Defender ChroniclesWhen I started this review site, I promised short reviews.  So in short, WOW! This game is incredible!  It is the Must-Have new Fieldrunners.  If I were going to give stars out, I’d give it six out of five.  Yeah, that’s right.  As much as I was looking forward to this game, it exceeded all expectations.  I will go so far as to say if you are only going to have one tower defense game on your iPhone, make it this one.

Defender Chronicles is another is a string of quality releases by Chillingo.  It takes tower defense type games (like Fieldrunners and others of that type) to a whole new, and much better, level.  The first thing that strikes you as you launch the game is that it is not the typical top down perspective.   It is a 2D side view.  This alone makes it fresh.  But it doesn’t stop there.  Besides the numerous types of attackers and defenders and the different levels at different skill levels (about five of each), the game offers classic, campaign, and endless modes.  And, just for the added twist, it throws in a twist of a role-playing game.  You can not only use gold earned by killing attackers for purchase or upgrades of different types of defenders, but can also use it to customize your hero/leader so that you can concentrate on different character attributes, skills, armor strengths, and so forth.  By changing these attributes and difficulty levels, this game offers endless play at a very low $2.99 price point.

I took a load of screenshots as I played through this game.  Picking the right one to post that would give an accurate representation of the game was impossible though.  None really do the smooth graphics and soundtrack justice.  So here is a link to a video of the game in action.  If you haven’t watched this yet, and my recommendation above doesn’t have you clicking that purchase button yet, you owe it to yourself to check it out.  The game is every bit as impressive as the video makes it appear.

As great as the game is, I do have some suggestions. :)  First, I’d love for there to be different player profiles.  My son is going to love this when he sees it and I know I’d like to keep my progress and such separate from his – if I can get my iPhone back from him.  Being able to save a particular place in the game and come back to it with a different hero configuration would be cool as well.  Second, while I enjoyed the accent of the voice-overs, some of the text in the tips and help need just a tad bit of polish.  The grammar makes it appear (in a couple of cases) that English was/is not the first language of the folks doing it.  I hate that an application of such quality in every other way suffers in the grammar department.  Third, while the sound effects are great, I’d love some kind of sound effect as each attacker died.  If you are zoomed in to a particular part of the screen (and yes, you can zoom and scroll around), you can still see deaths indicated in change to your gold, but an auditory indication would be nice as well.  I’d also love an auditory “ding” or something to let me know when I have an archer or other defender selected and achieve enough gold for an upgrade.  And speaking of sound, I’d also like volume sliders for the music versus other sounds as opposed to just on/off.

Overall, I’m very pleased with this game.  I can’t wait to see what the future holds for it.  There is already a community forum devoted to the game, and version 1.1 is waiting for Apple’s approval with improved memory requirements, a new “novice” level, and “additional bug fixes”.  I haven’t come across any bugs myself, but I’m sure a game with this level of complexity must have had something slip through.  The fact that it is quickly being addressed is a huge plus.