Origin8 seem to be experts at defence games because MonsterKill is definitely up to Sentinel's standard. Like in all defence games you'll be defending your wall from enemies that move down from the top of the screen, however killing enemies is a little different in MonsterKill: The game is entirely based on touch gestures so you swipe to cut the enemies, draw a lightning bolt to zap them, a downwards arrow to block them with ice and an upwards arrow to launch a fireball on them. We think that these touch gestures, which are the core of the game, work very well and we are very pleased that Origin8 chose them as the control method.

The game may sound quite easy at this point but as you progress it becomes much harder. In story mode, the four different enemies are slowly introduced and we feel that the pace and difficulty is just right. The good thing about the different enemies is that they each have their own challenge; the mummy turns up in large numbers, count dracula can teleport out of trouble, the werewolf will run forward in fury as soon as you attack him and the zombie is a huge beast that takes multiple hits to destroy. This means the enemies really mix up the game and that unlike other defence games, there is a little bit of strategy involved.

Between each of the levels you can buy upgrades from the shop, as well as extra health for your defences. As you attack the enemies you use up magic, which is shown in a bar at the top of the screen, so the regeneration speed of this is one of the many things you can upgrade. If you die during the story mode you are given the option to retry from the last level you played which we found especially useful towards the end of the game. All in all the story mode took us around an hour to complete, but the game offers much more content than that - an endless mode and an onslaught mode. The endless mode is fairly obvious; you have to defend your wall as long as possible, but in onslaught mode there will be 101 enemies coming towards you and you have to try and destroy as many of them as you can. The trick in this mode is that you have no wall to defend, so the enemies can walk straight off the screen and therefore killing all 101 is quite hard.

Just like Origin8's other games, MonsterKill has some very good graphics with great animations for the enemies. All of the damage done to your wall is visual which we think is an excellent touch, although a health bar at the top would also be appreciated. Throughout the story mode you will travel through different locations (including a graveyard and an Egyptian crypt) which, in a way, decrease the repetitiveness of the game. We also found the light hearted, horror music well suited to the game and its frantic gameplay.

On top of three game modes, MonsterKill has OpenFeint integrated so you can submit your scores worldwide and earn achievements - in fact we found that the achievements were one of the things that made us replay the story mode. With well designed menus, simple and addictive gameplay and save state, this game has clearly been created with the iPhone in mind and which we think that all iPhone developers should do. For 59p you are definitely getting your money's worth and we definitely recommend it if you aren't sick of defence games by now.

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More by this developer

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Sentinel, B

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