Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. While true, there is some evidence that Korean company Kurechii should be calling their lawyers right about now. Their new 'tower defense without the towers' game Tiny Guardians may be good, but it sure seems like I've played this before.
Games of any genre share common elements, it's the nature of working within the confines of any particular niche. FPS games will have HUDs (or not), MOBAs will have three lanes and, after about three months, a toxic community of players; and Tim Schafer titles will be brilliant but underappreciated. A tower defense game will have branching paths, unique towers that function as MMORPG classes (tank, mage, dps, etc) and waves of enemies. Tiny Guardians has all of these things, simply without the towers.
It is not the gameplay that I decry - more on that. But there are some serious artistic liberties at hand. From the moment I fired up the game with its chibi-esque characters, I had this strange sense of déjà vu. I hadn't played this game before, but I've certainly seen it: Kingdom Rush.
From the color palette to how the 'guide' is laid out, the overworld map and similar unit design, Tiny Guardians is more than just a spiritual successor to Kingdom Rush, it has possessed the latter's body almost entirely.
Now, this could be a case of simply being inspired by another creative team and unconsciously lifting product. Perhaps many of the same people worked on both games. That is a discussion best left for the lawyers.
What remains, however, is that Tiny Guardians is a surprisingly challenging tower defense title that is worth a look. It's part classic tower defense, part RPG adventure. Instead of managing a set number of towers at varying locations across a map, a central unit and the game's heroine, Lunalie, moves along a path and summons various minions who will engage the many enemies one is wont to encounter along any such fantasy road.
I am a very passive player of tower defense titles, in that I prefer to 'set and forget'. Build up a choke point, and hope like hell nothing gets through. Tiny Guardians forces you to always pay attention and to be constantly moving and unsummoning units as you progress across the map. Seasoned players will find even the easy setting a bit hard to handle at first. Where before you could bolster your defenses, disregarding the armor of a particular attacking unit, now you have to adjust your strategy on the fly, removing a Knight in favor of a Magician, or taking out that glass cannon Archer for a stealthy Hunter because there's a bunch of bandits up ahead.
Expect to die a lot in the beginning. Your only job is to protect Lunalie from dying. Luckily, she helps her cause and tosses out the occasional spell, but getting her to the end of the map is your victory condition. But she's going to die a lot. There's a precision here that borders on - and often falls into - frustration. If you're not Johnny on the Spot with your moves, constantly keeping your ranged units out of harms way, you'll be tasting the bitter sting of defeat as the enemy simply overwhelms you.
All of this shouts 'hack free to play mobile shovelware', but the best part of Tiny Guardians is that it's a fully premium game. There are optional in-app purchases for different skins and even different cards to summon, but there are no lock-out timers or cooldowns that you have to contend with. Play it as often as you like, it will always be there.
It is that premium quality that makes you wonder how the design got past. Sure, every strategy game looks like Clash of Clans now, but they're all free to play and somehow, free to play means 'shoddily made' and we can overlook that, can't we? But when you're asking us to pay for the experience, as you've read, it becomes an issue.
In a quick series of (similarly drawn) cut-scenes, we see our heroine, Lunalie, awakes one night to find that her master has gone missing. Intending to find him, she dons her cloak, gathers her Ruemas cards - which can summon her "guardians" - and sets off down the road where only danger and adventure await. It's a simple tale told simply, one filled with bandits and giant spiders, wolves and blobs of goo. You know, the usual.
What can provoke audible cries of outrage, however, is the good-not-great touch tracking. I played the game on an iPhone 5S (though the game really calls for a 6) and lost a unit or outright died because the game simply did not register what I was doing. It froze on a number of occasions, especially early on during the intro levels, when I just couldn't X out of some informational screen.
Thankfully, the gameplay is such that I just stopped the program and immediately fired it back up and continued on my merry way.
Intellectual copyright law aside, Tiny Guardians is a great take on the tower defense genre. The game should definitely appeal to long-time tower defense fans who are looking for not only something different, but a compelling challenge as well. Newcomers may get easily overwhelmed with the amount of micro-management required, but if you're on board, the game will certainly reward you. Even on the easiest setting, every victory in Tiny Guardians felt like a hard won battle
And even I can't say that about Kingdom Rush.
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Tiny Guardians was reviewed using a code provided by the developer. The game is available on the iOS and Google Play stores now for $3.99.
