The original Block Fortress ($1.99), from the good folks at Foursaken Media, was one of the roughly 86 million Minecraft ($6.99)-inspired games that came in the wake of its success. More importantly, it was one of the roughly five Minecraft-inspired games that weren’t awful. It was a really cool fusion of FPS, construction, and base defense, with each element working almost perfectly in combination with one another to create a compelling new take. Block Fortress: War ($1.99), the new spin-off, also attempts to fuse genres. This time, it’s a bit of RTS, a bit of tower defense, a bit of MOBA, and, of course, a hearty helping of the construction genre. That’s a lot of plates to keep spinning at one time, so perhaps it’s no surprise that things don’t work quite as well as you might hope.
Befitting a spin-off, this is a very different style of game from Block Fortress. The phase-based system of building up your fortress followed by going into first person view to defend it isn’t found in War. Instead, true to the name, you’ll be waging battles across the Blockverse from an aerial third-person view, with the goal being to destroy the enemy’s base on each map. Scattered around the maps are resource points which can be secured by your hero. Doing so will give you a specific amount of resources which you can then spend on defenses and turrets that can be built in the immediate vicinity of any points you control. The strategy varies from map to map, and on some of them, you’re better off just going for the throat, but generally speaking, you’ll want to secure resource points, build up some back-up to support grabbing the next resource point, and repeat until you’re at the enemy’s front door.
Successfully completing a mission earns you some cash that can be used to buy more powerful weapons, turrets, and heroes. Almost everything is reasonably priced except for the heroes, who are a bit pricey at the moment, nudging you towards the inevitable IAP. Still, you don’t need the other heroes to win, so it’s not that much of a problem. As you play, you’ll also unlock different block races to play as, offering different stats and abilities. To unlock each race, you have to conquer their planet with an escalating number of other races. If you don’t feel like doing that, or can’t, you can use the cash you earn in-game to unlock a race whenever you want, but the price on that, in terms of in-game currency, is very steep indeed.
Still, I can imagine some people doing it, simply for one reason: this game is actually pretty hard at times. Your resources are very limited, so mistakes can be very costly. If an enemy manages to destroy something, it’s gone, and those resources will not be replaced. If it manages to destroy the resource point itself, that point is not only out of play for the duration of the round, but all associated turrets will stop working. Since you have a hard limit on what you can spend, the more challenging levels are more like puzzles that need to be solved than typical RTS battles. This is a viable way to go with a strategy game, if not always a popular way. It can be immensely satisfying trying to find the best route to victory in a carefully-designed trap. Unfortunately, the solution to the puzzle in Block Fortress: War usually involves the exact same strategy: build some really tall towers and put your best guns on top.
There are a few exceptions, but most of the maps in this game reflect a corridor-style design. It’s great for forcing encounters, but it’s a real buzzkill for strategy. The maps that try something a bit more open show promise that makes the general reliance on hallways even more disappointing. All of this working together creates a strategy game where many attempts to use actual strategy will result in failure, while general exploits work very well. Once you’ve found an exploit, you probably won’t even want to risk trying tailor-made strategies anymore, since the missions are sometimes quite long, a small mistake can cost you the whole battle, and you get relatively little return for failing. The game opens up a bit more once you can play as the other races, but the journey there isn’t very satisfying.
A lot of this goes away if you’re playing multiplayer. Block Fortress: War supports up to four players divided into two teams. You can play locally or online, and while I didn’t have the chance to try the local play, the online mode worked pretty well. In multiplayer, resource points aren’t destroyed when the enemy takes them out. Instead, they’re simply restored to their original state and can be claimed by either party. Furthermore, rather than giving you a finite lump sum of resources upon capturing the point, the game instead continuously gives you resources for each point you control. I can see why the developers didn’t use this rule set in single-player, since you could pretty much brute force your way to the end, but man alive, it’s a lot more fun to play this way. On top of all that, since you’re playing against a human, you actually have to use some strategy, as opposed to just finding a loophole in the AI’s logic.
My only issue with the multiplayer is that you only have access to what you’ve unlocked via the single-player campaign, so you can run into opponents who will eagerly do their impression of Joey Chestnut with you playing the part of the hot dog. Again, I can see why the developer did this, because it gives you incentive to complete the single-player campaign, but it introduces an unsavory element of pay-to-win that leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. Don’t even bother ducking your head out online until you’ve unlocked the Blockoids, really. Playing with people you know can mitigate this imbalance, of course, so if you’ve got some like-minded friends, it’s full steam ahead.
Seeing everything work fairly well in the multiplayer mode really makes the single-player campaign’s failings stand out. Block Fortress: War has a lot of great ideas behind it, and when it’s working, it’s completely awesome. The balance is off, to be sure, but the foundation is all here. Different turrets serve different purposes, and the equipment limitations on your peons forces you to carefully consider what purpose you hope to achieve with them. Taking into account the different races and unlockable heroes, there’s a lot of potential depth to be mined here. As it stands now, there are considerable issues with balance that seem to be leading to players online using a very narrow range of strategies, but given their past record, I’m willing to give Foursaken Media the benefit of the doubt that they’ll update this game into fine shape on that end. The single-player mode needs a serious rethink, though, because right now it’s more negative than positive.
Foursaken’s games usually have nice presentation, and Block Fortress: War is no exception. The graphics are blocky, but they’re very sharp and look quite good in that Minecraft sort of way. The music and sound effects are nicely done, and the controls work reasonably well most of the time. It takes a bit of adjustment before you’re able to do things as quickly as you might need to, especially in the multiplayer mode where you can’t pause while building, but I can’t think of a better method than the one they’ve used here. The UI is a bit more ungainly than it needs to be, but it works well enough once you’ve put in a bit of time. Game Center support is in for both leaderboards and achievements, with individual boards for each race as well as an overall board.
At present, I can only strongly recommend Block Fortress: War on the back of its multiplayer mode. If you have no interest in multiplayer, I’d give this one a pass for the time being. If you’re interested in that side of the game, I think you’ll be pretty happy with the game as it stands so long as you realize you’re going to have to either buy some IAP or spend some time with the less enjoyable single-player campaign mode in order to unlock what you’ll need to be competitive. I’ve no reason to doubt this game will be improved with updates, but as it stands right now, it’s going to need a fair bit of work to fully realize the fantastic potential laying tantalizingly just out of reach.
I has a boner
What's the difference between this and an amazing classic like Star Fox? Is it just replay-ability?
Star Fox on the N64 also had space arena combat missions that gave you free range movement for their duration, loads of alternate paths with unique missions for these paths, ground missions with the Landmaster (a tank, your nostalgia may cause these sections to vary in quality), and some of the coolest boss design I have seen on the N64. Plus, getting the good ending was REALLY difficult; my brothers and I managed to get it, over and over again, but that was after several hours of playing.
It was a fun game with a LOT of great gameplay, despite the limitations of the N64.
I had a feeling as such and the review confirms it. Looks like a good game but I personally didn't pull the trigger because it just didn't look like anything better than what I already have to fill this niche for me. I still own the original Arc Squadron (backed up, not the freemium rerelease) which, no offense, just seems like a much better version of what this is trying to go for. Not that I don't think folks would find this to be a good game, rather for me personally, when buying these particular sub genre I have a go hard or go home ethic, so it's got to impress me in more avenues than just graphics to garner my money...
Same here, i also have the original Arc Squadron (without all the social media buttons and stuff I don't need) and I don't see why I should go for this. Graphics aren't everything.
Even if they were everything, Arc Squadron has this beat.
As a side note- you don't have to back up the original AS. If you bought it from the App Store, the original is in you purchased list. The freemium one is a separate app, they stopped selling the paid version but per App Store regulations it's stored for those who bought it to download whenever they want. The only reason to back up app files nowadays is if Apple themselves pull an app for a violation or whatever.
Developers/publishers can pull them as well, just look at Tetris by EA. It is not even listed under purchased apps anymore. If I wouldn' have backed it up, I would have to settle with that crappy freemium version. Also, I liked the release version of Arc Squadron more, before they added facebook, twitter and other links to the main menu. Sometimes you really have to lock a version state locally.
Though developers can stop selling an app, current App Store policy is that it be available for those who purchased it no matter what. This policy is more recent than your Tetris example, which happened in 2011. I've had several games that were pulled by devs that I can still download. A high-profile example of this is Flappy Bird, which you can still download from your purchased list if you bought it before it was pulled by the dev. Kind of a moot point though since a pulled app will likely be obsolete after a few iterations of iOS without getting updated.
Like you mentioned though, wanting to keep an app in its current state is a very good reason to back up the file if it's lost some core functionality in an update but generally I find it's not worth the trouble as it requires turning off auto update since iOS 7 or constantly reloading the app from your PC.
Inferior to galaxy on fire. If it's not open world then don't bother...
this seems the same as almost every other kind of game like this i used to play on old consoles and in arcades going back to the 80's
anyone remember Zaxxon?
I have fun with this it's a great looking shooter and I love playing the levels several times it looks nice and plays well.
I agree it does not have the longest campaign or much replay ability, but it was a pretty fun ride none the less.
I think people are expecting too much. For just 4 bucks you get a great game you can pick up and play to the end and then it's done.
It had enough choice to make me play it two times and then I saw everything and got all the trophies.
Ok they could have had difficulty options maybe. It was a bit easy but I did feel satisfied with myself when I beat it. :)
I felt much better after deleting it!
It reminds me of Silpheed on the Sega CD -- visually stunning, technically impressive, stupid voice acting, and ultimately not too deep.
That's fine, there's nothing wrong with it, and the price is right in my opinion. I would have cut out the badly-acted "story" and made it more of a straight-up shooter with different objectives and a few branching paths.
How is it different from Star Fox?
1. It's new, not 20 years old.
2. It's 4 dollars, not 50.
3. It's not as well designed for repeat plays
3. Its characters are significantly less charming.
I get that they wanted to make it straight up action, so there's no free-roaming looking for targets gameplay. I respect that. It's worth a play for 4 bucks and an hour of your time. These days I find it easier to give up money than time, so this is OK by me.
The reviewer clearly did not like this game. It was basically a slew of negative points, followed by a couple things touching on how it's pretty and that it had an upgrade system that added to the illusion of depth. That said, why the heck did he give it a 3.5? That's only 3 points off of TA's perfect score, so for those standards it's quite a good score. With so many negative points in the article, you would have thought a lower score would have popped out, like a 2.5. Oh TA, you so confusing!
Haha, it's funny what you said are my thoughts exactly about the review.
Seemed about right to me. In his summary at the end he says the first play through was very enjoyable, but the game just lacked depth or a lot of replayability. Any review which includes the words "very enjoyable" probably indicates a pretty decent above average game.
Personally I don't consider lack of replayability to be a big negative, since I generally get tired of any game after a while anyway no matter how good it is. To me this game is enjoyable enough that I'll probably play through it a couple of times at least, which seems like excellent value for my $4. So personally I'd score it higher, maybe a 4 at least. I respect the reviewer's score too though, since I agree that for people looking for a deep challenge or for a game they can keep playing for a long time, this game isn't it.
Why do people keep quibbling about the star ratings? If the review comes across as highly negative when reading it, form your own star rating. Is it just that people aren't patient enough to read?
That's exactly what it is.They think the star rating is supposed to be a substitute for actually reading the article.
Glad to see TA spot this because I played with it for a short time and then deleted it. There was no sense in playing on. I think the dev knew too that's why he didn't make it freemium. Very cunning dev ripping us off like that!! Will note this in my little black book and be careful next time I wast $5 on this dev.
Y wont anybody just make the game star fox on ios? Its one of my favorite. Its better than this game. This game is so short. Youll finish it in 2 or 3 hours. They also make you decide how the story goes. If you want to join the federations crew or the rebels, telling you the story changes on your choice. But to be honest, nothing changes wether you pick one of them. When you pick one or the other and complete the chapter, the following chapter will be the same for both. The story doesnt change. So whats the point of making split decisoins? NO POINT!!!!
I bought it to support full no-iap games. And I like it. Great music and good action.
If ARC Squadron had the control scheme of this game it would have been much better. I like a few others appreciate the effort from the developers for no IAP.