Arrrgghhh! The stinkin’ devils are close to me gates. Ready the cannon and let’s rain fire on their puny heads, arrrr!!! Thar she blows! Har, har, har! Nah, there ain’t no real enemy bucko. It’s just this here app that I parlayed from iTunes two days ago. It’s called Kill Devils and seems to be a whole lot of fun. Even some of the stinkin’ scallywags in me crew like Left-eye Morrison and Big Jim have found the game a wee bit exciting. Aye, tis’ a good app, and that is coming from the App Pirate himself.
There are literally hundreds of tower defense apps out in the market, and Kill Devils is one of them. So, you can really understand how difficult it will be for a typical game in this genre to stand out. Fortunately, Kill Devils overall design and concept shines through as one of the better apps in this genre. In my opinion, it stands out. And here’s why.
Game Concept and Mechanics
To tell you honestly, Sun Ground Company didn’t deviate a lot from the solid and proven formula for every successful tower defense app that has appealed to the masses. They designed Kill Devils to pretty much emulate the mechanics of a standard tower defense game. In the game, you have a castle with some kind of crystal in it. Your job is to protect the castle from the demonic minions that mean to decimate your defenses to get that, yes, that damn crystal.
To help you protect the castle, you have 1 cannon aloft its walls, which you can use to pick apart the attackers. If things get crazy, though, you can count on 4 different types of elemental attacks with area effects. Make sure to time the use of these special attacks perfectly though since these aren’t available all the time.
Anyway, once you start shooting at those devils and banishing them down to the lower bowels of hell, you will notice that there really is nothing different in this app from the rest of crowd except for the cool elemental attacks. The mechanics and concept are very familiar. However, once you delve deeper, you will notice a huge assortment of upgrades and unit types that no other game in the genre has yet been able to pull off. And this is where Kill Devils takes a step forward to interesting and fresh.
Visuals and Design
Aside from its solid game concept and mechanics, Kill Devils throws out a more than elegant graphical design and interface. Shooting down enemies with your cannon and raining fire is easily done with a tap or two on the screen. And once the firepower is unleashed, get ready to enjoy the display as the visuals is just that awesome.
If there is one thing that I did not like with this title, it is the progression of each battle. The combat becomes rather predictable on each and every level. You are bombarded by an initial wave of enemies, which you can more than easily take care of. Following that is a boss battle with a semi uber-difficult boss monster. Now this isn’t a big deal, but it just is strange that the game would be designed with so much predictable events.
Verdict
Kill Devils is free for both iOS and Android gadgets. The game does sell stuff for real money, most upgrades really however, you can easily do without the additional spending since the game can be played and completed without such luxuries. I tested the game using an iPhone, though, so I can really tell you that the game is awesome on it. I do, however, recommend playing it on devices with a larger screen – a 10” iPad or Samsung Galaxy Tab perhaps.
