Viking Defense, from IriySoft, is a close cousin to Canyon Defense, their intriguing but flawed re-think of the tower defense genre, published earlier this year. Fans of Canyon Defense will be happy that everything has been improved—the artwork, the map layouts, the weapon variety, the overall game balance. Un-fans of Canyon Defense will be pleased to know that the fastest enemies can no longer outrun your missiles (which, frankly, was pretty ridiculous. Imagine for a moment avoiding a missile by briskly walking in front of it, and then imagine how much respect you'd have for the nitwit who fired it at you).
It still follows the basic tower defense formula: raiding hordes attack in waves, following a winding waterway from the top of the screen to the bottom, where a helpless village of exactly 10 inhabitants resides. Quell the invasion by buying and placing armed towers, which will fire upon your enemies from dry land. Each ship, serpent, or dragon that runs the gauntlet without dying will murder one of your townsfolk, until you either run out of people to protect or you stop the last wave of attackers. Each bad guy you kill adds money to your coffers to spend on more defense towers or support buildings.
Some waves consist of flying enemies, which ignore the usual path and simply glide straight across the screen. Most of your towers can't target the fliers, so you'll have to make sure to budget for your air defense, in terms of both money and positioning.
Viking Defense, like Canyon Defense before it, breaks from the rest of the crowd by introducing game elements incrementally, through a quest system. You start out with only two simple towers, and then unlock others by meeting various criteria—destroy 10 boats, build 5 air defense towers, kill 4 enemies simultaneously with a single strike of the legendary hammer Mjolnir, that sort of thing. And that would be the other major distinction of Viking Defense—once you build certain temples to the Norse gods, you get to use rechargeable powers, like the nuclear super-strike of Mjolnir, or the ability to construct platforms in the water that can restrict enemy movement or support additional towers.
These temples also give you access to magical runes, which take the place of the usual tower defense upgrades. Each tower can only be enchanted with a single rune. You must therefore focus on finding effective combinations, rather than just making everything more and more powerful.
Analysis: Tower Defense is one of those genres that gets less accessible with each new layer of sophistication. Most of the new generation of TD titles dunk you in an overwhelming sea of options straight away, and then let you flounder around grasping for a successful strategy to keep you afloat. And that's what the most devoted fans want—to surgically extract the still-beating mathematical heart from a giant's body of weaponry and upgrades.
And that's fine, but catering your games exclusively to the hardcore is like wearing iron pants all the time to protect yourself from dog bites. It works, but every other aspect of your life suffers. So I'm grateful to IriySoft for Viking Defense. It hits my complexity sweet spot, never drowning me in choices nor playing the game for me.
I enjoy the way the game restricts you at first and then branches out along multiple paths. You probably won't see all the available upgrades every game. The most difficult towers to unlock are not so much gameplay staples as they are devastating toys that you earn for playing in a particular style. The quest structure is a clever way to guide you between different activities, although the conditions that unlock specific buildings seem arbitrary. Why do you earn a mystical energy spire by nuking four whales with a hammer? Who knows? Take your present and say thank you!
Although the enemies look lively, with their flags flapping in the wind and their serpent bodies undulating, I wish there were more of them. On the longer stages, they start showing up as Rank 2 or Rank 3 versions of themselves, without any visual difference whatsoever, and I'd appreciate a color change, at least. The downside of the relatively simple gameplay is that it eventually gets repetitive, and if my brain isn't getting enough treats, then my eyes want some.
One of the nicest things about Viking Defense is that, in a notoriously abstract family of games, the basic premise makes sense. Because Vikings, unlike balloons, are known for their invading hordes. They had raiding parties, which were not the sort of parties that you bring balloons to, and they were rarely intimidated by monkeys. I'm not making any judgments here. I'm just saying.
Ive manage to beat the first 4 level. The last one I sorta gave up... XD. The forth level has 2 paths and the fifth level is basically open with a few islands.
The two towers I use are catapult with the first rune and falcon cliff.
Maybe it's just me....... but I'm not understanding exactly how to enchant these towers with runes??? I've looked and everywhere says you can but I just don't know how!! I have the runes.... I just can't seem to use them!!! Anyone??!!
On the last map, you can close off paths with just a couple of bridges and force the boats to go on a circuitous path. Yeah, catapults with the Homing rune are awesome early on. Also when you can unlock Greek Fire, you're unstoppable. I put the falcons on "burn" and "freeze" duty because they do multiple hits at the same time and are much more likely to succeed at it.
aah vikings, the origanal discoverers of america, and the steriotypical brute(or was that what there were styreotyped as?).
even though i haven't played it yet it sounds like a really good game.
TO BATTLE!!!
This game looks remarkably similar to the previous TD game miniclip had porduced. Seems that its only a change in its livery differenciates from the preious game
I beat all five without any villager died.
In order to win the fifth:
You should build the platforms rapidely to canalize their floating attack.
Next, try to fill the islands with falcon cliffs and stoneheads (which slow down the enemies). Put 3-4 flamethowers (the mightiest weapon against floating) at the entry, with the help of some stone head, no floating enemy can pass this firewall.
To oppose the flying attack, build a line of storm... (the heaviest weapon against flying) which release the thunders. 6-7 are enough. With the help of falcon cliffs and stoneheads on the island, no flying enemy can reach your village.
Excuse me, Psychotronic! Are you POSSIBLY suggesting that THIS GAME is better than Bloons Tower Defense 3? How could you POSSIBLY be suggesting THAT? The monkeys are perfectly right! WE MUST SAVE OUR FUTURE GENERATIONS FROM THE EVIL, WORLD DOMINATING BALLOONS!
Charlie:
If you have enough money to buy one, you should be able to just click on the rune, then click on the tower. A little glowing symbol should appear in the corner of the tower's square.
Arikiko:
When the balloons break down my door, I will know that you were right. :D
Hey, if anyone else out there is having problems getting games on Miniclip to load, then try emptying your cache. It worked for me.
Very well crafted game. Enjoyable for a while. The only disappointment is that the game is too easy once you get the bottom weapons. Plus, once you beat it, nothing left to do.
I would have liked an infinite mode with maybe tower upgrades.
Is it just me, or does some elses game screen flicker as a 1910 video projector as well?
I need help!!
I am not able to unlock quarry of Rage because it says destroy sunken enemies.
I am getting pretty good at this game and no enemies pass but I cannot unlock that one...
What am I supposed to do?
I think there's a bug with the speed rune. It seems to increase attack speed way more than 20%; reload time went from 4s to 1.4s for the frag bomb tower, and from 0.5s to 0.2s for the tempest tower. That made the tempest towers pretty godlike.
Also, I had music while it was paused, but not while playing. Weird.
I find it amusing that ice damage on a greek fire tower is so effective.
polyfrance:
That strategy sounds fine, but what about the early lvls? It is quite a pain to get to full power.
Ioannis:
You need to kill three underwater enemies (not at the same time) while they are actually underwater. (i.e. 'dark') Unfortunately they seem to surface often, especially when attacked, so this is hard to do. The best way is with a Hammer attack just as they start to enter the map. With luck and timing, you can get three in one go.
Bloatedsack:
I can beat it consistently with the following:
Start with watchtowers on the bottom island, about four, building up to six.
Build sacred woods as required on the upper islands, you should hit 5 soon enough.
Throw up the Thor temple when you can, and then start populating the upper islands with runed catapults.
Build more catapults and sacred woods until you unlock the Forge, and throw that up as soon as you can. Start blocking off the channels.
If you can unlock that sparkling tower thing, build those instead of the woods. Enchant them with the second rune. Or the ice rune once you get that.
Once falcon cliffs unlock, hopefully you can build the elemental runes temple at around the same time.
Just keep building these platforms, and once you hit 10, put fire runes on your fast firing towers, and then later replace them with ice runes. And finally start building the super towers.
I really wanted to like this game more than I did....
its pretty, there is some original stuff here and early on it was fun.
But a couple of things really made it a chore:
1) you have to build 10 extensions of island as soon as you can in order to get the citidel that then opens up greek fire. Ths means that you really have to sit through the timer on every level for the middle part of the game... just sit there waiting for the little island extender thing to fill up... and this is boring as heck. No way to speed it up... just sit and wait.
2) the upper levels are not well thought out... you become super ubber once you have to top weapons easily and then each level you just wipe em out.
This was close to being a great game... just not quite there...
I enjoyed this enough to work through all the maps, although it did get quite repetitive, as mentioned in the review.
It is just a bit too easy - I got down to a population of 2 on one of the maps, but was never really in danger of losing.
It was slightly annoying having to work through the same upgrades for each map - maybe different challenges would make things more interesting?
to carldec:
you commented that it was bad because you had to wait for the time to work up. If you click the "ATTACK" button immediately, you will notice that a big chunk of the power is filled up. It gives you that time all at once. Don't sit there and wait, press "ATTACK" and it should fill up a big slice all at once.
Anyone got good rune and tower combos.
yes, you can press attack, but you'll lose out on all of the time that the power was full. if you want to play optimally, then you need to wait.
Carldec:
If you build multiple temples of the same type, it significantly speeds up the recharge time for the related ability.
For example, I built four Thor temples and was able to use the Mjolnir hammer every turn - just click the 'attack' button as mentioned earlier by Ethan.
LOL! i finally died on the first map at wave 692 with over 1M coins and score came up as 0 in the end. hmmmm might be a bit bugged
What do they mean by sunken enemies?
The Quarry of Rage requirement.
hey josh,
you have to kill the enemy while they are still underwater
the easiest way is to use catapults with the first rune, i think its called raido or something
I have beat the last map a few times and I consistently get about 12 million points. How do some people end up getting well over 1 billion points? Is there some sort of bug like on canyon defense that gives a lot of profit?
Anyone else have a problem where the ships suddenly (and seemingly randomly) go into hyperspeed? It is really annoying! It seems to happen once I start building bastions, and only on the later levels.
It is really annoying because the shots don't speed up, so all the ships suddenly race past my defences and I lose.
Anyone else had this problem?
How do you get a map bonus at the end? i've only ever got 0%
How do you get a map bonus, i never get one
I love TD games, and this one is great. There were a couple things that didn't work too well. One, it wouldn't let me build a temple somewhere, even though the ring around the temple icon was green, not red. Also, if i tried to fire Moljnir at flying enemies, it missfires, almost every time.
What's the highest level everyone has got to in free play mode?
Level 860 and still going strong... Going for the 1000.... By the way, it gets to a point where you are so strong you can defeat them without having to use hammers or anything. So you just leave it on, go to sleep, and wake up 2-3 hundred levels later.
Yeah, I got the Bastion accelerant problem, too. As far as I can tell, if I lay down multiple Bastions, all the boats and so forth go into hyperspeed when the Bastions fire. The more Bastions, the worse the problem. Dodged by using lots and lots of Tempests instead, which isn't really a solution.
Only 20 levels? The game was over before it began. I was still working on unlocking even middling itmes.
at taybo: go on freeplay you can go as long as you can
This game is fun but easy on lvl 224. Too repetitive. Just go to sleep zzz...
With upgraded speed, tempest towers are godlike. Have the entire map covered with them. Don't even get to the first strip of land before they are dead.
Make a harder game Miniclips!!
Too easy on last level. You don't even need half the weapons. I beat it without losing one person with:
3 Greek fires (ice rune)
10 Catapults (speed rune)
4 Slow down weapons
20-30 Trees (speed runes)
4 Hawk nests (fire rune to unlock greek)
Build you canal to funnel them all into one area, then load that area with the catas and greek fires and two slow down weapons.
Spread your treas across the islands and put 2 slow downs spread out.
Once you get the greek unlocked, switch hawks to ice rune.
I had all of this setup by turn 48, and didn't have to change a thing or add anything before the end. I just sat their and watched myself win, only nuking once on turn 70.
28,000 gold at the end and 15.5million points.
Last lvl.
Unlock second building asap. You can block the down left side exit with 3 platforms. Concentrate on Left and center air guns and on the Right side cata with R and GF. Enjoy.
Great game! I got to the end - the very last level, and something went buggy! All the ships zipped through the channel so fast I could hardly see them - literally. Must be a bug. A bummer of a one.
ChiefJoe96 or anyone, how do you play more than 70 levels on the game?
Hey guys.
I think this was a great game. On second level, I am on attack #250 with every space covered with Sanctum of Tempest (the 5 sacred building). I kill every rank 10 that comes past in a mnimum of 10 seconds. This is the ultimate nuking weapon and is great with the longer range rune.
Good talking too you all and I hope you get a high score sometime soon.
holy geez. Greek fire with the ice rune, absolute molestation.
try the splash damage rune(the last one) with the canons after plasing them near the beginin of the map!!!
how to beat fifth level please
I have gotten up to level 638 on the first level but then got bored. I had every space covered in sanctum of tempest. But why do they do so much damage? they say they only do 10 damage, and every fifth hit is amplified. what does this mean?
it means every fifth hit is stronger.. it gets boring.. anone know how many waves you have to get through to become number 1 in the game?
I really enjoyed this game. The problems are A) it gets dull once all your defenses are set up. B) The score at the end is almost always 0. Yet there are people that can score 2.4 billion points over and over. My best is 1.9 billion. c)The ships rushing in is a fault with using the Bastions. Solution: don't use them. To keep the game interesting, and shorter, avoid free play. On level 5 I survived 1191 waves. I used a macro to click the attack button every 5 seconds, and went to bed. Now the challenge is to play level 5 (not free play) and get through all 70 waves without the loss of even one life. Really hard to do, but possible!
Anyone know how to avoid getting a zero score in free play?
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