Defense is boring, right? Attacking is action, advance, and victory; defense is static. You sit there and hope for the best. No war was more boring than World War One--unmoving defensive trench lines for four long years. So a priori, you might think a game named "Master of Defense" would be, ah, less than scintillating.
Actually, it's quite cool.
You purchase defensive towers and place them on the map. Initially, you have a choice among three types: ones that attack walking critters, ones that attack flying critters, and ones that attack both but do far less damage. Each tower has arange of attack, which you can see as a circle about it by selecting it.
Then, a bunch of monsters appear at one point on the map and make their way down the road to the point that you're supposed to defend. Any that make it that far kill some number of your 'people'--you have a limited number, and if they all die, you lose. So if at all feasible, you want to kill all the monsters before they get there.
That's only the first wave of attacks; after each wave, you get some additional money, which you can use to improve your towers, increasing their range and allowing them to deal more damage--or to build new ones. Typically, there are dozens of waves for each level of the game. So you see what kind of monsters got through last time, and concentrate on stopping that sort of critter. In other words, while you don't actively attack creatures yourself, the pace of the game is such that you're always actively monitoring what's going on, and planning how to improve your defenses as the attacking waves become more powerful.
Between levels, you gain 'experience points' which you can use to purchase new types of towers, improve the capabilities of existing tower types, and make some other changes, like increasing the amount of money received between waves.
The result is an engaging game where things change enough between each level to retain your interest, and where there's enough for you to do, despite the inherently static nature of being always on the defensive, that you remain engaged.
The developer says:
Master of Defense is great real-time strategy fun with top-notch 3D graphics. Build towers to defend your citizens from invading armies of the underworld. Land Towers defeat walking monsters, Air Towers defeat flying beasts, and Plant Towers can take on both, but are weaker than the other two. As you progress, upgrade and build new types of towers with the gold you've earned and add on really cool special abilities through skill points you've accumulated.
Choose your defense carefully to keep your citizens protected! As the Master of Defense, if even one monster gets past your guard it could spell certain doom for your entire city!
For all its seeming simplicity, Master Of Defense is fun to play and doesn’t grow stale in a short while. You will discover 5 diversely-themed locations and a wide array of monster types. Creatures range from big-headed thingies to mutated animals to flying insect-like monsters. Wave after wave they become stronger, faster and take more efforts to stop.
Master Of Defense pleases the eye with wonderfully-crafted visuals, level design and animation effects, which are peppered throughout the game. All this adds to the game's replayability and keeps the game fresh and interesting without making it tedious and frustrating. Master Of Defense allows you to save your game at any time and return to it later. The full version of the game features over 100 raids of monsters, the new Survival mode, and the online high scores table.
Features
- 6 wonderfully-crafted locations to explore
- The Survival mode
- 180 raids of evil monsters
- 4 different towers, fire and balloon
- 3 Magic types
- Towers build and other skills upgrades
- Online highscores table
Reviews
"Ultimately it is a much better game that will sink players into their computers for hours without realizing where the time has gone."
- Game Tunnel
Awards
2006 Strategy Game of the Year, Game Tunnel