Master of Defense is a real-time strategy (RTS) game, downloadable for Windows only. If you are the sort of RTS player who really gets in to the whole base defense thing, then this is the game for you.
Created by the talented duo at Voodoo Dimention, Master of Defense is a simple strategy game about defending your townspeople from the dangerous monsters that lurk just beyond the town gates, and these monsters wish to do them harm. Fortunately for you, not only do the monsters opt to follow the road laid out for them towards the town gates, but you have a wide array of towers at your disposal with which to defeat the beasts. With careful and clever placement you should be able to destroy the menace and keep your innocent townsfolk safe.
Analysis: This game certainly has a unique design, and one which I was really getting into by the end of the demo. It can be tricky to figure out initially, but there is a certain depth and strategy that emerges from the variety of towers and abilities at your disposal, as well as from the path of the road itself. My primary recommendation would be that you try to upgrade each tower as much as possible first, then only build another tower once the first one has reached its capacity; check out the tips and tricks page on the main site for more detailed strategies. If you can get over the somewhat short duration of the demo, and the unfortunate need to download this game, then you will be sure to experience a unique game with great potential for depth of strategic game play.
Windows:
Download the demo
Get the full version
Mac OS X:
Not available.
Try Boot Camp or Parallels or CrossOver Games.
It's a pretty good game gets harder though. They come through to quick you can't upgrade your towers fast enough.
Calling this game 'strategy' requires a redefinition of the term. The only real consideration is what to place - will the next wave be more land monsters or air? Often this is solved by reloading your save and building the right ones, as it is pretty much a 50/50 guess!
Placing the towers is easy - just go for the most coverage of the road. It is only in the last level of the full game that this gets hard.
This game requires nothing but to watch the monsters get shot. It is oddly compelling, but it is not fun. I played the whole game all the way through out of some grim determination to finish it, and then disliked myself intensely afterwards. All you can do is make obvious choices, and reload the game in frustration when a squadron of flying beasts are thrown at you when you mostly have land towers.
Amazing game
I have not played it yet, but it sounds to me like a stand-alone version of the custom games that have been made (by fans) for Starcraft or Warcraft III, Blizzard Entertainment even put in its own "Tower Defense" game in the expansion to Warcraft III. And those tower defense games are very popular custom games in warcraft/starcraft, and extremely indepth sometimes (anywhere from movable units to about 9 different technology trees), and if you told the player it didn't involve strategy, they'd probably be upset :P.
I was very disappointed at the shortness of the game. I completed it after only a few hours from having downloaded it (the whole thing, not just the demo).
I would say the game is excellent, but despite the addition of 'Survival Mode', not worth the money.
the demo makes me thirsty for more though :(
I really enjoy it, and didn't mind paying the money, though I wish the average price point for games without much depth or length was $5 to $10 less. $20 is enough to make me hesitate before picking up something I just 'fairly' enjoyed the free trial of.
The different modes of difficulty (complete on each to unlock the next) do add a bit of strategy and change things up a bit. On hard, your best friend is the plant tower, but on easy you don't have the resources, usually, to get enough of those up and big enough. On legendary, you need to be very precise and have exactly what you need since you only have 1 (!) person in your city and no saves are allowed (though level restarts are).
Even so, I found the game to get fairly easy, likely because the design is simple.
Survival mode is only a challenge because the armor and speed increase linearly, so no matter how well you build up, eventually monsters can't be damaged except by fire or poison, and in the end they are so fast they can actually outrun the shots from your towers - which feels anticlimactic.
Still, I was very happy with the campaign and would like to see more of this type of game.
I just played it (first 2 levels), it is a dumbed down version of the "tower defense" type games (there are dozens) for warcraft/starcraft, but it takes those games and makes it single-player rather then multi-player (everyone works together to try and stop the monsters in the *craft versions).
the demo is the perfect marketing length then? :p
and i might wanna add:
this game should be free :p
Not a bad game at all.
I'd love to play more.
Also, the name/email addy details don't pass over from your comment preview page, forcing people to enter them twice.
Simon, check the box "Remember personal info?" and your name and details will be saved.
Or, better yet, sign into TypeKey and save me the work of having to approve your comment.
I really liked this game. Would be perfect to play a few "raids" during a short break. Would be? In fact, I wasn't able to exit before it was finished... :)
Unfortunately, when I started a new game and played the third level, an error occured in the save/load function. So when I reload now, the game continues with the last raid in this level but with no towers left. So be careful not to click on anything else than "OK" when the "Congratulations" dialog box appears!
Jay, I visit your site very frequently, for more than a year now. But as this is my first comment, I'd like to say thank you for adding some color to grey days!
Christian
P.S.: To Simons comment: The name / mail address details seem to vanish also when I check "Remember personal info"
Thank you, Simon and CM, for alerting me about the issue with the comment preview form.
I didn't believe it at first because of Firefox's auto form field entry feature was auto-filling the fields with my info each time. So I reproduced it with a different browser, and was able to pinpoint the problem and fix it. =)
I don't have warcraft, but for a demo this thing is good and long, and it's well put-together above all else.
Pretty cute. I've only played the first two levels so far, but heck, the graphics are rich enough and the stuff that evolves and the little monsters makes a good way to kill time.
I bought the game, and I was fairly impressed with it. I mean, $20 is expensive, but new games are now releasing with price points at or exceeding $60, so what can you do?
In addition, after you play through the game once, you unlock a harder version, which is the same thing, only with tougher monsters. Upon beating that, you unlock yet another version, which is harder still. That's it, as there are only the three levels, but I found that the hardest level was the only exciting, intelligent level in the game.
As far as the claims that the game lacks strategy, I was impressed with the upgrades system as far as a game like this goes. Given, it didn't explain exactly what you were doing each time, but it was fun. I've been spending a lot more time on this than I have on other games I've bought recently (meaning Starscape from Moonpod) but I don't know about it's replayability. I'd really like a random map generator.
Rob - Funny you mentioned Starscape - that's one of my all time favourite indie games, but it seems to be one of the most obscure too - I was surpised anyone else has even heard of it! I bought Starscape two years ago and still come back to it even now. That game has 'strategy' to it - ship building, Research&Design working out how best to mine nodes and when you've upgraded enough to strike at the zone boss. Still, there's probably all of 5 people on the net who have ever played it!
Master of Defence on the other hand, well, I just can't see the strategy to it - just keep upgrading, and that's about it. It's a lot of fun though, and is one of the very best looking indie games out there, just very, very repetitive, and doesn't require much thought. I don't really understand why the term 'strategy' gets used here. This is just a casual game, a sheep in wolf's clothing as it were, and nothing wrong there if you like that kind of thing.
What store can I go to to buy this game? Or is there even a place besides online?
Very good
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