OTTTD Review

Being an avid player of tower defence games such as Sol Survivor, I was reluctant to try OTTTD (Over The Top Tower Defense) due to it being seemingly designed for iOS gamers in mind, but I installed the game on Steam to see if I’d be pleasantly surprised.

As you boot up the game you’ll notice you have the option to store multiple game saves, which is undoubtedly a great feature for those who share their PCs or iOS devices with others. You’ll start the tutorial with an Engineer, the only Hero you can select from, you unlock more of the team as you complete the tutorial and missions. In terms of customisation, you can’t chose the name of the Hero yourself, but you can hit a button which allows you to randomise it from a preset list. Aside from that, each time you successfully complete a match, you’ll earn points which can be spent on up to 16 skills, these skills are different for each Hero and the more you earn, the more you can level up specific abilities.  

In the tutorial you’ll be shown the basic mechanics of the game, one of the features I like about OTTTD is the ability to fight with not only your towers but also the Heroes you’ve chosen. (In later games you can chose up to three Heros to accompany you in battle). Some of the controls feel a bit unnatural and inconvenient to a PC user: You’re told that dragging the screen with your left mouse cursor will move it around but I later discovered you can also do the same with WASD, left-click your Hero to select it, right-click to move it to a designated area and around the map, click special abilities to select them, then click again on a tower to assign it the special ability. Basically there’s a lot of clicking involved which I can only assume is put to better use on an iOS device where tapping on the screen is already comes naturally.

Onto the actual gameplay aspect, unlike most Tower Defense games, you can’t just go throwing your towers around anywhere you like. In OTTTD, X marks the spot, which means there are certain areas marked on the floor of each map where you can place your towers. In some ways this is a helpful feature and perhaps better for those with less Tower Defense experience - it probably means you’re unlikely to get a match horrifically wrong and completely fail, but on the other hand it feels somewhat restricted to have a set amount of areas for your Towers.

So as previously mentioned, once you’re past the tutorial stage of the game and have unlocked more Heroes, you can select three to take into battle with you each time. Each Hero is good for something different and bring something new to the table, you’ll often find it difficult to select just three, although any more than three would make the game pretty hectic and unplayable. As the games progress and your Heroes level up, they receive new weapons, and just like the Towers, Heroes can also cause damage and take it, therefore keeping them running around the map, doing their jobs and staying out of harms way becomes a top priority. If one of your Heroes should die, you have to wait a set amount of time before you can play them again, or use one of the in-game currency to revive them.

Initially you select from a select range of basic Towers, each costing a different amount of the in-game currency, so strategically working out where to place the more expensive ones is vital when playing on later levels or other map sizes. You can start upgrading these Towers as soon as you’ve earned enough currency from destroying enemies, and I would highly recommend it as the extra damage caused will help immensely when levels get harder. The one downfall to the upgrade system is the constant clicking of each Tower to see which one is eligible for an enhancement. Aside from the upgrades, your Heroes can also assign some of their abilities to the Towers, such as damage boosts or quick repairs, which is almost essential in tough situations - and is another reason I find myself really enjoying the option to control Heroes.

Enemies come in all robotic shapes and sizes, and in the event of their destruction, leave a trail of blood and guts laying around the map until the game has finished. Although a quirky little feature, it can occasionally make it difficult to see your characters. The enemies insides only adds to what is already a very fun, cartoonish looking game, and as previously mentioned definitely looks like something you’d find on the iOS/Android store, but that’s not at all a problem. With an upbeat soundtrack thrown in, you’ve got yourself a very light-hearted but also incredibly over the top and quirky Tower Defense game.