Cartoon Defence: Space Wars Review

The App Store is overwhelmed with tower defense and strategy games simply because they are one of the most popular genres. Since there are so many, it’s often difficult to tell which game stands out from the rest. What makes Cartoon Defence: Space Wars so intriguing is that the stick-figure game aims to create a real-time tower defense game that utilizes a nonlinear instead of the typical vertical and horizontal vantage point. Is this enough to make the game shine over all the others?

Cartoon Defence: Space Wars comes with over 80 challenging levels that are spread through three different gameplay modes: scenario, wave and battle star. Scenario offers the typical stage-based game play where the levels become increasingly difficult as gamers work their way to the boss battles while the other two are more like mini challenge games. Players are given a certain number of units to play and many are not available until the make it so far in the game.

The goal is to defend the home planet from the waves of enemies. While players work hard to defend their planet, they are also tasked with mining minerals to earn gold in order to buy more units to protect their planet. There are approximately 45 different basic units and 12 special units in the game. Players can upgrade their units along with the planets with gold earned in the game or purchased via IAPs.

Unlike most stick-figure games, Cartoon Defence: Space Wars features impressive graphics that have a hand-drawn and colorful design that work well to make the game visually pleasing. However, an iPad or universal version of the game would be ideal because the larger screen could showcase the vibrant graphics and enlarge the game so it’s easier to see all the small details that are packed onto the little iPhone screen. Those with large fingers will also find themselves yearning for a larger iPad version as the controls are especially difficult to touch—not to mention that they are also quite confusing.

The other downfall is that players will desire to utilize IAPs, which is a common theme among fermium games. It is possible but very doubtful to complete the game without IAPs, but players will face a severe handicap as it will take forever to earn enough gold for upgrades.

Cartoon Defence: Space Wars has been done before and it’s hard to justify checking it out when it’s packed with IAPs and confusing controls. Since the game is free to try, I recommend at least giving it a shot if you’re a big fan of this genre. However, gamers looking for a simple, fast-paced game may find it to be repetitive and not so enjoyable.