Radiant Defense

Tower defence games are the bread and butter of smartphone app stores the world over. But, of these simple and addictive little titles, only a few ever add anything new or interesting to the template.

Radiant Defense, from Hexage, has the developer's trademark neon style, a story set in the Radiant universe, and a few tricks up its sleeve to set it apart from the rest of the increasingly large crowd. It might not be a space-based revolution, but it's worth a look all the same.

Towers in space

The game is set on a variety of space stations across the cosmos, and it's your job to protect the glowing coil at their centre from the unwanted attentions of waves of brightly coloured globular aliens.

In order to do this you build gun turrets along the black walls of the station. Of course, turrets don't come cheap, but for every creature you mow down with your laser fire and hail of bullets you're give a little extra cash to spend at the end of the wave.

You'll need to research to unlock the bigger guns, which costs time and money, but it's worth it once the invasion starts to hot up and you find yourself hideously outnumbered. If you're a little short on cash, upgrading your units adds some much-needed firepower for a smaller outlay.

Defensive manoeuvres

The twist in the tail comes from barricades that you can add on to the existing structure of each space station. These let you shepherd your attackers, making them detour around your turrets and take far more damage than they would have originally.

In-app purchases let you augment your arsenal with a variety of exciting new weapons, and whilst they're not essential, the game does have some pretty cruel difficulty spikes that make the packs on offer a little more tempting.

Radiant Defense is a decent free-to-play tower defence game, and the added polish that you'd expect from a Hexage game finishes the package off nicely. A few extra original ideas wouldn't have gone amiss, but if you're looking for a challenging game that's easy on the eye, you could do a lot worse.