The Digest: Shoot them down, hit them with a frying pan, shoot sticky denture adhesive substance to slow them down! It’s swamp defense, and the family brings out all the tools to destroy these vile swamp creatures.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: April 4, 2011
DEVELOPER: entwickler-x
Price: 80 MS Points
GENRE: Strategy

Product Overview: : Fight your way through 15 levels with different routes. Unique tower types help you to defeat the Swamp Monsters. Features 5 different Towers (the family), and 8 types of enemies.

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• 5 different towers (the family)
• 8 types of enemies
• 15 levels with different routes
• Endless waves

If your not too familiar with the genre, Swamp Defense is a tower defense strategy game. This involves strategic gameplay of carefully placing towers around a given map or level and watching the destruction unfold. The genre has gained some popularity lately and continues to gain steam with gamers all around. The genre has a setting for pretty much anyone; from plants attacking zombies, to experiences with Toy Soldiers. This indie title puts its hat in the ring of this ever growing genre. In Swamp Defense your tasked with placing members of the family near a linear path and watch the destruction your family can cause to the vile and hideous swamp creatures you face.

Right off the bat I want to touch on the game’s difficulty. Even though this is a smaller indie title I found it more difficult than it needed to be. This could be both good or bad, depending on the player. For a smaller game I think this could have been a nice introductory title to those new to this genre, and it still can be. But I had some problems with the games difficulty, it took me quite a few tries just to pass the first few levels, and was stuck on the 3rd or 4th level for some time. I’m not a seasoned veteran with the genre, but other games in the genre I think does a better job of easing you in with easier levels and then getting tougher as they go on. I found that this was a little difficult, I think the pacing could have been better.

In the game’s 15 levels of play, the backgrounds are changed up a little bit on each level, but it’s more of subtle change. The art is recycled on all the levels for the most part. The main change is the different routes that are set up differently on each level.

As expected the difficulty ranges based on what wave you’re on. Wave 15 will be much more difficult than wave 5, you’ll need to understand which part of the family you should place in a particular area. You could set up some of the following towers: Buster who sports a pistol, Old Flint who will slow your enemy down shooting a sticky denture goo adhesive, Maggie that hits enemies with a frying pan, and a few others. How you get points is by killing enemies, these enemies range in difficulty and there are 8 types of enemies. Points are also varied based on what wave you’re killing the enemies on.

Each character can also be upgraded to have a better weapon. For instance, the pistol shooting character Buster can be upgraded with his first upgrade to wield dual pistols. Maggie can throw a cooking roller instead of a frying pan, ect. Each time you buy an upgrade the next one requires more points. For instance, the first time you purchase Maggies upgrade it costs you 500 points. The 2nd upgrade will cost you 600.

You start the game with 10 lives. There is no way to get extra lives in the game, so you will need to protect what you have. You lose a life for every enemy you allow to get away. A boss enemy will take 2 lives away if it’s not put down. The enemies will walk along a linear path and won’t move away from that. Simply set up your towers of the family on the areas outside the path and have them take out all the enemies. Once one wave is over you simply rinse and repeat the process but changing your approach to each wave as you progress. Some levels will have you complete 15 waves, while others will need you to complete 30 waves to complete a level and unlock the next one. The waves can go on forever, if you choose you can keep going on until you lose, the levels don’t end simply when you have reached your target of waves completed.

Conclusion: Swamp Defense while a little more difficult than I expected, and does sport some recycled art, those short comings are the only faults I found with the game. It is a game that has a lot of value for what your paying. You might not get the same amount of time from some arcade titles that are about 10 times as much money. Swamp defense is a nice edition to the indie marketplace, if you consider yourself a fan of the tower defense strategy genre look no further.

Single Player: 4/5 | Multi-Player: N/A

Special thanks to entwickler-x for providing us with a copy of the game for review.