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App Army Assemble: Isle of Arrows - "Does tower defence meets roguelike make for a memorable combination?"

We ask the App Army

App Army Assemble: Isle of Arrows - "Does tower defence meets roguelike make for a memorable combination?"

Isle of Arrows is a new tower defence game from Daniel Luts. Now a solo dev, Luts has previously worked on stellar mobile games like Hitman Go and Lara Croft Go as the creative director. His latest venture promises to mix the familiar tower defence set-up with tile placement and roguelike elements. To see if this all came together, we handed the game over to our App Army.

Here's what they said:

Oksana Ryan

Defence is the aim and fortification is the game. This game gives plenty of room for strategy, as you place images, as depicted on cards, onto the board, which enables you to defend against enemies. After pressing the ‘wave’ button to activate the enemy’s attack, you can see how well your defences have been built.

The graphics are beautiful, the mechanics of the game are straightforward (with a good tutorial) and although simple, the background sounds are not overly annoying. I found the game very satisfying when I managed to defeat the enemy and even when I didn’t, I wasn’t too bothered because it gave me a chance to try different layouts and go in different directions. All in all a good game if you’re in the mood for a challenge.

Brian Wigington

I am a person that thinks card-based games a pretty good sometimes and that tower defence can be fun at times as well. When these 2 genres were more or less combined in Isle of Arrows I found myself playing for about an hour before breaking away. The game has a neat and tidy simple graphic design with a sort of muted colour palette that is very pleasing. The sound is decent and non-jarring, which makes the game a bit more chill even though it can get stressful when more enemies are attacking.

The goal is simple. Protect your "base" by placing arrow-shooting towers, frost areas to slow enemies, towers that shoot bombs, and many other devices. Enemies will be weaker small guys, burly guys with more health, and ones with protection like shields that must be destroyed before taking them out. You are dealt cards for use each turn and you can earn some by completing levels. You earn coins that can be used to place more cards per turn as well. The objective is to build a winding path with obstacles of destruction along the way to defeat the enemies before they reach your base, which has a number of hearts.

The isle you are on can be expanded by placing a flag that will grow the map by a number of squares in a given direction. This is important so that you can make the path longer and longer to your base. There are many other upgrades you can place that give bonuses to coins, damage output, and other perks. The controls are pretty straightforward for placing and rotating the pieces you place from the cards you use.

The game does a decent job of showing you where you can and can't place tiles or structures as well. Also, you can sometimes use a bomb to destroy a tile that was previously placed if you want something else there. This keeps the variety going and makes each run unique. This is one of those games you can keep on your device and enjoy for 10 minutes or a couple of hours. I hope to see more updates with more features. Isle of Arrows is definitely worth the asking price.

Mark Abukoff

I’m a fan of Tower Defense games so I started this up with enthusiasm. And I was not disappointed. It has very clean lines and a unique spin. I like that you’re dealt tiles to play that you can place for the best advantage. I like that you can choose a guild that will have advantages and disadvantages. There are three game modes, but I’ve mainly played the campaign.

Controls are simple and work fine. Nice having it in portrait as that’s more comfortable but still gives you a pretty expansive playing area. Really the only issue I have is that I don’t recall seeing in the tutorial how to rotate tiles (an important element), but I figured it out quickly enough so not a big deal. I really like this different and creative take on Tower Defense games, and I happily recommend it.

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Pierpaolo Morgante

Isle of Arrows is a roguelike tower defence (TD) game. Our goal is to defend the isle we are given at the beginning, and to do so we place tiles with paths, towers, water, and other elements on it. The gameplay is interesting because the path that we need to defend is not pre-defined, and the tile selection we get is random, so no two games are identical. In addition, we get to play three different modes (campaign, challenge, and daily challenge), each with its unique characteristics.

The challenge mode is my personal favourite, although it’s better to make sure we grasp the basics of the game before attempting it. In all game modes, we also get to choose which guild we belong to, each having perks and downsides. The game is a little hard, especially at the beginning, but I didn't find it frustrating. The artwork looks very nice, and the game is overall very well made [shout out to the (solo) developer!]. My only critique is its price (5.99 USD), but it is certainly one of the best games I played. It is a must-have for all the fans of TD games, and a great addition to anybody’s game library.

Daniel Steinbrecher

A somehow minimalist but still impressive-looking roguelike/puzzle tower defence game! As roguelikes are known for their endless replayability it's fantastic to play this game. No run is the same and the cards you get for different buildings, paths and so on support that greatly. Since the map is limited you have to reveal other tiles with flags as these will remove "the fog of war"/clouds.

You can count, archer-, cannon-, dart- and sniper -towers and traps as well to your arsenal. The fun begins when you have to decide if you want to save your coins to get more coins for every 10 coins you have per round or if you invest some because you have the feeling that your defence isn't strong enough.

 

Tower and trap range is also very important as this is the puzzle part of the game. You can always decide if you want to build some kind of a maze to make the best use of your towers but you will sacrifice some kind of safety as well because the path is shorter then.

The atmosphere and sound are awesome too. The windy sound made my wife feel cold under the blanket.
As this game is easy to pick up I'll definitely love to play it during my lunchtime at work!

Wossa Harvey

The visual style reminds me a lot of Monument Valley. The sounds are nice and very atmospheric and not over the top. I really like that you gain new tiles wherever you fulfil levels in the campaign. The soldiers can get a tiny bit repetitive and confusing. They could do with a bit of colour variety. There could also be different creatures: wolves or a dog hunting pack, or ballistas to temporarily stop a tower.

There are some annoyances. The tiles you place have small arrows on all sides that do not need to be there. They do not add anything to the game. I was initially confused about how to rotate a placed tile and assumed it had something to do with the white arrows. I am thoroughly enjoying the game and found it harder than expected

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Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen Gregson-Wood
Stephen brings both a love of games and a very formal-sounding journalism qualification to the Pocket Gamer team.