7 Cities TD Review

7 Cities, developed by Neptune Studios, is the latest in a long line of tower defense games that can be found in Apple's App Store. Having been in development since the beginning of August it hopes to challenge the established TD front-runners (Fieldrunners, Tap Defense etc) by promising deep gameplay and features not commonly found in other TD games.

First impressions of the game were good, however it became apparent quite soon that 7 Cities was more than a simple pick-up and play game. In the grand scheme of games on the Touch and iPhone, there seems to be a division forming between games that encourage substantial sit down and play time (SimCity) and games designed for a quick 5 minute spurt of gaming (Dr. Awesome, Galcon, etc.). Many games promise both, attempting to appeal to both the casual and devoted gamers at the same time, but few ever manage this. I myself decline to have a preference, instead focusing on what works for me. If a game can captivate me for more than 10 minutes, then it deserves more devoted playing from me, and I am happy to provide it. If I can't stand to do more than a couple of levels at once of a certain game, then I'll come back to it in the future for a few minutes at a time. Anyway, that is a discussion for another time, but it is relevant to 7 Cities.

Most tower defense games promise a mixture of pick-up and play gaming, but with enough content to also entertain those that wish to put more time into it. However, most of them fail on this promise. 7 Cities doesn't make this promise, and it's probably for a reason. It's not the most friendly of games for wasting away 10 minutes while waiting for a train, but it doesn't try to be. It has one goal in mind; to be as in depth as possible, and offer the gamer as much choice and variation as possible. And it does a pretty good job at achieving this.

I was initially slightly deterred when starting the campaign mode. I've always considered myself reasonably good at TD games, so I went straight ahead and tried the first map on 'normal' difficulty. Unfortunately my city was overrun by wave 10 out of the 15 or 20 required for that round. After several attempts in which I didn't progress any further, I conceded and played on easy. And it was during these first two campaign cities that I really realised the beauty to the game. It takes the format and strategy of TD games, and turns it upside down. While every TD game has varying towers, upgrade options and enemy types, no other game does it like 7 Cities. For the first time I found myself really thinking about how to tackle each map that I was presented with, often having to attempt it several times before getting close to beating the final wave.

Unlike other TD games, towers upgrade automatically through combat, gaining substantially increased damage as they level up. While this is a great feature by itself, it has a massive affect on your strategy. You are forced to plan ahead and build ahead, to ensure that towers are powerful enough by the time you face the more powerful enemies 10 waves from now. The typical TD tactic of throwing in a few towers towards the end of the path to tackle the occasional enemy that has escaped no longer works, because the damage they inflict will be a fraction of what is needed. While it takes some getting used to, once you have a collection of heavily upgraded towers, it is deeply satisfying to watch them tear apart the enemy with ease. And even more satisfying knowing that you really had to approach the level with some thought to manage this.

In addition to towers leveling up, they also have unlockable skills. These are gained by progressing through the campaign mode, and unlocking the tower skills from the game's menu. Fortunately, if you find that the tower skills you unlocked aren't working for you, you can go back to the menu, unselect them, and pick different ones. It is also on this screen that you unlock the final 3 of 5 different tower types. These tower skills are further evidence of the depth that exists in this game. Each tower has two different skills, which can be used twice during gameplay (with increasing effectiveness). Rather than simply increasing the stats of each tower though, they have differing effects that can be useful in multiple situations.

I'll give an example (as this is pretty hard to explain without doing so). The cannon tower (pretty standard for a TD game) has two different skill upgrades. One turns it into a trebuchet (graphically represented as well) which causes the tower to inflict burn damage for a set duration. The other skill gives the tower a certain percentage chance to go 'berserk' every time the tower gets a kill. When going berserk its rate of fire is increased for a number of seconds. Now these two skill upgrades are very different, and can thus be applied in different situations to gain most benefit for your strategy. For instance, if you have a cannon tower placed strategically on the inside of a loop it will rack up a lot of kills. Because of this it is tactically sound to give it the berserk upgrade as it gets a lot of kills. Alternatively you may have a cannon tower near the beginning of the path (or river in 7 Cities) which rarely gets kills, but inflicts a lot of early damage. The trebuchet would clearly be best used in this situation. There is more to the use of skills than just this, but I'll let you explore that when playing the game.

Visually, the game is pretty impressive. Tower animations are nice, and the map is detailed. You can zoom in to help tower placement and there is an easy button for turning on and off a grid to help. The combat is well animated, with nice fire and lightning effects in particular. There is also a nice variety of interesting enemies and bosses for each of the enemy types. There are 7 different maps, which are unlocked as you progress through the campaign, and you are unable to unlock all the varying tower skills until you have progressed to the end of the campaign. While this makes it frustrating for those that want to jump right into a survival game (due to limited tower skill upgrades), it does encourage a more paced introduction to the game, which is needed.

The game is not without some flaws. The UI should be customised for each map i.e. putting numbers and buttons in empty space rather than always at the top (map 2 for example). Some rebalancing of the enemies is needed; sometimes the boss enemy is easily defeated when compared to groups of regular enemies, and sometimes it is the other way round. Zilla, the regenerative boss is also massively overpowered. Finally, while I am very impressed with the guidance and info available for first time players, it could be improved a bit, especially in relation to tower skills, as it took a little trial and error to fully understand it.

Overall though, 7 Cities is a supremely well-made game; you can tell that significant time and effort went into it to create the game that was originally intended, rather than rush out a less developed or bugged copy as happens all too often. While it doesn't quite match the graphical beauty of some TD games in the App Store, it is certainly among the prettiest. And when you consider that alongside its deep and engaging gameplay, there really is no better overall TD game than 7 Cities. It might not be suited to pick-up and play gaming, but I dare you not to reserve more time in your day for the next time you plan to play.


- Thank you to the people at Neptune Studios for giving me the chance to review their game.