I had written a post on the genre of tower defence and how to try out this genre for free by downloading-tapdefence! I had done this to prepare our readers for a game which is arguably the best game on iphone yet!Its a tower defence game and its called by the name of
FIELDRUNNERS!Befor I explain the entre game to you and share my expreiences I think it is necessary for me to apprise u of some things-
1.Before buying this game i read a lot a lot about it...Aftr about one month of reading and hearing and seeing i bought this...!There are a lot of comments-both good and bad about this..I will outline both of them in my discussion and provide u wt their validity with reasons offcourse!There are hundreds and thousands of geeks who have bought this and are crazy over it(me being one of them!!)
2.The world famous TIMES magazine voted fieldrunners at no.9 in their list of the 10 best games of 2008 along with likes of grand theft auto 4...I thnk it deserves it thouroughly!
OK so what is the objective of the game-Its simple!The enemy comes out from one gate and u have to stop them from infiltrating ur building by setting up towers.There are 4 towers in fieldrunners-
Gatling Tower:
Great tower for quickly constructing defenses. Dirt cheap and surprisingly powerful. What this tower lacks in range it makes up for in its low price and damage.
Goo Tower:
This tower is a must for those sticky situations when you need to slow a fieldrunner down. This tower reduces enemy movement rate and the effect increases with each upgrade.
Missile Tower:
A great defense against air units. The missile tower's explosive damage hits multiple targets at once. This tower has a very long range.
Lightning Tower:
An ultimate weapon of devastation. This tower fires a single bolt of lightning that incinerates most fieldrunners in seconds.
You can upgrade the towers maximum twice!
Currently it has 2 maps to play on-
Grasslands
Crossroads
Now what is so special about the game?This question bothered me for long before i bought it and i must say that i have my curiosity answered by 'everything'!
This game has great great graphics!Just zoom in once to actually realise the kind of animation and graphics this game supports!
Now the game was released on the 5 th of oct-ok?But here comes the surprising part-
It was without music!Had only one map-grasslandsThe price was still 4.99$ as its nowAnd despite the above it became a huge huge success..This was purely due to the gr8 gameplay experience and addiction it generated!
After so so many requests for updates the devs finally released an update 1.1 wt the following improvements on 19 th november!Note the time period between its release and the first update-huge;over a month!!Still it was so successful...
What happened wt the update..some of the features were-
1. Music and sound added to the game plus the ability to play ur own music!
2.A new map-crossroads was added
3.Endless play mode was added(before the update only 100 levels of gameplay was present and so many people had played it so much that they wanted more of it and hence endless play mode now,meaning that u can keep on playing the game till u r able to survive-dam dam kool
)
4.new fieldrunners (the enemies who run around to reach the building) were added
5. Improved user interface
This was superb and after a month of keeping a track of fieldrunners i finally bought it the day the update came out!
Its a treat playing the game and its very addictive!But what about the criticisms??Well there were lots of them mainly-
1.The game is EASY to play
2.The gameplay lacks depth
Now since I read all these before i bought the game I think i shud also inform u of them before u buy it(in case u buy it!!)....
1.The gameplay is not easy unless you are a pro in Tower defence games.I must have played this game for ovr 30 hours(easily!) and i havent beaten grasslands on hard!I have played crossroads for a while but i wanted to beat grasslands and then play crossroads!Those who made such comments probably played fieldrunners and then went on to play other td games after learning the tricks,strategies etc of the game!!Trust me i have played a lot of strategy games in my life and this one needed a while before i could crack it!It basically made meto experiment wt my strategy!I beat grasslands on easy pretty quickly and then i thought that the gameplay might actually be very simple but my notion broke wt medium level of grasslands whch actually took me a while to beat and now having beaten it i am making new strategies to beat grasslands on hard..It made me thnk differently!!
2.The gameplay is not those heavy kinds of strategy games where you have to keep on making strategies and not enjoy ur game...I can say wt a large degree of confidence that not only hardcore strategy game players will like it but others too!!It is designed to appeal to a very lage audience!
I term it a
strategy+action genre game!!And i mean it when i say that!
The game,as per reviews in the us itunes store,is the second highest(atlst it was in the recent future) as among all the applications available at the app store..!
As of today its the 7th most downloaded game ever in 6 months of life of app store!Mind you its a
5$ game and it had no sound for about
1 and a half months of its launch!
This game made the genre of tower defence to be the most addictive one!
What about the replay value of the game?
Well i can term it the game with the highest replayable value right now on the iphone!You can play this for hours and hours at a go (specially after the
endless mode)...The 5$ u spend on it is worth it anyday!
Sometime back i was travelling in the metro and i started playing fieldrunners and within seconds i got so lost in the game that i forgot all abt my station where i was to get down and after a while suddenly i realised that i was in the metro and that my station was right in front of me!Thats how addictive it can get!
Subatomic studios(the devs behind this game)
WERE very small developers(using where cz after the fieldrunners success they must have become millionares) and when they had promised to launch an update with such fabulous improvements people were very contemptuous saying that one cannot believe something untill one has seen it!And they wre indeed silenced when d update came along!So now these devs are about to make another update in sometime v1.2-but the only difference is that this time nobody is doubting the credibilty of their claims....An update with much more features will make its way inevitably!!
Many may think lets wait for the update to see how much more features these people have added!Sad news for them!
I was going thru the page of fieldrunners on itunes and it says that a price increase is due...I was anticipating the same because honestly i think that this is worth much more than just 5$...!!
If u havent heard of this game yet i have to say that u really dnt knw much abt the app store!
And if u havent bought this game yet then i must say u havent experienced best gaming the platform of apple has to offer!!
And i dnt say this thousands and thousands of people from all over the globe say this!!The very renowned TIMES magazine says this and once u play this once i guess u gonna say it!!
BUY IT and if u do lemme know what u think about this game!
Shashwat
iPhoneIndiaBlog's Forum
