Alien Creeps TD

Gamer reviews for Alien Creeps TD

Defend the planet against creepy aliens!

Defend the planet against creepy aliens!

Alien Creeps TD is a great tower defense title from Outplay Entertainment Ltd. The game offers three modes in different stages, challenges, minimal micro-transactions, and the use of unique Heroes in the game. As a bonus, it can be played offline, without limits. This means you can grind or work hard to earn coins to upgrade your towers further. You'll also encounter some ads if you're playing while connected to the internet. That said, ACTD offers hours and hours of fun and challenge different from the usual tower defense design.

The game is pretty simple; you simply need to prevent as many alien creeps you can can stop as possible (or better yet, let none escape at all) from crossing your checkpoint. You have four different towers in your arsenal, at least two heroes you can use at the same time, and two active abilities. You'll be facing waves and waves of enemies and on a standard campaign, have 20 "lives". On harder difficulties like Veteran and Spec Ops, you'll only have one "life" so you need to ensure that not a single creep gets past your defenses. These special modes also impose some limitations like having the ability to use only two types of towers. Completing a Campaign stage with no "lives" lost will give you three stars and unlock the next difficulty/ mode. Each map has three modes/ difficulty each.

Energy is used to build and upgrade your towers in the middle of battle. You'll have a decent amount of energy when starting a mission, enough for you to build a good line of defense early in the game. Killing different creeps provide energy that will sustain your army in the entire battle. Calling in the next wave of enemies will give you bonus energy but at the same time, will potentially make your job a lot harder. Do this only after weighing the pros and cons of your current situation.

The game stays true to its title. You'll indeed face an army of alien creeps with different variants, abilities, and traits. This makes the entire enemy army composition varied and diverse. On later stages and harder modes, the combination of normal and special alien creeps will test your defenses and strategy. Even with their numbers, these creeps doesn't have the capability to attack your towers so you don't have to worry about repairing them.

While you normally expect tons of different towers in a tower defense title, ACTD only gives you four different types. So how can these four towers stop an alien army with different types and abilities? Upgrades. A lot of them. Having four towers makes the selection simple and will allow players to focus on the types they really need. Each tower has its own linear upgrade selection. Upgrades range from increasing damage, range, unlocking the higher levels, additional effects, and better yet, change a tower's form. Take note that these upgrades are not applied instantly after purchasing them. You have to wait for a few minutes or hours for the "research to complete and apply the changes. Higher level upgrades costs more coins to upgrade and more time to develop. You can finish an upgrade immediately by spending valuable gems. Longer upgrade development times costs more gems to finish.

Since you'll also be dealing with both aerial and ground targets, at least two of the four towers can shoot down airborne targets. The machine gun tower is the standard and cheap tower that can deal fast, direct damage against targets and can jump from target to target quickly. The Rocket tower fires slow but powerful homing rockets that deal splash damage upon contact. The Laser Tower fires a single but powerful laser beam that can pass through enemy shields but that has a very slow reload time. Finally, the Infantry Tower spawns up to three soldiers that will engage enemies in combat. Killed soldiers will be replaced by new ones spawning from the tower until the maximum number is deployed in the battlefield. You can set the waypoint where the soldiers will take point once they emerge.

As you progress in the game, you'll play in maps with multiple entry points for your alien enemies and multiple checkpoints as well. There are limited spaces for your towers, and some of them will have debris that require energy to clear before you can start building towers on them. As bonus, each map has a Tesla Tower that has three charges. It can reach anywhere in the map and can instantly kill several enemies at once. After using, it will go through a brief cooldown before you can use it again. This is a very good backup tower in case you find your defenses getting overwhelmed or if the enemies are about to break through. Once the three charges are up, you can spend gems to get additional charges.

The game also gives players the chance to call in reinforcements and airstrikes. Reinforcements will arrive via helicopter and will drop off a handful of elite soldiers. They can be ordered to move in a particular location, and will stay in the map until they're killed. Their HP also regenerates over time. Airstrikes call in bombers to deliver ordnance to the specified spot. These abilities need a brief cooldown before you can use them again. They're also consumable so the amount you see in your screen is the actual number of remaining times you can call in these abilities. You'll get five airstrikes and reinforcements every six hours for free. You can exchange gems for additional airstrikes and reinforcements, as well as connecting via Facebook and send/receive care packages from your friends who are playing the game as well. Furthermore, these abilities can be upgraded as well like improving your reinforcement soldiers' armor and damage or adding an extra plane to deliver more payload for airstrikes.

Thew game features unique heroes that you can deploy in battle. You'll get one free Hero (named Flak) and others you can buy through microtransaction. Heroes earn experience that allow them to level up and unlock more powerful skills. Heroes regenerate HP and they don't die. If their HP is depleted, they'll stay down for a few seconds before getting revived with full HP. Their abilities, immortality, and increased stats are quite invaluable in battle. You can carry up to two heroes per battle.

The game's character designs may remind you of old 3D animations but the overall game design, map layout, and enemy variations are quite satisfying. It may look cartoonish but the effects and animations are smooth and fluid. The game boasts good audio. The sound effects are immersive, and the heroes' voice clips are clear. The whole game's presentation is simple, effective, and interactive.

What I enjoyed in the game is that it can be played offline and it's not a money-trap that will limit your playtime or throw various difficult features that will force free players from enjoying the game's content. For a free-to-download game, expect some annoyances like ads but if you play it offline, you won't see any. You'll get one free Hero as a free player, which is enough in most battles. You'll get to try the other heroes since they'll be available on specific missions when you're playing them for the first time. The game's premium currency, gems, can't be obtained in the game through normal gameplay. Gems are exchanged for extra tesla tower charges, instantly completing upgrades, or extra ability counts.

You can replay completed stages for extra experience for your hero(es) and coins for purchasing your upgrades. After finishing stage four, you'll unlock Challenges. These are short missions which will award you with extra coins. You can play them again after completing them but their coin reward is one-time only. Each Challenge stage can have to three difficulties, with Hard mode rewarding players with the most coins. You can replay main missions but you'll earn diminished exp and coin rewards. The game is generous in giving players enough energy per mission so that they won't have a hard time putting an initial line of defense. Players can receive 5 airstrikes and 5 reinforcements every 6 hours, 20 every day if you're able to collect them in time.

Players can also earn bonus coins through Achievements while simply playing the game. After completing an achievement's condition, you can access the Achievements option in the main menu and and collect your coin reward. Achievements have three levels and your progress is counted continously so let's say you completed the achievement for killing 100 enemies, your progress toward the next achievement (kill 1,000 enemies) will be counted continuously even if you withdraw the cash reward.

Let's say if you're willing to spend a bit of cash to make your life easier. Watch out for packages, especially the starter bundle. You'll get a second hero and 32,000 coins, which is more than enough to upgrade your towers and abilities several notches ahead. While purchasing is entirely optional, free players may find themselves in frustrating situations or block your progress because not because they have too little energy to start with but because of underpowered towers. If you want to spend money to make your life a bit easier, you have that call. If you want to remain as a free player, you have to work hard for it. If there's something I can suggest, the developers should have at least given Free players at least two Free heroes instead of one. There are certain points in some maps that's quite hard to defend without a hero and making him run around to cover points can be frustrating at times. Also, make grinding a bit of a challenge not a daunting task by increasing the amount of rewards, especially when the reliable upgrades become a lot more costly in the long run.

There are no lags or bugs in the actual gameplay though there are times that the game shuts down without any error messages, ruining your progress. The game doesn't seem to have a reliable "suspend" code since it will most likely restart even if you pause a battle and switch to another application while it is running. That said, if your device's resources is low, it will crash often. Closing applications won't help much so you'll have to restart the whole device to give it a fresh start. If you don't want to experience these inconveniences, you must run the game alone or with very minimal number of apps at the same time, close it when you're not playing it, or avoid multi-tasking while running it.

All in all, ACTD is a very promising game with great gameplay, simple but attractive mechanics, and good features focusing on progression. Offline gameplay, and unlimited playtime are also main strong points. ACTD still has room to grow. One is to adjust the reward system for Free players and enjoy a larger player base. Two is to ensure that purchasing remains optional. There are a lot of great free-to-play TD's out there and considerable number of pay-once-to-play "premium" titles. If ACTD wants to reach out to more players and more potential paying costumers, being able to deliver a challenging yet "fair" platform is a must.

4.2 / 5.0
 
Review by vhayste | Mar 29th 2015

Total Reviews: 2


Showing all reviews:


Review by GuestMay 30th 2018

Love it !! Very addictive

Well set out

Do you agree? 0   0   REPORT
 

 
Review by GuestSep 7th 2017

Brilliant wee game that cures your boredom when sitting around but then gets really addictive and you must keep playing lol.

Do you agree? 0   0   REPORT
 

 

Comments & Replies

ADD YOUR REVIEW
Your Rating:
 
GAME RATING
 
 

AppGamer - Mobile Game Guides and News since 2008.

AppGamer.com is owned by Web Media Network Limited, UK company number 3783771.

© 2023 Web Media Network Limited, 86-90 Paul Street, London. EC2A 4NE. United Kingdom.

All rights reserved. No part of this website or its content may be reproduced without the copyright owner's permission.

This site is not affiliated in any way with Google, Apple or any video game publishers.

About Us | Contact
Privacy Policy | Terms of Service

Promote your Game
 
Game Guides
Thank you for your addition to AppGamer. Please complete the sign up form below to create a free account and track your posts.