In a traditional tower defence game, you start out with a small amount of funds - and by defeating small numbers of enemies you gain funds to build upgrades and more towers. Eventually, you hit the magic point at which the enemies have trouble breaking through because your maze is too powerful. In many games of this genre, the inevitable imbalance usually means that you can pass through unscathed - if you are smart with your tower placement. In geoDefense, the creeps get harder and harder, and more numerous, quickly. It's also unrealistic to expect a win without taking some damage - this game forces you to fight for your crown.

You do so by building towers en masse rather than in small amounts to quickly cull the creeps from the screen - as waves progress, the cash flow increases exponentially, and all too often you may be overwhelmed by how much action is going on. But each map has a different strategy and starting amount of cash - some have poor funding and therefore start slower, and some have a lot of money but get difficult very quickly. It's up to you to choose whether to spend your cash on upgrades or entirely new towers, and as upgrades shut down the tower temporarily (and take longer depending on what level you're upgrading to) placement is key to avoid gaps in your line of fire.

Placing towers can be slightly tricky - as towers tend to glue themselves to the board rather than having truly freeform positioning. Once you get the hang of the tap/drag system though, it works well - and fortunately you can offset the tower from where your finger touches the device, so you can see where you're putting the tower. There are five towers (with 7 upgrade levels each), including a cool 'vortex' tower that takes the energy from fallen creeps and puts it to use either by a big energy blast or by feeding the pool of energy to surrounding towers to boost their damage. Working out how the towers work is part of the fun though so we don't want to wreck that too much.

As far as presentation goes - geoDefense looks far better in motion than in screenshots. Simply put, the game is a visual feast for the eyes - with particle fireworks ricocheting all over the screen when vaporising an enemy, the fantastic weapon fire and the many enemies that litter the maps with colourful neon flair. The technological sound effects and robot voices we found effective, even though there was a distinct lack of music. And we appreciated the fact that all the levels were opened for us from the beginning, so we could move on if we were stuck.

When playing geoDefense you'll realise just how hard tower defence games can be - you need to think fast and use strategies that just wouldn't be possible elsewhere - and that's thanks to each level's fine balance of cash and creeps. It will inevitably take a while to get accustomed to, but once you break through that barrier it's extremely rewarding. We can't recommend it for the genre's newcomers, but if you're looking for a fast paced strategy game with excellent presentation for a cheap price, then you won't go wrong here.

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geoSpark, B

Review by Tom Grimes, January 11, 2010

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