Save Sylva - TD Review
iPhone App
$1.99 Buy now!

Save Sylva - TD Review

Our Review by Chris Hall on August 17th, 2010
Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar :: SO HARD
Share This:

Save Sylva is a solid fixed path tower defense game that will drive you nuts (in a good way) because of its insane difficulty. Pick it up if you'd like a challenge.

Developer: Clovare
Price: $0.99
Version Reviewed: 1.0

Graphics / Sound Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar
Game Controls Rating: starstarstarhalfstarblankstar
Gameplay Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar
Re-use / Replay Value Rating: starstarstarstarhalfstar

Overall Rating: starstarstarstarblankstar

It's not often that I find a fixed path tower defense game that is actually challenging. I really do enjoy this style of tower defense game, but after an hour or two, I've usually played through everything that there is to play through. The only fixed path tower defense game on the iPhone that really gave me a challenge, up to now, was GeoDefense: Swarm. Swarm had everything that you could ever want in a TD, good graphics, good sound, innovative level design, and some extremely tough levels.

Save Sylva isn't as stylish as Swarm (it's nice, just a bit plain) and isn't as instantly playable/approachable, but man is it hard. What Save Sylva does is give you a ton of upgrades per unit, forcing you to make tough upgrade decisions on the fly. Instead of giving you a simple unit with three or four upgrades, Save Sylva will have three upgrades per upgrade category, with six upgrade categories per unit. Each unit has completely different attributes too, so it really makes you think about your decisions.

What I've found, for better or worse, is that I typically make the wrong decision when upgrading. Even on the medium difficulty the levels are extremely challenging, forcing me to play each at least 3-4 times before I finally win... if I win at all.

My only complaint in Save Silva is that it doesn't have a zoom, so when you get a bunch of units grouped together, it's a real pain to make sure you click the right one. You can slow the game down to a crawl to make sure that you get your defenses set up correctly, but I like keeping the speeds at full throttle to get the game going. I like my tower defense to resemble speed chess.

While Save Silva doesn't come across as a polished, big budget game at first glance, it is a nice tower defense game that will keep you frustrated (in a good way) for a long time. Pick it up today for less that the price of a coke from a vending machine, it'll be much better for you.

iPhone Screenshots

(click to enlarge)

Save Sylva - TD screenshot 1 Save Sylva - TD screenshot 2 Save Sylva - TD screenshot 3 Save Sylva - TD screenshot 4 Save Sylva - TD screenshot 5
Share This: