Jelly Defense Review: Stylish, Straightforward TD Game

App Name:	Jelly Defense
Platforms:	Universal (Optimized for iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad)
Publisher(s):	Infinite Dreams
Version Reviewed:	1.05
Genre(s):	TD
Release Date:	October 8, 2011
Price:	$2.99
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Recent entries into the well-mined tower defense genre — like the lamentably named Tower Defense: Lost Earth — have really made it seem that TD games have reached their nadir. Thankfully, sometimes a game like Jelly Defense, from Infinite Dreams, comes along and tries something new. In the case of Jelly Defense , the “new” is mostly on the surface; it’s a stylishly inviting game that has a very traditional TD game at its core.

Visually, there’s a lot of style here. Jelly Defense is a very cartoony game, featuring a color palate with a lot of primary and secondary colors in the foreground and almost all greytone in the background. We’ve seen games with this coloration before (it reminded me most of De Blob), but this is the first time I’m aware of it being used in a TD game. The tower, setting, and enemy designs are all very organic and blobby, with one-eyed looks dominating. Things jiggle and pulsate and wobble and fall asleep and generally keep things lively and interesting.

The whole game is accompanied by a soundtrack that can best be described as “New Wave 1980s,” and it’s very catchy. At first, I thought that they might have actually licensed the songs of some British 80s one-hit wonder! The music really adds a flavor to this that works.

So, in terms of both visuals and soundtrack, Jelly Defense is a big win. In fact, it almost reaches “style over substance” levels here, and while I think it doesn’t go quite that far, game play is definitely a secondary element.

Jelly Defense is, at its heart, a straightforward TD game — build towers, shoot enemies, collect resources, upgrade towers, shot more enemies, prepare for the Final Wave. The plotline is just as familiar: this game takes the TD plot of “aliens have invaded your homeworld” over the tried-and-true “you have landed on an alien world” scenario. The mechanics of game play don’t try to be overly inventive, either, though identifying enemies and weaknesses and corresponding towers is made easier by color coding (another nod to the game’s style). But there’s nothing new here; it’s tower defense.

The way Jelly Defense is designed, in fact, means that even this typical TD scenario is a bit rigid. In some TD games, you can win by winging it — have enough towers that do enough different things and you can eventually overpower every level. In Jelly Defense, things often feel more like a puzzle game: there’s a limited set of solutions for what to build / when to build on each level, and playing is more about figuring that solution out than it is in devising a defensive strategy. This means you’ll be playing some levels over, and over, and over again. It can get very difficult, and somewhat repetitive.

For fans of TD games looking for that next game to load onto their iOS devices, Jelly Defense is a worthy buy. It may not reinvent the TD formula, but at least it looks good doing it.

Our Score: 4 out of 5.

About the Author

Writer@Large Brian P. Hudson is an educator and freelance writer currently living in Dearborn, MI.

 

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