Fieldrunners is a strategy/action game developed by Subatomic Studios.

The Game

Rounds can get pretty hectic.

Fieldrunners is a tower defense game. This style of gameplay hearkens back to the Warcraft 3 Custom Maps community before the now-ubiquitous Defense of the Ancients began to make the rounds, and so some players may feel a twinge of nostalgia for the first app from Subatomic Studios. For those not versed in tower defense, or TD as veteran WC3 players have affectionately dubbed it, the objective of the game is to simply defend your base. Instead of shooting at them as a single unit or commanding groups of units to attack enemies, all you are permitted to do in tower defense is to build a variety of stationary towers that react to enemy units in particular ways. Most tower defense games have a diverse set of towers to pick from and an equally varied range of enemies, and the strategy usually lies in building the right towers in the right areas to stop wave after wave of man, robot, or vehicle from destroying your base, which normally sits at the opposite end of the map from the enemies’ spawn point. There may be single or multiple spawn points depending on which of the three maps you are playing.

The main tenets of tower defense are upheld quite well by Fieldrunners. In “Classic” mode, you are able to pick from four towers that fulfill various roles; for example, one tower slows enemies down, and another fires missiles that deal splash damage. Still more kinds of towers are available in the “Extended” and “Endless” modes, the latter of which removes the cap of 100 enemy waves. Each kind of tower costs a different amount of money, and you can build a tower anywhere on the rectangular map, so players will spend a lot of time and lose a few rounds figuring out the optimal configuration of towers. An additional layer of strategy comes in the form of being able to upgrade existing towers instead of building new ones. Once one has discovered the “best” layout of towers for a particular map, the game ends up consisting of watching your iPhone-controlled opponents struggle and fail to get across while you sprinkle upgrades and swap towers here and there.

There are three maps to choose from.

The game is as easy as you make it. On harder difficulty levels, it can be very challenging to micromanage (Yes, I said the “m” word.) your towers to ensure that the next wave of enemies doesn’t slip through a hole in your defenses. “Endless” mode is especially entertaining to try and “beat,” a victory here meaning creating the ultimate defense whose only weakness is your iPhone battery.

The biggest victory that Subatomic Studios’ has scored with Fieldrunners is the game’s controls. A tower defense game might seem daunting to adapt without a keyboard and mouse, but it’s very intuitive to simply drag the towers where you want them. Upgrading towers or selling them back is also very simple: just click the tower in question and tap on the appropriate option. This game could definitely have been rendered unplayable by bad controls, but thankfully this is not the case.

Graphics

The game uses sprites that are easy to distinguish from one another and there is enough variety in terms of locations, even though they all have the same general rectangular layout. The graphical effects can be described as “cartoon violence” more than anything else. Fieldrunners is overall a colorful, aesthetically appeasing game.

Sound

While there is no in-game music to speak of, the sound effects do their job well. Missiles explode on hit, a particularly slimy tower gives a hilariously gooey impression, and there’s nothing sweeter than the sound of multiple gatling guns, flamethrowers and rockets raining down on your targets. None of the sounds get too annoying, but it would have been nice if the enemy helicopters were a bit less noisy.

Conclusion

Fieldrunners is a definite must-buy for tower defense fans because of the expertly adapted touch screen controls, and the variety of stages and difficulty options make it accessible for anyone else. This is definitely one of the most replayable games on the App Store, if only for the appeal of squeezing every last minute out of the “Endless” mode.

Score

MustTap Score: Golden Tap

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

Bottom Line
Fieldrunners is an excellent foray into the tower defense genre on the iPhone OS.

Screenshots