XMorph: Defense Review

The concept of a Tower Defense game is simple, place towers to blast an army coming through a designated path and make sure that they don’t reach the base. These games are simple but fun, but the ones that really impress are the ones that adds a little more to it.

This is what XMorph: Defense does so well. It is a Tower Defense mixed with a Twin-Stick Shooter with enough strategy that it feels like it should be classified as an RTS title, and is easily one of the best indie titles I played all year.

XMorph: Defense starts with an alien invasion in South Africa, as the aliens, you are out to dominate earth and harvest the planet for yourselves. The Humans are not going to take that lying down, so they’re sending waves upon waves of tanks, planes and various other devices at you.

You’re not defenseless though as your fighter can take on all multitudes of opponents with its lasers. Players ships are able to shoot in full 360 degrees using Twin-Stick shooter controls. But that isn’t enough as your lasers are a bit weak, and the humans are coming in at full force!

To back you up, you can place towers strategically around the map to help deal with the rows of tanks and heavy artillery coming for your base. What makes these towers awesome is its ability to cut off opponents tracks, forcing them to find a way around your towers and reach your base. This is a great feature for dealing with ground units as it allows you to warp and build their path to your liking, having them go the long way or an area with plenty of towers.

Between waves, players can place more towers, move or sell current ones on the map for a better strategic line against the humans, but players will have to be cautious about how their towers are placed in later levels as some units can do damage and destroy towers on their path.

To add to the strategy, players can upgrade their ship to take down skyscrapers to block paths or fall on harder to destroy enemies. Plus your ship is fully upgradable to include weapons that are more effective to ground units and air units, both with their own charge attack which can be devastating.

Another major bonus to this game is couch co-op. In co-op, each player will take control of their own ships and place their own towers. Each player will have their own pool to pull from in terms of number of towers, and that between rounds is dependant on how many units they’ve stopped, giving a small amount of competition in a co-operative experience.

XMorph does contains a bit of a difficulty spike with some of the later levels getting ridiculous with the amount of paths and fighters coming in from all directions. Classes like the Jumper units, bombers and various airborne attackers can easily overwhelm even the best thought out defenses if players are not quick or is too focused on one group at a time, forcing players to really focus on the entire map and use their ship to handle those weakened locations in their defense.

XMorph is a well thought out, strategic defense game that is a blast to play. If you a fan of strategy games that keeps you active in the game, then you need to look no further!