Action & Arcade

There are many different Tower Defense games available in the Market. Most of them use the concept of placing different kinds of turrets (towers) alongside a path in order to intercept advancing enemy units. Those towers usually have different statistics relating to the kind of damage they do and the reach they have. Placing those turrets relies on strategic choices you, the player, have to make.

Magic Defenders takes a different approach. Instead of placing multiple turrets to shoot at the enemies, you control a single wizard with a set of four spells to use against the approaching enemy hordes. You have to combine those spells for maximum effect, which allows for a more tactical game.

Magic, Spell and Powers

In Magic Defenders you have two Heroes (wizards) to choose from: John and Steve. Both have their own set of four spells to use against the enemy units. The basic offensive spell is Arcane (John) and Lightning (Steve) and you start your game with only that one spell available. But very soon you get your second spell and now you are able to subdue your foes with a new power. As you progress through the game you unlock the ability to use other spells as well. Some of these other spells deal fire damage, poison damage or ice damage amongst others.

Each of these spells damage the oncoming bandits in their own way, but when used in combination they can be truly devastating to your hapless victims. This is a big part of thegame: choosing the best combination of your spells for maximum effect.

Gameplay

Easy to play, yet hard to master – that’s what makes a game addictive. This certainly holds true for Magic Defenders! While you can make it relatively easy through the first (Forest) scenario by simply shooting your spells at the targets, in the second (Wall) scenario you really have to consider which spell to use with the right timing and in the right sequence. If you don’t use decent tactics there, you will surely get overrun; I found that out for myself the first time I played the Wall scenario! Complicating matters even futher, you have additional choices to make: when your wizard increases in level you can upgrade one of your character’s statistics such as damage multiplier, magic points and magic recovery speed. Furthermore, when you decide to level up, you have the option to level up one of your non-basic spells and choose which aspect of that spell to improve. Your options are the damage of the spell, the cooling down time, or the cost in magic points.

All these variables influence your ability to hold the fort against the onslaught of enemy units. Which will be infinitely long in the third and last scenario: Town. Here you get an infinite number of waves of enemies, and the challenge is to hold them of for as long as you can.

When you lose (and you will lose!) you can post your score on the Openfeint leaderboard to compare yours skills with others. One issue I did encounter is that after submitting my name for the Openfeint leaderboard nothing happened, even after I pressed Enter.

Visuals and Sounds

Magic Defenders has an attractive graphical look with cell-shaded animations and matching backgrounds. The menus and information screens use the same theme and it looks polished. The game also contains a rousing musical score which perfectly fits with the game and adds to the atmosphere of the game. Some improvements could still be made to the icons for the different spells. While playing the game the spells use different icons than those that are show in the Hero menu and in the description windows: The icons in the menu look like placeholder icons compared to the icons used while playing the game.

VS

Verdict

Magic Defenders is a very nice variation on the classic tower defense type of games. It focuses more on tactics and strategy to defeat your foes. The look and feel is very attractive and the game has a good depth in terms of gameplay , one to surely rewards the skilled players. Unfortunately there is no button to return to the main menu on the screen where you submit your score to Openfeint, and when the game didn’t automatically return to the main menu after I had tried to submit my score my only option was to close the game and start it up again. This is a minor annoyance to an otherwise really entertaining game.

	Magic Defenders HD
	Clueless Ideas $1.34    Size: Varies wit Installs: 1,000 - 5,000	Requires: Varies with device