Kingdom Rush might fall under the tower defense game category, but it’s far more than that. The game turns the very familiar experience into something refreshingly new. A strong testament is the players’ ability to set up Barracks towers on the enemies’ path. There are four kinds of base towers, to begin with, but each customizable to possess powerful features.

The game was released by Ironhide Game Studio on Android and iOS separately in 2011. Since then, there have been three sequels: Kingdom Rush: Frontiers, Kingdom Rush: Origins, and Kingdom Rush: Vengeance. Generally, it has a great design and a fantastic premise that makes it a good game. Strategy is a crucial element of the game, and players will need a great deal to succeed.

What the Game Looks Like

The game is set in the medieval era and revolves around the player building towers with Strategy Points. There are four tower types – Mages, Barracks, Artillery, and Archers – to construct. You start with an amount of money at each level to build the first couple of towers. The towers kill invaders wanting to take over your kingdom before they get to the defense.

The Barracks, also known as Melee tower, takes an approach different from projectile launch. What you get is a tower that sends military personnel to wade off enemies. Units from the Barracks usually have three soldiers or less and exact minimal damage to foes. The Mages, or Magic Towers, rip enemy units apart with magic bolts. These bolts take no regard for armory and stand as the most damaging attack in the game.

Archer Towers target air and ground enemy units with constant sprays of arrows. Their effects could become very deadly, even if they form the game’s most basic unit of attack. Artillery Towers deal damage to a large group of enemies with large-sized weaponry. They are, however, ineffective in attacking flying units.

Besides the towers, there are heroes and magic that can help kill your enemies as they approach. The more enemies you kill, the more money you make. But you have other ways you can earn cash: early calling of enemy waves. You can also prop up your finances by selling towers.

An entire campaign lasts 18 levels, with stars accompanying each victory. There are 48 enemies to face in total, with a live count of 20. If an enemy gets to the defense point, you lose some life counts. However, you can take the notch higher by playing challenging modes. These modes leave you with one life count, meaning you lose once they get to the defense line.

Each stage demands you to fight stronger and stronger enemies. In the first few levels, you get to fight with low-health enemies. You’ll require very little to deal them a blow. But as you begin to level up, the enemy unit becomes stronger and faster. Some also have special abilities like teleporting and magic resistance.

One of the interesting features of the game is the voice acting throughout gameplay.

Choose A Hero and Move to Victory

Kingdom Rush allows you to pick a specially-talented hero to lead your soldiers to victory. The heroes give your troops extra strength, mobility, and certain advantages. They have special abilities that await activation and others that spring into action as gameplay progresses. The ability to choose your hero lets you determine the narrative of the game.

Now there’s a feature in Kingdom Rush that will clearly cause a divide among players. It is the option to replay a level you just completed. An easy level will likely earn you one star (out of 3), and not everyone will accept that – when there’s a chance to make more. So you can opt to retake the stage, this time around, under more stringent conditions. If you used your four tours before, you might have to just settle with two or three. That way, you get a chance to get more stars, but with a fix. Losing (which is a possibility under strict measures) will tarnish your previous record.

You can expand your towers to accommodate more abilities. That allows you to do more damage to the enemy units. Similarly, you can continually step-up your hero, unlocking some of their abilities as the game moves on.

The Sequels

In Kingdom Rush, the heroes usually begin at Level 1.  However, that changes in the first sequel, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers, where they get to work at different levels. As the game progresses, the heroes maintain. They can, however, boost their abilities with hero points they get from leveling up.

Kingdom Rush: Origins follows the footsteps of Frontiers, especially as it relates to heroes. However, there’s a little but significant difference between both systems. While heroes in Frontiers have five abilities, the hos in Origins have four abilities. In place of the fifth ability, we have a Hero Spell. The Hero Spell, just like the other abilities, can be upgraded with hero points.

The second sequel, Kingdom Rush: Vengeance, borrows gameplay from Origins. Heroes have four different types of attacks and an Ultimate Spell. There’s also a passive ability that functions throughout the game. Upgrading this ability is impossible, except in levels 5 and 10. The heroes are unique in their way, but the differences between them do not affect gameplay. One exciting feature of this sequel is the animation that marks every hero’s death. No longer do you have to manage the grumbling sounds of “aargh.”

A Fantastic Mobile Game

Kingdom Rush is an entertaining mobile game that has stood the test of almost a decade. Its sequels make for an excellent way to experience something new from this solid defense strategy game. It’s hard to pick a better tower defense game – so I might just stick with this for now.