Some just won’t take death lying down, and such is the Lich in Lich Defense. This skeletal warrior king is fed up with the waves upon waves of wannabe-heroes that insist on attacking, and he’s taking them out. This is the role that the player steps into in Lich Defense, and Jelly Oasis (the dev team behind the game) make it a fun ride.
Lich Defense offers castle defense lovers a high quality expression of their favorite genre, with some extra goodies. An RPG-esque upgrade system lets players tailor the Lich’s abilities as they see fit—both his special area-of-effect attacks and his base stats. While we’re speaking of tailoring, players can even outfit the Lich in new robes. These little extras give Lich Defense a lot of oomph, keep it fresh, and keep players engaged. Lich Defense doesn’t depend on these bits of novelty to provide a satisfying gaming experience, however. The castle defense side of things—the true meat of the game—is exceptional.
A large part of what makes Lich Defense really pop is the controls system. Jelly Oasis used a similar set up in their previous castle defense hit Elf Defense, but with Lich Defense’s superior pacing and more frantic gameplay, its advantages are even more evident. Two taps are all that’s needed to manage a tower—for placement, upgrade, or removal—and there are very few extraneous icons to clutter up the map. That’s a huge advantage when playing on a small touch screen, when it comes to game mechanics and game aesthetics.
Players get to really use the game map to its full advantage and the extra space lends itself well to the great character design and animation detail that Jelly Oasis provides.
Lich Defense gets a lot right and very little wrong. In contrast to the game’s sleek in-stage control system, the between-stage menus are a little clumsy. This doesn’t impact gameplay at all, but it would be nice to see these simplified a bit in future updates. Granted, there’s a lot more to the between-stage levels than we’re used to seeing from castle defense: applying upgrades according to the player’s preferences to pretty much every aspect of their defenses. The Lich as well as individual towers can be enhanced through these methods, and how a player goes about it can impact their future tactics in surprising ways.
Jelly Oasis has a few games on the market and they’ve all been visually engaging. Lich Defense is no exception to this. The darker theme is a welcome change of tone from the pastel brightness of Elf Defense, but doesn’t get too gloomy either. The three world maps where the stages take place provide some more variety, with a woodland, lava, and arctic theme. And awesome unexpected touches like the laser-shooting death ray towers give the game its personality.
Lich Defense is a solid choice for those who like RPG and tower defense games on the small screen, and it has varied enough difficulty (through choosing modes/speeds) to be appealing to a wide range of gamers. It’s only $1.99, and it’s in the iTunes App Store now!
