Acupwnture is the latest falling block game to hit XBox Live Indie Games. Match up colors to form squares which then explode after a few turns and increase your score. I liked how you could reset the explosion timers by expanding the squares and the overall Asian theme is nice, but if you’ve played one falling block with color game, you’ve played them all and this doesn’t really do enough to distinguish itself from the competition. So in conclusion, pretty fun, extremely hard, and not a bad use of 80 MS points if you want another puzzle game, but far from an essential purchase.
Next up, we have two tower defense games, Towers and Impact of Towers. How’s that for confusing? Towers is an excellent tower defense game that gets everything right. Good interface, easy controls, pleasing visual and audio, and well balanced gameplay all result in an excellent example of the genre. It has a nice balance of simplicity and complexity that I especially liked. It doesn’t do anything especially unique (except maybe the multiple endings), but despite that, I’d say it’s the second best tower defense game currently available on the XBox 360 at the moment (the best tower defense game being Defense Grid).
Impact of Towers on the other hand is less good. It’s not necessarily a bad game, and it does have a decent arsenal of towers, 1-time use items, and levels to play around with, but the controls aren’t the best, the gameplay isn’t as balanced, and the presentation is poor. Oh and it costs 240 MS points, whereas Towers is only 80 MS points. In a genre as crowded as the Tower Defense genre, skipping Impact of Towers is an easy choice.
I actually really dug Acupwnture. How far did you play into it? There are different obstacles in each level and, once you get the hang of it, you can chain a lot of those explosions together. Music’s really good for an indie, too.
Thanks for the response. Sounds interesting and I love replay-ability so will definitely be getting this.
No, it’s nothing that complex. Basically, the more levels you beat and the more wizards you save, the more endings you unlock. You can see any ending you’ve unlocked by pressing down on the level select screen.
Also, in regards to Towers, I forgot to mention that the developer is currently working on an update that will add some easier difficulty levels.
Hiya,
The multiple endings can each be accessed from a special area in the game, called the Wizard’s Circle. Depending on how many crystals and wizards have been saved, different spells are castable. Each spell produces a different result and leads to a different story ending playing out on screen, with the final (and 10th) spell requiring every single wizard and crystal, which is no mean feat.
You are never be locked into one ending and can (potentially) access them all.
Cheers,
LedgeWizard
Question about Towers. What is the multiple endings about? Like is there story decision in the game?