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Tower defense games are generally a hard sell to me because there is a core design problem to solve with this genre: the death spiral. At any point in your tower planning and wave management, it's possible to make a move that has doomed you to failure well before you've actually hit a game over screen. Different games have different ways of dealing with this issue, with my favorites virtually eliminating it. Isle of Arrows comes nowhere close to solving the death spiral problem, but its design is still fascinating enough that I keep picking it up to try and master it.

Tiles and towers

The primary twist Isle of Arrows adds to its brand of tower defense is a system where you construct the level you are playing on as you clear waves. When you aren't watching your fortifications shoot arrows, cannon balls, and more at swarms of enemies, you are offered cards that you can place on the level to add additional features it.

Sometimes these cards are new towers or path cards you can use to extend how far enemies need to go before reaching your defense point. Beyond that, the cards can also be less direct features like a garden that provides a small currency bonus or “flag” tiles that build out more tiles on the island you're playing on.

Building balance

This wrinkle gives Isle of Arrows a whole second layer of strategic depth. In addition to trying to optimize a path that only ends in death, you have to make room for it. The only problem is, this game isn't kind about giving you what you need so much as serving up a limited selection of things you have to try and make work.

You can make the enemy path as long as you want, for example, but unless you manage your currency to be pulling down and placing towers along it you will eventually get overwhelmed by the enemy hordes. At the same time, there are a lot of bonus tiles you can add to your island, but doing so cuts down on the real estate you have to work with, and if you want to accelerate any of those plans you have to manage your currency efficiently. It's a lot of juggle at once, but Isle of Arrows gives you all the time you need between waves to ponder your plans.

Perplexing progress

Isle of Arrows has a few different modes to engage with (including a daily challenge), but they all boil down to essentially the same idea: Survive through as many waves as possible. The game's difficulty curve practically ensures you can't do this on your first try on the game's campaign mode, though (presumably) gives you all the tools you need in the daily challenge. It's also worth mentioning there's a third “gauntlet” mode that unlocks once you've cleared a campaign that also has all cards unlocked by default.

I say failure is almost certain at first because Isle of Arrows definitely has a problem with death spiraling which is exacerbated by the fact the card unlock system in the campaign mode, which is unambiguously this game's primary mode. Access to every other mode is tied to progress in the campaign, so not only will your first few forays into the game likely put you in situations where you just know you don't have enough coins to cycle cards and get your defenses up to snuff, but after you fail you get shown some tools that probably will make it easier to get further next time. All this can be demoralizing, but I somehow find the experience compelling enough to keep diving back in to see if I finally have the player knowledge and cards to clear the next hurdle.

The bottom line

Isle of Arrows has all of the design features that would prime me to be turned off by it, but its unique take on tower defense charms me nonetheless. Anyone looking for a deeply strategic tower defense game offering something genuinely new in terms of concept will be more than satisfied with it.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/isle-of-arrows-tower-defense-review/

I have been eagerly awaiting a mobile port of Monster Train since the game originally released on PC in 2020. Roguelite deck-building games tend to draw me in over and over again in part because they feel perfectly suited to touch play on the go, such that whenever a celebrated one releases I cross my fingers hoping that it comes to the App Store. Now that Monster Train is here, I can say it is a fantastic deck-building game that scratches a somewhat different itch from others like it on iOS, and its mobile iteration isn't perfect but totally serviceable.

Railroad to hell

Monster Train has an incredibly dumb and fun video game premise: It's about driving a train to hell. You and your demon army are the last hope at reigniting the fires of the underworld, and all that is standing in your way is a legion of holy warriors intent on destroying you and your train.

You start the game with a very modest “crew” and a few powers to defend your train, which are all represented as cards in a deck. Each stage of Monster Train has you drawing cards from this deck and playing them to stop waves of enemies from ascending all three levels of your train and attacking the engine powering your locomotive.

Trainhopping tag-alongs

As you clear levels in Monster Train, you are immediately rewarded with items like gold, a choice of three random cards, and more that you can use to morph your deck from its basic default state into an optimized angel-killing machine. Also between levels you get a view of your progress to hell that includes branching paths with additional rewards attached to them as well. You can access shops to spend gold to remove or upgrade cards from your deck, open chests with artifacts that provide passive bonuses for the rest of your run, or even make stops at randomized points of interest with mysterious consequences attached to them.

You'll need to take advantage of all of these opportunities to upgrade your deck, as your enemies grow rather quickly in strength. Identifying good card combos and ways to reliably access them is key to performing well in Monster Train. It's not likely you'll win on your first run, but death is all part of the process. When a run ends, you build up experience to unlock more cards on future runs and can restart again with a different combo of decks and modifiers to play with.

Model train

The sheer number of interlocking systems at play in Monster Train really make it feel endlessly replayable. There are so many different variables and all of them work together in a surprisingly harmonious way such that every run feels like it has potential to be a winner while still feeling deeply strategic and challenging. If the standard run ever starts to wear thin, you can also take part in daily challenges or even races against other players online to keep things feeling fresh or add another layer of challenge.

As a mobile port, Monster Train is mostly immaculate, but I did notice that boss enemies that float on the edges of the screen are cut off (mostly on tablets) such that you can't always see their stats in a way that you might need to if a run is coming down to the wire. The touch controls themselves are also fine, but slightly more clunky than expected. Generally speaking neither of these things are particularly bothersome, though they are worth pointing out.

The bottom line

Monster Train is a fantastic deck-building roguelite that is easy to play repeatedly over a long, long period of time. I plan to keep it installed for a good, long time even though the port isn't 100% perfect.

Source link:https://www.148apps.com/reviews/monster-train-review/