Fieldrunners has had plenty of press attention since launch; and it's understandable why, because its brought an approachable Tower Defense game to the iPhone which is incredibly polished and well balanced. It certainly provides a blueprint on how gestures and touch controls should be done for this kind of genre, and even if you have never touched a strategy game, you should consider giving Fieldrunners a whirl.

Like in all Tower Defense games, you must construct various offensive and defensive towers to eradicate your enemy before he reaches your headquarters (usually located off screen) - Fieldrunners gives you four types - Gatling being the cheapest and so perfect for path building, Goo, which doesn't harm enemies but slows them down instead, Missile, which has a longer range and creates splash damage, and Tesla, which has heavy damage but is the most expensive tower. Each has two upgrades which increase the effectiveness of the attack, and it's up to you to judge when and where you need to upgrade to save hit points (of which you have 20).

The enemy has many units at its disposal - starting with the foot soldiers, and then adding motorcycles, helicopters, tanks, robots, blimps and more - not all of which you will get in one wave. On the Crossroads map there's even anti-goo units to put a spanner into strategies that completely depend on the slimy green goop. Remember that the flying units don't follow the maze you create for the ground units, instead they take a beeline to the exit.

Successful completion of a map (in Classic mode, reach and finish level 100) requires you to think ahead and build a route that will simultaneously eliminate both the airborne and ground troops that will keep coming, getting stronger wave by wave. We won't go into the strategy of Fieldrunners too much, as the community has many guides already in place - but in most circumstances, putting high powered towers along the routes the helicopters take, and building a winding, diagonal maze for the ground runners usually keeps the troops at bay.

Both maps look gorgeous - Grasslands is just an open grassy plain where the Fieldrunners run from the left to the exit at the right, and the aforementioned Crossroads seems to be the inside of the half a building that appears in Grasslands - the cracked walls with light breaking through would seem to indicate so. In this map runners appear from the left and top entrances, so it's more challenging as a result. Towers look excellent, as the upgrades are visual not statistic based as in other games, and so do the runners themselves. Indeed, the graphics seem the most complete out of any game we've seen yet on the iPhone, providing a cohesive aesthetic which really suits the gameplay. Sound is also incredibly engaging - there's no music, but the tower weapons and runner deaths seems to be all Fieldrunners needs.

It's disappointing then, that there isn't more substance to the game - two maps and four towers with a limited upgrade path do hurt replayability somewhat - even though there are three difficulty settings and two modes (Classic and Endless) per map. Having said that though, Subatomic Studios seem committed to providing updates to the game - Fieldrunners initially had only one map and no audio, so we hope that they will be providing more content for us to lay our hands on. But it's definitely worth the money if you're looking for a shining example of Tower Defence done right on the iPhone.

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