Knight Defense Review

Knight Defense is a lot deeper than the quirky graphics and app icon would ever suggest. It's mean to assume things and judge a book by its cover but when I saw that icon after installing it, I thought 'Uh oh'. How wrong I was.

Knight Defense is a cross between Chess and Tower Defense. It's a concept that sounds quite outlandish but it makes for a compelling and deep title. The aim is like many other tower defense games, you have to defend the King from attack. You do this by using other chess pieces to defend him. The same restrictions as in chess are in place here. Pawns can only move in a straight line although at least they can go backwards, Knights can only move in their L shaped manner and Bishops move diagonally. They each have their own attack patterns to keep an eye on so that they gradually eradicate the enemy pieces coming their way. At the start of each level, you can place your pieces however you want to start with so there's a real level of strategy to working out how to proceed with each stage.

Each piece has their own special move of sorts too. Pawns can freeze enemies close to them while Bishops heal nearby friendly pieces. Knights boost the attack power of others and the Queen is a lethal piece of work indeed with a massive shockwave ability. The enemies offer similar special moves though so it's far from a one sided battle. Indeed, Knight Defense is a challenging title often testing your skills and quick thinking. As the game progresses, things get harder with even a slightly bizarre cat attacking your pieces.

Ultimately though, it's great fun. There's a ranking up system to make each piece stronger the more points you have, just as you'd expect from a Tower Defense title and the array of difficulties and levels ensures that there's plenty to do. Game Center and Open Feint support offering leaderboards and achievements is just the icing on the cake. For only a dollar, if you fancy a challenging tower defense game this is ideal.