Developed/Published by: Q-Games / Nintendo
Released: December 18th, 2009
Completed: 15th April, 2015
Completion: Finished all 30 levels, 16 perfects.
Trophies / Achievements: n/a

I feel like I’ve talked about tower defence here already, but apparently I haven’t. Must have been on Twitter, then.

Here’s my thoughts on tower defence games: I have a “they’re hypnotically… ok”/hate relationship with them? They’ve got a loop that is undeniably compelling—build a thing, watch it perform, did it work? Repeat—but they also (often) have a problem that comes with that: if you don’t know what the thing you are building is supposed to do exactly, you’re going to be annoyed as you watch it fail. Also because the games tend to have multiple waves, unless you’ve been building for future waves—in a way that will feel sub-optimal for earlier waves, likely—you can get wiped out towards the end in a way that can feel somewhat annoying.

These problems are definitely apparent in Starship Defense! I picked it up in a “god, apparently I have all these Nintendo points on my DSi” splurge right before Club Nintendo ended in the hope it would raise some more Club Nintendo points (I think it got me 10) and because I’ve generally been interested in Q-Games’ output on Nintendo systems. I had managed to forget totally that I hated Pixeljunk Monsters (their earlier tower defence) and didn’t really like Trajectile (or at least, I tired of it quickly.)

Anyway. Starship Defense looks nice—it’s almost a pencil-on-paper look, but not quite. Maybe they just thought it was too dull when they did it with black space. And I like the feel of the top screen being a Galaxian-like formation of baddies. Unfortunately, I just wasn’t crazy about the tower defence. You only get a glimpse of the route enemies will take right before they start to take it, and it makes planning for future waves difficult. Enemies are split up into two kinds, normal and stealth (stealth being the “flying” enemies you usually get in other tower defence games) and there are only three weapons that can attack stealth enemies, only one of which is cheap/immediately available, and it’s weak and unsuited for attacking other enemies, so you need to know exactly when and how to combat the stealth waves.

(This is problematic, because there are several special, expensive weapons you will never use because it only makes sense to use the one most powerful weapon that damages both stealth and normal enemies. I beat the game, generally, using only 4 of 8 weapons.)

I suppose tower defence games are for people who want to replay levels to get a perfect—in some respects my criticism of Starship Defense is personal. I’d much rather be playing a game where I’d be able to change tactics on the fly or have enough information, in advance, that mistakes would be my fault rather than the fault of ignorance. I don’t find it fun to replay a level where I’ve “solved” a bunch of waves to get to the wave where I should have done something different, and the game even discourages tactics changes (destroying a weapon costs energy, so you can’t switch a weapon’s position without, generally, paying double.)

Starship Defense still offers that pride, however. Pride of having a really nice, weapon-loaded ship, and seeing it get to work. And it’s only got 30 levels, so it’s a nice “hit” of tower defence if that’s what you’re looking for?

Will I ever play it again? Nah. And I hope this reminds me not to play a tower defence game again unless it does something really, really different.

Final Thought: It’s slightly disappointing this didn’t take more cues from vertically scrolling shooters, with enemies flying in Galaxian formations, or the player placing fighters that can only move left/right in rows? There’s probably something there!