In this post, I will be reviewing XR Defense. The developer describes it as an X-Reality Tower Defense game. The game was developed using Apple’s ARKit technology. In this game, you need to defend your base from alien intruders by placing 3 different types of turrets to defend the base. You also have an option to upgrade your turrets and buy defense and attack abilities to further help you protect your base. The goal is to stay alive through the 20 waves.
The base has a Pentagon size (5 sides) filled with Hexagon tiles which you can place turrets on. There are three types of turrets the has an advantage against certain types of enemies. When I start playing it, I didn’t know which turret to put and it would be nice for the developer to at least give the player a hint what each turret instead of letting him fail several times until he figures it out.
XR Defense has three different game modes: Normal, Hard and Impossible. I’ve yet to finish the impossible, but I was able to finish the hard after the second run.
XR Defense Gameplay
The gameplay has a good flow. I was able to quickly position turrets on the tiles, remove them if I wanted to. Unlike some other tower defense games that I’ve played like Terrorhedron, Tower AR, and Toy Clash AR, you can’t upgrade each unit individually. You can’t even see each turret health (why?). The upgrade is done through the floating menu above the base. There you can choose to improve the turrets technologies for all turrets, including improving their damage, attack range, and attack speed. Each upgrade costs money, same goes to buying new turrets but the technologies have a cooldown, which means once you purchase them, it takes about a minute until they become active.
Besides turrets, you also have your Weapons: Tactical Bomber, Energy Shield, and Land Mine. The tactical bomber will bring a bomber airplane that will bomb a straight landing massive damage to enemy units within the blast radius, The Energy Shield creates a protective dome around your base and protects it from any damage caused by long range and close range attacks. The last one is my favorite, it deploys dozens of landmines which are spread all around the base damaging any enemy that comes across them. I wish there were more weapon options but the ones that we do have are fun to use.
Let’s check out some gameplay video, shall we?
The player needs to survive through 20 waves with increased difficulty. It’s important to pay attention to the radar so you know which side the aliens are attacking and place your units accordingly. Sometimes it’s better to wait and see which units are spawning and put turrets that can deal with those specific threats. The enemy units attack from a bit further away from the base and there is a slight delay in each wave. This gives you some time for preparations.
I personally prefer the micromanagement of the turrets like in Terrorhedron but I have to admit that XR Defense felt good as well. You can really feel the action and you do get that adrenaline rush once you need to deal with a lot of enemies and need to quickly decide on your next actions.
XR Defense Graphics, Level Design & UI
Unlike many other tower defense games where the enemy units move along a path which you need to defend, in XR Defense you need to defend the base from all angles.
The level design is nice. The game spawns the pentagon-shaped base with nice animation. The graphics of the base is very plain but I did like the futuristic design touch. That being said, Terrorhedron had a more original 3D level design and much more interesting visual effects. Still, there are some really nice explosion effects going on in this game as well, giving you the feel like you are in the middle of a battlefield.
I didn’t like the alien character 3D model design nor their animations. Some of them just moved like Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters. The air units looked better but their animation felt choppy, especially when they suddenly turn 90 degrees facing the base after a turn. This hurt the experience quite a lot. If you want to see what is high-quality character design and animation, take a look at Toy Clash AR. Of course, it doesn’t mean that every AR game should have triple-A quality 3D character models and animation, but the fact is that in this particular game, it did make the gameplay experience less exciting.
The game used three main colors: dark gray, red and blue. The problem is that least for me, it was hard to distinguish between the icon and the background in the weapons’ menu. Furthermore, the developer used white color for the menu’s text. The menu is almost completely transparent, it was hard to read the text when played on a light surface (you can see this in my gameplay video). Same goes to the bright green color for the ‘balance’ text on the bottom left side of the screen.
I was also annoying always looking on the radar to see where the enemies are coming from. Sometimes I just prefer to change the angle where the camera is pointing at and then I couldn’t see the radar from that angle. I think the developer should add like arrows on the screen that points where the enemies are when they are outside the field of view of the camera.
I also don’t understand what I can’t see the enemy’s health bar. Sometimes I need to deal with several enemies at the same time and I want to know where is best to put my turrets to deal with enemies coming from either the side or the front.
Overall, I was disappointed with the overall design, visual effects, color palette choice and the character’s 3D models. It makes the game look cheap and it does lessen my enjoyment of the game.
AR Experience
Due to the things that I’ve mentioned above, the AR experience wasn’t thrilling. I think the UI is misplaced and actually was interfering with the gameplay itself at some points. You can open and close the Weapon and Technologies menus, which is a good choice for this UI design approach. Still, why do I need to see a menu lying there on top of the base the whole time when I play it from a top-down perspective?
I’ve also spotted a bug where while playing I can still see the base placement rectangular shape moving around the environment as I play.
I might be the design, the UI, the character’s animations, but something just made the AR experience feel dull and unexciting. Don’t get me wrong, I did enjoy playing it in hard mode when things got more intense and I need to make quick decisions, but other than that the overall experience felt very much lacking.
When an enemy is eliminated there is no death animation, it just disappears from the map. When an enemy shoots a projectile on the shield it’s just sick on the shield. When several air units fly together, the wing animation is synchronized which make it look very artificial, I felt no need to even physically move around the base because most of the action happened mostly in one side in front of me. I didn’t even bother to look back, I just placed some turrets on the back side of the base and that’s it.
Maybe it would look better if the air enemy units would attack from above or at a higher ground so when played at standing position you can see their height, but they just felt like ground units from a player’s standing position (which is how I played the game).
Overall, I wasn’t impressed with the AR experience, but it wasn’t too bad either.
Conclusion
I have mixed feelings about XR Defense. Some part of me enjoyed some moments of it. However, the whole experience felt really flat. I didn’t like the character’s design, the animations looked odd at times, the menu system was annoying, the game lacked depth and the sound effects were somewhat irritating. Even once I’ve already got to the point where I have a lot of money to build more stuff, there were no more tiles available to place more turrets and the game was over before I was able to enjoy spending lots of money.
Maybe if the game was built with levels rather than just 20 waves, with more weapon and turrets types, a larger grid and more enemy units it would be more fun to play. The game’s idea is good but the execution is far less from satisfying.
I love tower defense games. This is my second favorite genre in the AR category. I’ve played many other Tower Defense games and although this one plays quite differently, I didn’t match the experience of the other games that I’ve played.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not a bad game but considering it isn’t free, there are better alternatives out there that I personally recommend over this one. I recommend looking at the gameplay video and see if you like it or not. Although this game has its good moments it doesn’t enter my recommendation list.