Fresh app of the week: Block Fortress – A mix of Minecraft, tower defense and FPS

Our rating:

By: Foursaken Media

Version #: 1.0

Date Released: 2013-03-07

Developer: Foursaken Media

Price: 1.99

User Rating:

Loading...

Download App

Just launched: Block Fortress, a mix of Minecraft, tower defense and first person shooter (FPS). How is it?

I’m not a big fan of Minecraft. Somehow, I didn’t get the bug for the game at the correct moment, instead I became a fan of Dwarf Fortress. So, Minecraft lookalikes for iOS devices like Junk Jack, or even Minecraft Pocket Edition just are not my thing, even if I can enjoy free sandboxing for quite a while.

Either, I’m not a big fan of tower defense games. They get old pretty quick, at least for my tastes, and end up boring me to death. Finally, I don’t like 1st person shooters: kind of liked Wolfenstein 3D back in the day, and enjoyed bullet time in Max Payne. Nothing else. So, how do I see Block Fortress?

Curiously enough, I found it pretty good. In Block Fortress, you play in a blocky world à la Minecraft. Your goal (at least in Survival Mode, which is the most enthralling) is to survive increasingly harder hordes of “mobs.” Each wave has two turns: a construction part and an attack part. In construction, you place your defenses, usually around your barracks (which get placed at the start of the game.) Alongside defenses go resource-gathering mines and power plants… At the very least. The amount of things you can build is quite big, as the number of weapons you can use for defense (you start with a machine gun turret, then go up to plasma turret… sky’s the limit, almost.) To end the construction phase you equip yourself, which at the beginning of the game is “not much.” A pistol, a plasma gun when you get to level 3… And then the fun starts.

Mobs come from a predefined cardinal point. East, West, North, South. And of course, they are set to destroy your barracks (which as well as your turrets, also fire.) And you are just in the middle of the fray, shooting these poor greenies until they are dead. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But oh, it gets harder. Handling 40+ mobs with just a pistol and a few machine guns is damn hard. But it’s pretty fun also. The game is well-done, with almost perfect responsiveness even in my old iPad 1 (even when 10 MIRV turrets are firing at 20 mobs ahead.) All in all, this is a definite purchase. As you can see, even if you don’t particularly like any of the genres, the mix is curiously fun.

In short: Block Fortress is one of the best games of the week. A good one!