Star Defense is a 3D tower defense game developed by Rough Cookie and published by ngmoco:).

The Game

You call that an invasion?

The universe is in deep doggy doo – the S’Rath, an evil alien race, is invading planets and wiping out all of the inhabitants. You, the trusty strategist of these gaggle of planets, are given the task of protecting the fleeing inhabitants from being completely wiped out by these S’Rath jerks through the creation of defensive structures that will stop them dead in their tracks. Are you scared yet? Don’t be, because Star Defense is genuinely one of the best tower defense games I have ever played, let alone on the iPhone, and it is so well polished that I could literally see my reflection in the very well detailed models of the game.

In essence, you have four towers at your disposal: machine gun, flamethrower, slow, and lightning. The machine gun has a high rate of fire, but will only deal damage to a single individual enemy. Flamethrowers cause damage over time, slow will slow down your enemies, and lightning causes high damage over an area. There is of course a tower limit depending on the level and difficulty, and they must be spaced out appropriately. These towers can be upgraded to Level 3 towers where they increase in power and range for every level gained, but they are all rather pricey.

Oh… that’s a little better I guess…

As for the game itself, you are going from planet to planet helping the survivors fend off the onrush of S’Rath invaders and each planet increases the number of incoming waves of enemies. By my count, there are at least eight different kinds of S’Rath invaders, ranging from non-factor Probes to slow-resistant Man-O-Wars who will breeze past your machine guns. Once you complete the mission at a specific planet, you can also continue on for Endless mode where you survive as long as possible as the enemies continue to become stronger and stronger.

Star Defense also implements the Plus+ network, the social gaming platform from ngmoco:) that allows you to chat with other players on the network, try to get a score onto the leaderboards, or tackle one of the many achievements available to Star Defense players. This was my first experience with the Plus+ network, and I have to say I was mighty impressed and I look forward to future interactions with it. One of the fun little features that I found was that Star Defense had many challenges available to the user and you could send that challenge to one of your other Plus+ friends, which they could beat for bragging rights.

Graphics

Star Defense has gorgeous graphics – entirely 3D with very detailed sprites that are smoothly animated. In addition, the planets you will be playing on are lush and full of little intricate details that add to the environment. If you are anything like me, you will spend a lot of time rotating and zooming into the planet just to check out all of the different details while checking out the paths that the enemy combatants will be traveling on.

Sound

Welp, I failed.

Star Defense has a great futuristic-style soundtrack in the menu that definitely made you want to kick some alien butt, but once you enter the game, you are given a musical score that is very fitting for the planet. For example, the nature-like planet had a very serene and calm soundtrack with mostly piano, and the ice planet had a very cold and distant feeling soundtrack. Otherwise, the only music you will be hearing is the sounds of your enemies being obliterated – and is it an ever sweet sound.

Conclusion

Star Defense is one of those fantastic games that you definitely will have to buy, a tower defense game that is just so polished, so detailed, and so fun that you will will spend hours battling back hordes of S’Rath invaders just to save the universe. So what are you waiting for, a cape?

Score

MustTap Score: Golden Tap

The best of the best; everything about this is perfect.

Bottom Line
Star Defense is a special kind of tower defense game; being extremely well polished and quite a bit fun. There are many achievements to attain and the amount of replayability is immense.

Screenshots