Block Fortress, Foursaken Media's mixture of Minecraft and tower defense, is a fantastic game.
You're given a base to place wherever you want in a blocky Minecraft-style world and then you must defend it as long as you can against hordes of tougher and tougher creatures while mining resources that are necessary to buy better defenses. Not only can you put defenses like missiles, lasers and freeze guns on your bases but you can also buy weapons that can be used first person shooter style. Plus, you can build your own structures. It's as if Toy Soldiers was set in the world of Minecraft.
What gives the game an extra layer of depth is that nearly every weapon and defensive object can be permanently upgraded via a separate crafting menu. For example, reload times on weapons can be reduced or hit points on an item can be increased. It can be overwhelming at first but once you get a handle on the systems at play the game becomes figuring out which weapons fit your play style and how can you best improve them. Here are some tips to help with the complexity.
Part of the confusion comes from there being three resources—green, blue and white—that can be mined. Each map has only one type of resource and to upgrade items you need a combination of the three. You can, of course, buy the resources with real money, but the game is balanced well-enough that you don't have to because you earn them at a steady rate.
All of this complexity does cause some problems. Up until recently there was a game breaking bug that involved the game crashing whenever mines, a key defense, were used. I decided to wait until the bug was fixed before reviewing the game, even though it came out in March. Currently you can not sync your saves to the cloud, but that is a minor concern. The developers promise a co-op mode and the game is currently on sale for 99 cents.
Block Fortress is endlessly entertaining and contains a layer of complexity rarely seen in iOS games. Go support them so we see more of these types of games.
