Them's Fightin' Words

I heard about Kingdom Rush from a tweet I picked up from @wobblyonion, managing editor of www.lazygamer.net, who tweeted that while he generally doesn’t play iPad games, he was going batshit for Kingdom Rush.

I hit up the iStore to read some user reviews and was pretty blown away by the fact that EVERY REVIEW published had given the game 5 stars.

There had to be a catch. There’s no way an iPad game could legitimately get 5 star reviews across the board. Thing is, having played it for the last 3 weeks I can vouch for it. It IS legit. Kingdom Rush is that awesome. And here’s why.

In a nutshell

Kingdom Rush is a tower defence game, meaning you build different towers at specific points along a pathway to stop the advancing hordes of bad guys who get bigger, faster and meaner with every oncoming “wave”.

Your four basic tower types are Archery, Barracks, Mage’s Guild and Artillery. Each has different strengths and weaknesses that follow standard RPG lore.

 

 

The Archery Towers don’t do a lot of damage but are fast, Barracks towers deploy troops that engage and slow down the badguys, but unless you upgrade them the troops die quickly, Mage’s Guilds do medium damage but are slower than Archery Towers and Artillery Towers do massive damage but are the slowest of the lot.

Your placement of your towers is crucial in deciding the outcome of a level, as is your choice of which tower to upgrade when. Upgrade a tower three times and on the fourth upgrade, two new tower types become available.

So instead of just making standard troops, on your fourth Barracks upgrade you can turn it into a Barbarian Hall, which makes axe-wielding Barbarians, or a Holy Order that spits out armour-clad Paladins.

 

 

You are given a set amount of gold at the beginning of a level to get started and you earn more gold with every bad guy you obliterate.

Ideally, you don’t want more than one or two bad guys at the most to make it through the gauntlet of towers you set up. Get this right and you’ll earn 3 stars at the end of every level.

You then use those stars to buy permanent upgrades for your towers that increase the strength of your attacks and reduce the amount of gold it costs to build them, a sneaky incentive to make you want to ace every level.

 

 

What makes it awesome

The attention to detail in this game and the tight-as-a-drum level and character design are what make Kingdom Rush awesome.

It also scales up in difficulty enough that it doesn’t scare you off from the outset, but does offer a solid challenge that veteran gamers will sink a good couple of hours / days / weeks into.

What I also loved is that an update was recently released for the game that allows you to unlock “Hero” characters once you’ve earned 15 stars. These characters level up and add a nice extra layer to the gameplay. The only downside is that three of the six heroes have to be bought for $0.99 once you’ve unlocked them, but to be honest I’ll gladly chip in the extra $2.97 for this awesome game.

 

TOTAL TIME SPENT PLAYING: I’d estimate I’ve sunk about 30 or 40 hours into this game so far and still have about another 15 or 20 to go before I’ve unlocked the whole game
TOTAL ENJOYMENT LEVEL: 97%
FINAL VERDICT: I love the quote Jayisgames gave Kingdom Rush: “Kingdom Rush can be filed in the thin folder marked ‘games that are pretty much perfect’”. I agree 100%. If you have an iPad why are you still reading this? Go buy this game immediately and smash it in your FACE!

-ST