Desert Defense

Tower defense game got very popular in the last few years or so, when indie developers suddenly got access to a wide variety of free design tools to put their ideas into practice. Hence, instead of heavily modded maps for games like WarCraft or StarCraft, people can now create actual games and decide their own rules when it comes to gameplay and the like.

Desert Defense does not make use of these new tools, since the developer preferred to use his skills to make everything from scratch. As admirable as this might be, the result is obviously crude and severely below anything you could obtain with one of the free alternatives out there. Despite that, effort is always appreciated and it is widely considered to be the prime method of learning new things.

Subjecting yourself to someone’s learning process is not as fun, on the other hand, especially when it comes to video games. Desert Defense is ugly, too simple, buggy, and a plethora of other unpleasant adjectives at the same time. There are many flaws when it comes to gameplay mechanics, such as the fact that some maps do not allow you to place certain structures, which are vital if you intend on winning.

As a concept, the game is the same as the rest iterations in the genre, which means that enemies come out in waves and they must be stopped along the way, using a variety of weapons. This variety is not as diverse as you might think, on the other hand, especially since resources are scarce and you get to see everything there is to see from the first five minutes.

Technically, everything is a bit of a mess, starting with the graphics, all the way to camera controls and the actual maps. The latter are basically simple textures repeated ad-infinitum with barely any logic or reason. Mazes are usually formed to provide you with a challenge, but bad design can sometimes prevent you from being able to erect certain towers, such as those that must be placed on water to be viable.

When it’s all said and done, Desert Defense makes a very poor case for itself, because it offers nothing in return, but it asks for copious amounts of patience on your behalf. Hence, unless you are eager to help the developer improve his craft, there are far better alternatives out there.