OTTTD was a surprise to me on many levels. It came out of nowhere, showing up in my inbox only days before its release; It is a tower defense games which almost always leaves me wanting, especially on PC; It comes with a silly name that is utterly forgettable. Still, the game managed to extract a number of smiles from me (no small feat for a man that never learned how to smile) and kept me entertained for quite some time.
Okay, so getting things out of the way OTTTDis set up like your standard tower defense style game. You buy various towers and place them across each stages play-field. Unlike many contemporaries though, you don’t get a choice on where you place your towers. The game well give you a number of pre-placed X’s on the map. While this may seem limiting, in reality they are placed in such a way that will require a fair bit of strategy to deal with the enemy.
Don’t like where you placed a tower? Want to change your strategy and change from a defense tower to an offensive tower? OTTTD allows you sell back any tower and change it out on the fly for another, if you have the funds available of course. It makes the game much more interesting when different enemies are bearing down and you are actively upgrading and re-installing towers all over the place.
This isn’t just a “Place towers and sit back” style of tower defense. You will also get a number of player controlled characters to help you out in a variety of ways during play. You have you Engineer that can quickly repair towers, a Heavy that deals MASSIVE DAMAGE, a Jet-pack Solider that can fly and use their rocket launcher, a Scout with a sniper rife with an incredible range, and on and on.
During play you will unlock additional characters with unique abilities allowing you to play the way that best suits you. While OTTTD gives you tons of characters to play with you can only use three of them at a time in any given level. It gives the game a great bit of re-playability as you can jump back to a level you have already finished and try out a new characters, or set of characters to see how you like them.
The graphics are colorful and have this cartoonish charm to them. This may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but as a person who is sick and tired of all the brown, earth-toned, next generation graphics used in games today, I’m always happy to see some color in a game. Don’t get me wrong, the game features a ton of blood and guts, but the way it’s done is fun and humorous, instead of dark and depressing.
There are 25 levels and each features a unique look and fee theml. Tower defense games tend to give you the sense that every level is the same thing over and over again, but OTTTD likes to mix things up in a number of fun ways. Some levels don’t even have a distinct path for the enemies to follow. You may find yourself in a graveyard with zombies coming in from all angles. Zombies not your thing? Perhaps fighting in a Grand Canyon like setting with a giant Zeppelin shark circling overhead unleashing hell down upon you. The game does a wonderful job of mixing it up just when you think you’ve seen everything it has to offer.
The playfield is set in a way that you can’t pan around in any position you wan’t, but the way each stage is set up this isn’t a problem. You can zoom in pretty tight getting an up close view of all the carnage and move around the level with your basic WASD layout. They only problem really comes up when you want to move around one of your player controlled characters. Clicking doesn’t always work the way you want it to meaning you will think you moved someone when in fact you didn’t do anything. I opted for just clicking on their onscreen portrait and then clicking where I wanted them to go. This is the best way to handle characters as when there are dozens of exploding baddies on screen, losing sight of your team happens quite a bit.
OTTTD doesn’t just treat these player controlled characters as mere cannon fodder, instead after each time they are used they will earn XP and level up. You will be able to upgrade and unlock specialty skills that are unique to each character. You can up their damage resistance, upgrade their damage output, and unlock unique abilities. Some of these will allow you to repair towers from a distance, target an airstrike from anywhere on the field, unleash an electric shock that kills nearby enemies, and tons more.
The game also lets you trick out each character with their own weapon and armor layout, much like you can do in an RPG. Heck, OOTD offers more RPG elements than I’ve seem in many standalone RPG games. These abilities and upgrades are not only helpful, but many offer a lot of visual touches that adds a bit of fun to the whole experience.
The only thing that OTTTD is lacking is on the sound front. None of the music is memorable and even as I sit here writing, having just had a quick play about 10 minutes ago to refresh my memory on everything, I couldn’t even hum you any tune withing the game. There are a few vocal ques here and there, but nothing that you’ll want to crank the speakers for. Guns and explosions are utterly bland and generic and don’t help the game stand out in any meaningful way. There is nothing bad here sound wise, it’s just not going to have any lasting impression.
OTTTD is a great deal of fun if you are looking for something a bit different. Most impressively is that the entire time I was playing it I never thought that the game is just a port of an Android based game. That is saying quite a bit as knowing that may have soured my view on the entire thing. It’s a testament to the developers for taking the time to optimize the game and graphics for the PC market. OTTTD isn’t going to win any awards, but for $10 you could do much worse.
The copy of OTTTD used in this review was provided by to us by the publisher
About Author
