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Category: Real-time strategy game
Developer: Itty-Bitty Games
Requirements: iPhone 2.2.1 software
Compatibility: iPhone and iPod touch
File Size: 33.8 Mb
Version Reviewed: 1.0
Price: $1.99 (sale price at press time)

Keep Defenders is a real-time strategy game where your disturbingly-cute warriors attempt to prevent their clubhouse-like castle from being destroyed by wave after wave of equally cute enemy armies. The whole thing would be adorable if it weren’t for fact that they’re beating the crap out of each other with bladed weapons. It’s like watching Hummel figurines in a pit fighting competition.

You have three types of soldier: the soldier, the knight (who has better armor than the warrior), and the archer, who has virtually no armor and is weak in hand-to-hand combat, but has, obviously, a ranged attack. The opposing forces have the same troops, and often more of them, so you’ll need to figure out how to wipe out one wave while still leaving yourself with enough strength for the next, because Keep Defenders is a hard game, even on the easy settings. There was never a point where I felt comfortable with the size or health of my army; I’m not sure if that made it more fun, but it certainly made me pay close attention to every unit.

The only resource management you need to worry about is gold to buy troops, and the only way to get gold is by killing enemy troops. Soldiers and archers are worth 1, and knights are worth 2. Keep in mind that buying a soldier costs four, knights are six, and archers are eight gold, and you’ll begin to see how important it is to keep your existing army alive. And that ain’t easy either, because the only way to heal a wounded soldier is to have him stand perfectly still; even walking screws up the process. Nine times out of ten I ended up moving wounded soldiers into combat to support a healthier soldier who needed help. I never had more than a handful of soliders at any one time.

The controls are simple. You click on a warrior to move it to a location. If it’s set to attack, it’ll move to engage any nearby enemies. If you set it to defend, it’ll stay put until it’s attacked hand-to-hand (which means it won’t move away from arrows). You can also draw a box around several soldiers to move them as a group. One problem is that it can be hard to select a different soldier: I can’t tell you how many times I told a knight where to go, went to click on an archer, didn’t click exactly right and had the knight start walking back to where the archer was. Zooming in (via the pinch function) makes selection easier, but doesn’t completely eliminate the problem. Strategy comes down to deciding which troops to engage what enemy: if you have two soldiers fighting one enemy and one is about to die, simply have him move away and then attack—the enemy will attack the stronger one and won’t switch back to kill the weaker soldier.

One other thing that struck me as extremely odd? While you are Keep Defenders, you can not use your keep for defense. Your characters can’t enter it, the archers can’t climb on to the top to fire arrows, all you can do is try to prevent the enemy from wailing on it. You lose the game if it’s destroyed, or if all your warriors are killed and you don’t have enough money to buy more.

The design of the game is colorful and fun, with the superdeformed armies running around a cartoon wonderland of mayhem and death. If they move behind a tree or the keep itself, it turns translucent, allowing you to find your soldiers quickly.

Keep Defenders is a fun, colorful game that’s challenging even from the beginning. There isn’t a lot of variation in the gameplay between levels (no upgrades, for example, once you’re able to buy all three unit types), but because they force you to pay close attention to every unit’s health and your limited gold supply, it’s just as engaging as a more full-featured desktop game.