For lovers of strategy games in 2009, Robo Defense was a great mobile experience to spend hours on. To date, it still holds up as a straightforward strategy game with interesting gameplay. Developed by Lupis Labs, Robo Defense is a real-time strategy, tower defense video game for Android. The gameplay may be direct, but it gives room for great strategy with varying enemy machines and soldier levels. 

With a theme centered around sci-fi battles, you can defend your territory from enemy attacks using towers. The gameplay looks like a Star Wars movie staged on earth. In a world filled with racing, sporting, and arcade games, Robo Defense does a good job of standing out.

Straight To The Point Yet Exciting Gameplay

Robo Defense has a very interesting progressive system, designed after the classic tower defense game format. You are to build different types of stationary weapons (towers) for different kinds of assault. The enemy soldiers are trying to make their way from their lair to your territory, and you must use these weapons to stop them. The objective is simple: stop enemy combatants from advancing.

The enemy army comes out as foot soldiers, with war tanks of different strengths, resistant levels, and helicopters. They start coming in trickles and gradually increase in number and the intensity of their assault. Immediately after you open the game, you select a difficulty level and one of the five maps available. The game begins with ten difficulty levels, and the number increases as you advance.

Everything about the game is designed to allow you to focus on the strategy aspect. The graphics are simplified but have reasonable details. The user interface avoids fluff and comes with simple controls.

You get a point for every kill, and the points add up to give you financial rewards. The money is then used to buy more sophisticated towers that can kill enemies faster. You can upgrade older, slower weapons as you progress in the game. Select the tower or weapon you want from the menu on the screen and drag and place it where you want it to be.

Great Graphics Work For A 2009 Game

Reviewing this game in 2022 will not do justice to the graphics. Of course, there are better-looking games than Robo Defense in 2022, but it has great graphics for a game released in 2009. It is not pixelated to a level that makes it difficult to enjoy the game. I could make out the forms of the characters and the machinery on the ground.

The game is very light on software, but this does not diminish the gaming quality or affect graphics quality. If you experience any issues, you can fix them by turning off “High-Quality Graphics” in the options menu.

Dynamic War Machines And Weapons

Earlier, I mentioned how Robo Defense comes with dynamic enemies and weapons. Land attackers follow the route made by the arrangement of your towers. Air attackers simply fly ahead, ignoring the laid-out path straight into your territory.

Remember that you only have 20 lives, so the game is over after 20 enemy attackers cross into your territory. Not to worry, you get to choose three defensive turret towers. The machine gun and rocket towers shoot down both land and air attackers, respectively, but speed is still a factor. For that, you have the slow tower, which slows down the enemies.

As you advance in difficulty, you get to choose between gun towers which range from regular to heavy. The anti-air cannon fires exclusively at flying attackers in rapid succession with an upgrade to heavy anti-air cannon. There is the $50 Flamethrower which shoots fire on ground units and can be upgraded to the Inferno, which comes with increased damage. You can also upgrade slow towers till you get the Advanced slow tower.

You could also opt for the Mine tower, which causes damage to ground warships on a wide scale, the Teleport tower, which teleports units back to the start of the level, or the Mortar, which deals heavy damage to ground troops. A line of Rocket launchers can be upgraded to Medium and Heavy variants. You also have surface-to-air missiles, Artillery, etc.

The strategy angle is knowing which tower you need per time. You can choose to line the beginning of your route with slow towers for when the attackers come in bursts, but you may not be able to make effective kills. There is a delicate balance in choosing what you need every time, which changes quite rapidly as the game difficulty increases.

Paid Version Versus Free Version

There are different versions of the game available on the app store. You could opt for the paid or free version. The paid version gives access to the five maps mentioned above, and you get numerous upgrade options and difficulty levels. The free version, however, is basic, with just one map and limited additions.

The great thing about the free version is that it is ad-free and gives the same level of strategy as the paid version. This is unlike many free-to-play games. I have always disliked developers who riddle their games with constant ads, but Lupis Labs does a great job of avoiding that pitfall.

Conclusion

In Conclusion, Robo Defense has aged well as a great strategy game. An in-depth progression system gives you more reason to grind out to higher difficulty levels. For a game developed in 2009, the developers put much thought into the sheer number of weapons on display. They are still relevant today and give you something to strive to get.

In making this game, Lupis Labs stuck to the basics and avoided fluff like zombie hordes, magic spells, mythical creatures, and other funny additions by some developers. The game operates smoothly and precisely, and you can tell that it was well executed. I would recommend it to everyone.