In this review, we’ll take a closer look at a new Merge Cube game called Tricky Temple. As you can see, lately I am kind of hooked by Merge Cube games. Tricky Temple looked like a great little tower defense game, and as a fan of this genre, I’ve obviously decided to purchase it and try it out.
What is Tricky Temple?
Tricky Temple is a tower defense game for the Merge Cube. Players need to choose different defense structures and put them in designated locations available on the map. The available structures are ones that do extra damage, slow down the enemy, increase the fire rate, allow enable multishot.
The structures appear as blocks. You can stack up blocks to upgrade your towers. Each block has durability, and this durability causes the block tower break after 30 shots. There is a visible hint that shows you the blocks that are about to break so you can replace them with new ones.
Blocks cannot be replaced during the wave. The player needs to buy blocks and assemble towers before the wave begins. This is where I have a big problem with the game. Many tower defense games are quite passive by nature. You put towers in different strategic locations and let them do the job. However, most tower defense games that I’ve played, allow the user to make decisions like deleting, upgrading and adding new structures at any point in time, even during a wave.
The inability of controlling the structures in real time creates a very boring gameplay experience. All you have to do is to just watch the units pass by your defenses without being able to do anything about it. Even if you get enough coins to purchase a defense block, you can only place it after the wave is ended. By that time, you already suffered a big hit on the tower. If the tower health reaches zero, it’s game over.
Tricky Temple has only one map, a jungle. The other levels (volcano and desert) are in “coming soon” state. A paid tower defense app and with just single map doesn’t feel right.
Gameplay Experience
As I mentioned in the previous section, the game feels passive and therefore boring to play. It’s quite unfortunate because playing a tower defense game on the Merge Cube is actually a fun experience.
It felt good placing structures and watching the enemies walking down the path while crossing different facets of the cube. However, that part of the active wave session where you can’t react to anything that happens at the level just felt very frustrating.
This killed the game for me. There were some other annoying UI issues like when I couldn’t start the next wave if the overlayed UI for the block is active. On the positive side, I liked the aim and hold to select, it works well for this game and it’s much better than needing to tap on the screen to trigger a button press. This is how it is used in many Gear VR virtual reality apps and it works well here as well.
Overall, I am very not pleased with how the game is played. I’ve played many tower defense AR games like XR Defense, Terrorhedron, CastleMustBeMine AR, Tower AR, and Toy Clash AR among others, Tricky Tower, although unique in its own right, didn’t exceed my expectations.
Graphics & Level Design
The Jungle level looked really nice, with nice protruding 3D objects that cover the 6-sides of the cube and create a pleasing visual experience. I liked the color choice, music and sound effects as well.
The game level and game controls were designed well to take advantages of the small space of the Merge Cube. I prefer this design than a miniaturization of the whole level and characters. I don’t want to play this game with glasses. This way, I could clearly see everything on the map and easily interact with it. So with a smart level design and game controls you can actually make standard tower defense game plays nicely on that very limited surface.
Living the gameplay mechanics aside, the level design and the game controls were designed well. The graphics are neat, the level design is interesting and flawlessly fits the Merge Cube physical design.
It’s very important to understand the limitations when designing a game like this for the Merge Cube. Stacking blocks is obviously a necessary design feature because there are not many places in which you can place defense structures.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are some things that I liked about the game, mostly the presentation, level design, and game controls. Having said that, the inability to control the placement of the blocks during the game lead to a very boring gameplay experience after only a few minutes. This is something that the developer needs to change and I see no reason why not to offer users the option to place and upgrade towers during a wave.
The game is challenging, but only because of its awkward gameplay design. It also lacks content, I mean for a paid app it’s just ridiculous.
I can’t recommend this Merge Cube game at this point, unless the developer improves the gameplay and add more content, right now, it’s not worth it.
Download Tricky Temple for iOS from the App Store here.