has also been used in the Playstation 3 game Eye of Judgment, and even in this incredible Augmented Reality tattoo. Ideas like this are obviously possible on the iPhone as well, and it seems like ARDefender is a step in the right direction. All I've ever really wanted from an Augmented Reality game is for it to make me actually feel like something is being created in the real life space around me, and by the looks of things ARDefender does just that.

It shouldn't be too long before we can get our hands on the game either, as ARDefender has already been submitted to Apple. Interestingly, the game has been available for over a month on the Samsung Wave, and impressions from those gamers have been positive. They've even come up with some clever ideas on how to use the technology, like printing out a huge version of the PDF image to create a gigantic tower and playing the game from an elevated area like a balcony, or pulling up the PDF on their computer at work and pointing their phone at it to play the game directly on the screen. We'll be sure to take a closer look at ARDefender when it gets released in the near future.

Not long ago classic iPhone tower defense game geoDefense [$1.99 / Free] version 1.5 hit the App Store, adding support for the Retina Display of the iPhone 4 as well as the framework for DLC level packs. The first of those level packs was just released this afternoon, and a 99¢ in-app purchase unlocks brand new set of 3 medium levels and 3 hard levels. Also, these levels are immediately playable once downloaded so you can dive right in without needing to play any previous levels. While a game as good as geoDefense getting more levels is totally newsworthy by itself, it also gave us an excellent opportunity to pester developer David Whatley who is quite literally floating around the Caribbean as we speak.

Last time we spoke with Whatley he was extremely excited about the potential of the iPad, and told us that a sequel to geoDefense was coming which would be exclusive to the device. Since then, several things have gotten in the way such as the release of the iPhone 4, a Facebook game called Fantasy University, launch day ports of geoDefense and geoDefense Swarm for Windows Phone 7, and the never-ending question of what will make a worthy sequel to a game with the notoriety of geoDefense.

According to David, the recent update to geoDefense had a lot of work done behind the scenes to eventually ramp up in to an iPad version of geoDefense which is going to be the next title to be released by Critical Thought Games. From there, they're going to be testing the waters of the iPad App Store to see whether or not sticking to their guns regarding the iPad exclusivity of geoDefense 2 makes sense or not. Whatley admits that not doing an iPhone version of the sequel would likely be a big mistake, especially given the size of the market.

When talking to David about geoDefense 2, he mentioned the amount of pressure he's under to deliver something that will impress gamers, but not stray too far from what everyone has since come to expect out of the geoDefense series. He wants to take geoDefense to the next level, but he's still not entirely sure what that next level is. The situation seems eerily similar to Galcon [$2.99 / Free] and its successor Galcon Labs [$2.99] which despite the popularity of the original saw a lackluster response from gamers as it felt too much like an expansion pack, and not enough like its own game.

If you've beaten every level in geoDefense over the last year and a half since its initial release, now is a great time to re-download the game and try out the new levels. Admittedly, I'm fairly rusty but so far the six new levels completely live up to the difficulty level we've come to expect of geoDefense and are highly recommended for any fan of the game.

Tower defense games on the App Store come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors it seems as the genre becomes more and more saturated with each new release. Much like match threes, it's getting harder and harder for these games to stick out amongst the crowd when there are already such fantastic tower defense staples such as Fieldrunners [$2.99 / HD], geoDefense [$1.99 / Free] (along with geoDefense Swarm [$1.99]), or my personal favorites, Sentinel: Mars Defense [99¢] and Sentinel 2: Earth Defense [$1.99]. But just because all these awesome games exist, doesn't mean I don't try every tower defense game that looks interesting (and every match three for that matter) but so often in these games there's not much in them that given the choice would make me tap their icon instead of just playing some Fieldrunners or any of the other games I just mentioned.

Guns'n'Glory [$2.99] is a somewhat rare exception to that, and I really can't believe it hasn't generated more buzz in the time since its release over a week ago because it's one of the most unique tower defense games I've played in quite a while. Handy Games did a great job of combining some elements of realtime strategy with the standard tower defense formula as well as a ridiculous premise, great sprite-based graphics, and a western themed soundtrack that fits the game perfectly. On top of that, it's even universal and while I prefer it on the iPad, it's just as much fun on the iPhone.

So by now it all sounds good and you're probably wondering what's the deal with the title of this review. Well, I'm not entirely sure how the setting of the game will sit with some people as in Guns'n'Glory you're not protecting Earth from invading aliens, or killing the anonymous troops of some enemy army. Instead, you control a gang of bandits made up of various stereotypes, train-mounted gatling guns, and cannons. These bandits slaughter waves after waves of men, women, horses, and a few different types of covered wagons all trying to make their way west. It's actually kind of amusing how when playing the game I went from "Wait a minute, these are... obviously women... that I'm gunning down" to "Argh, get back here you!" as a settler makes it to the end of the path and off the screen.

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There are tons of tower defense games on the App Store, and for good reason-- The touch interface and fairly slow-paced gameplay just works fantastic on iOS devices. I have quite a few favorites in the genre, but Origin8's Sentinel 2: Earth Defense [Free] is always on the top of any list of tower defense games I recommend. There is just so much I like about this game which I explained in my review.

In a nutshell, Sentinel 2 has great graphics, good sound effects, a nice variety in both towers and enemies, and the inclusion of both repair drones as well as different destructible barriers to defend really adds an interesting layer of strategy to the game. There are also mega weapons that are fired from your orbiting space ship that slowly recharge over time, my personal favorite being a massive orbital laser strike that destroys anything it comes in contact with. The best thing about Sentinel 2, at least in my opinion, is how well the game is balanced.

There doesn't seem to be any "right" way to beat the included levels, as quite a wide variety of different tower constructing and upgrading strategies all seem to work. This makes the game a lot more fun than a lot of other tower defenders which often seem to be games of how intelligently you can manage your resources to ramp up to whatever the fully upgraded ultimate tower is that kills everything in one hit-- Allowing you to just put your phone down and wait for all the waves to just die to your defenses and for the next level to start.

If you even have a vague interest in tower defense games, or even have never played one before, you should download Sentinel 2 while it's free. If you miss the window of the freebie promotion, I'd even recommend buying it.

iPad owners are in for a treat heading into this weekend, as TowerMadness HD has gone free for today. Not only is it a rare occurrence to get a full fledged iPad editioin of a game for free, but this particular game normally sells for $7.99. TowerMadness HD is a fully 3D tower defense game, and the iPad version features same device multiplayer for head to head competition. We previewed the game back in May shortly before it's release, and you can take a look at our review for the original iPhone version that was released over a year ago for more information.

This short developer video showcases the added multiplayer mode of the iPad version:

Even if you're not typically a fan of tower defense games, there's no reason not to give TowerMadness HD a spin during this free promotion. More information and player impressions can be found in the game's thread in our forums.

When we first heard that there was a tower defense game in the works based on not only the best entry in the original Star Wars trilogy, but also a movie that is so good that it ranks in at #10 in the IMDB Top 250, it was hard to not get excited. After all, the entire battle on the ice planet Hoth seemed to make quite possibly the perfect scenario for a tower defense game, especially when you throw in heaps of Star Wars fan service in to the mix. After spending the day playing Star Wars: Battle for Hoth [$2.99], I'm happy to report that Battle for Hoth is a competent tower defender, with quite a few good ideas. Unfortunately, it's also lacking in some areas, which may or may not concern you depending on your level of obsession with the Star Wars universe.

First of all, from a Star Wars nerd perspective, it's hard to imagine a better iPhone game. Carving out trenches in the snowbanks of Hoth to position units and drive all the completely recognizable Imperial troops through your maze of defenses is really awesome, especially as you progress enough through the game to where you're battling AT-AT's and have access to the full arsenal of defenses. Brief clips of Empire Strikes Back play between levels, and as mentioned before, the entire scenario laid out in the movie is a great premise for a tower defense game.

Battle for Hoth works like other tower defense games, which by now I'd think everyone who reads this site with any regularity would at least be vaguely familiar with. It improves upon this gameplay formula in a number of ways, the first being trenches. Instead of needing to funnel the incoming enemy troops around by building rows of towers, you can dig trenches in the snow, which barely cost you any of your command points, the resource used in game to buy more defenses. When you place units inside of these trenches, they get a defensive bonus, which is important as the incoming Imperial forces won't just be blindly walking past, they will also be firing at you-- Often destroying your defenses in the process.

The way the command points are handled is pretty cool too. Instead of the way most tower defense games work where you're just awarded whatever resource you use to buy defenses when enemies die, you have to actively tap on the little command point icon which is dropped by the last enemy in the wave. This forces you to pay attention, and continually pan around the battlefield to not miss command points, which could have vital consequences if you find yourself short to buy additional or upgrade your existing units. I found myself feeling like I was "playing" the game much more than your typical tower defense game, as odd as that is to say, because I couldn't just upgrade my towers and put my phone down while the next few waves of guys get slaughtered before I have to do anything.

My absolute favorite feature of Star Wars: Battle for Hoth is the level of control that you have over each of your units. Instead of your typical tower defender where your defenses blindly fire on the first unit, with some games allowing you to target a specific unit, Battle for Hoth allows you to tweak the targeting of all of your defenses. For instance, you can toggle whether they attack the weakest or strongest unit first, whether they should prioritize ground or air units, and this can be done both globally as well as on a per-unit basis. If you like this level of micromanagement, you will have a load of fun with Battle for Hoth.

Later in the game as you get access to more and more advanced defenses, you will need to build and protect power generators to supply power to stronger weapons, and there's even a second game mode. In fortress mode, you start each map with a fixed amount of command points, and you must plan ahead and use those command points wisely to be able to survive the level. It's an interesting spin on things, as it really forces you to analyze what the best bang for your proverbial buck is and whether or not you should build more units, focus on upgrades, or a mixture of the two.

Unfortunately, with all this good comes some bad as well. The interface of Battle for Hoth feels a little clunky. To place units, you drag them from the toolbars which line the top and right side of the screen. Units are placed under your finger tip, which really makes things feel extremely inaccurate as I'd much prefer they were offset above my finger instead of relying on the weird crosshair system they have currently implemented which just draws a horizontal and vertical line intersecting with your finger to line things up. In a tower defense game where you need to lay out defenses to route enemy troops around, you need to be able to position them exactly where you need them to go. I felt like I was accidentally placing things in the wrong spot far too often, forcing me to sell them at a loss and try again.

Overall the graphics of the game just seem lackluster. The animations of the various Rebel and Imperial units seem very basic, and while they certainly get the job done, Battle for Hoth barely compares to games like Fieldrunners in the art department. The sound effects and music get a little repetitive too, as you will need to get very used to hearing the same old blaster sound over and over. Also, I would have loved to have the original John Williams soundtrack (or at least parts of it) in game instead of the current background music which seems a little out of place.

Still, for three bucks, Star Wars: Battle for Hoth is one of the cheapest things to sport a Star Wars license that I can think of. It's a competent tower defense game, and I really don't think the things I perceive as negatives to the game would be as much of an issue if the entire genre wasn't so incredibly mature on the App Store. There are some absolutely fantastic tower defense games out there with highly refined controls, expertly balanced difficulty, tons of content that has been added through (in some cases) years of updates which make the rough edges on newcomers like Battle for Hoth stick out like a sore thumb.

At the end of the day, while there are better tower defense games on the App Store, this is the only one where you can battle waves of AT-AT's, which is likely worth the price of admission alone for most.

While the tower defense section of the App Store is nearly just as packed as match three's and line drawers, it's hard to not appreciate a game from even the most saturated genre that puts a new spin on things. Developer Tall Chair is putting players in charge of the defense of Undeadwood, a town which unsurprisingly has a zombie problem. In Cowboys vs Zombies, instead of the typical path that creeps snake around in front of your towers in most tower defense games, players hire cowboys to defend the roof of a particular building along what presumably is the main street of Undeadwood with a camera system that pans up and down the street instead of the standard overhead view.

According to the developers' description of the game, the zombies will attack each of your buildings, and deciding which to defend, which to rebuild, and when to fallback will be vital parts of the strategy involved in Cowboys vs Zombies. Check out the following gameplay trailer to see how this all looks in action:

According to the Cowboys vs Zombies Facebook page, the game was submitted to Apple on Monday night. Assuming there aren't any issues with the approval process, Cowboys vs Zombies should be available very soon.

If you've been following TouchArcade, chances are you've already seen this video, but like anything related to the Star Wars movies, it almost seems to be tradition to release things, then re-release them (and often times re-re-release them). This time, the video is narrated by Fluffy Logic designer Tomas Rawlings. Rawlings explains some of the strategies used in the game, such as building trenches and placing infantry in those trenches which offer them a defensive bonus.

Trenches also allow you to funnel enemy units, and the incoming attackers will also fire on your defenses instead of just walking by like most creeps in tower defense games. Star Wars: Battle for Hoth is scheduled for release on the 15th for $2.99, and you can expect a full review as soon as we get the game in our hot little hands.

An ambiguous image has been making the rounds over the weekend as casual game development king PopCap has sent out save the date emails for August 2nd in San Francisco, CA. This is quite literally all we know right now, but judging by the wild success of both the original Plants vs. Zombies for the Mac and PC, as well as the chart-topping Plants vs. Zombies [$2.99] and Plants vs. Zombies HD [$9.99] for the iPad, it's no surprise that PopCap would be making a sequel.

If this is the first you've heard of Plants vs. Zombies, here's the gist of the game from our review:

In Plants vs. Zombies, Popcap takes the standard tower defense formula and greatly simplifies it. Instead of a path to build towers along, you drop seeds in your yard which then grow in to plants that have various offensive or defensive capabilities. The yard is organized in a grid, and zombies move straight across the row they spawn on, munching (or in some cases jumping or flying over) anything that they come in contact with.

A gauge on the top of the screen shows how close you are to the end of the level, with flags indicating when big waves of zombies are going to come. When you clear a stage, you're often awarded with the seeds of one more of the nearly 50 included plants. This seemingly constant progression does a great job of keeping you interested, as it always seems like you have a new toy to play with. To shake things up even more, mini game levels are mixed in, including a bowling game of sorts, a whack-a-mole game with zombies, and others.

We awarded Plants vs. Zombies for the iPhone 5 stars, and the iPad game is worth a look too as it includes a survival mode, more mini games, and the graphics look simply fantastic on the iPad screen. PopCap seems to have a knack for creating fun games that appeal to everyone from the most hardcore FPS player to your grandma, and I expect Plants vs Zombies 2 to be no different. It seems a sequel is inevitable, I just hope they release it simultaneously on the App Store instead of making iOS gamers wait nearly a year for a port like the first Plants vs Zombies.

Scheduled for release on the 15th of this month for $2.99, Star Wars: The Battle of Hoth is a tower defense game set in the Star Wars universe where players defend against the Imperial forces while on the ice planet Hoth. Straight out of Empire Strikes Back, the game includes all kinds of units that will be instantly familiar to Star Wars fans from the massive AT-AT to Rebel Snowspeeders.

Gameplay looks fairly standard for a tower defense game, and aside from all kinds of Star Wars units, it also sports some cut scenes from the movie. Needless to say, as a huge closet Star Wars nerd, I cannot wait for this game to get released.

Ace Tennis 2010 Online

Eurocenter's newest release, Ace Tennis 2010 Online [App Store] is self-described as "the first real tennis game on the iPad."

An iPad adaptation of Eurocenter's early iPhone release, Ace Tennis Online [App Store], Ace Tennis 2010 Online is an over-the-shoulder tennis title that features three different court types (grass, sand, and indoor) and matches against computer AI as well as online players from around the world.

The game features region tap controls (you control where your player runs on the court, but the swing is automatic) with tilt influencing volley direction. The iPad version features enhanced graphics that take advantage of the device's large screen and features gameplay similar to the original iPhone version, which saw a successful run in the App Store in its day.

I'm far more accustomed to triggering the swing as the main play dynamic in most tennis titles-- so the gameplay felt strange to me.

The biggest feature of the game like its 2009 iPhone counterpart is online multiplayer play. Eurocenter is well known for their online multiplayer features across many of their games.

As the game just recently landed in the App Store, we haven't been able to really test the multiplayer functionality. Eurocenter is planning on launching the iPhone version of Ace Tennis 2010 in the coming few weeks which should expand the player pool.

App Store Link: Ace Tennis 2010 HD Online, $4.99

TowerMadness HD

Limbic Software has just released the HD version of TowerMadness.

TowerMadness HD is an open-field or fixed-path tower defense game where you can create your own path to defend off the enemies (Aliens) from reaching your base (herd of sheep). The game has full 3D graphics with pinch-to-zoom capabilities to view the game from any angle, all the way down to first-person viewing of the action.

One of the most intriguing new features coming to the HD version is the split-screen multiplayer mode. The way it works is that each player is controlling different games, but they are fighting the same linked waves of aliens, allowing each player to have their own strategy. Sending waves in early will result in both you and your opponent having to fend off the incoming aliens. So if your confident in your defenses, you can overload your opponent with waves and win, but this could also result in your own demise if your not careful. There are also new multiplayer specific features, like 'Panic Your Opponent', where you can accelerate the aliens on your opponents side for a little while to hopefully get past their defenses. Another one is a new character called 'Robosteal', who will travel down your opponents path and steal a sheep if he reaches them, and give it to you.

If you haven't tried it before, a free version of the iPhone game called TowerMadness Zero remains available to download.

Our pals over at 148Apps scored some details on the upcoming Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth tower defense game this morning. As someone who not only loves The Empire Strikes Back, and tower defense games, I'm having a hard time not getting totally excited for The Battle for Hoth.

Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth obviously takes place on the snow covered planet of Hoth during the massive assault on the Rebel Base at the beginning of Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back. If you've seen the movie (and if you haven't you should really stop reading this and fix that) you probably can guess the objective of the game: Defending the shield generators from the Imperial forces.

15 levels are included, with new units joining the ranks of both sides with each new level. Rebel forces are placed on the map just like towers in any tower defense game and range from different kinds of soldiers to several types of cannons and even Snowspeeder or X-Wing control towers which each deploy their respective aerial craft. Imperial units range from gigantic AT-AT walkers to smaller AT-ST's, TIE Fighters, Speeder Bikes, Probe Droids, and two different types of Imperial soldiers.

Two game modes are included, a "classic" mode which works like an normal tower defender where players gain and spend "command points" to buy additional defenses. Once a level is completed in classic mode, "fortress" mode is unlocked where players start with a fixed pool of command points and must see how long they can survive.

Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth is going to be released "very soon", and since I'm basically chomping at the bit to get this game on my iPhone, I can promise we will post more information as soon as we receive it. Games based on movies have been very hit or miss on the App Store, with last year's Star Wars: Trench Run being one of the bigger misses. I've got my fingers crossed that The Battle for Hoth will be just as awesome as I imagine it being.