ZombiED - 3D Defense 12+

Awesome!

This is by far my favorite tower defense style game. There is plenty of ways to try and handle the different levels and that keeps me wondering how I could have done better. Probably the best part is the developers are always trying to improve the experience and they listen intently to the suggestions of the community. This a must try game for anyone who likes tower defense or zombie themed games!

Beyond disappointing.

I downloaded the game after seeing a very intriguing ad from another game. It said that it was free, so I decided to try it. I had very high hopes, as I love both zombie and tower defense games. What I got was an awkward, cheap mess of wonky camera controls, unclear directives and levels, and the inability to perform certain actions consistently. The delay after the appearance of tombstones is extremely disorienting, and the first level has a spawn point hidden from clear view. The potential of this game is immense, but the execution is absolutely terrible. The advertisements ended up very misleading, as the game appears polished and functional, but is very poorly made in actual gameplay. The camera movements feel bogged down and random when I swipe at all, I cannot move towers without messing up my angle that I work for a few minutes just to figure out how to move, and the fact that most actions, like upgrading towers, are unavailable for the tutorial kept me away from the later sections. I couldn’t stand to even finish the first level.

Developer Response ,

Hi Nick100909,

Thanks for taking time to do a review. I will start at the beginning and hopefully be able to respond to all your comments. We take all reviews seriously and want to make sure we are always improving. Regarding your opening statement, "I downloaded the game after seeing a very intriguing ad from another game." We would be curious to find out where this was? As we do not advertise our game in other games. We use only one platform to advertise the game in iOS. We know our competitors advertise in other games, as they have very large budgets to do that.

This is the first time we've had anyone mention any of the issues you are having on your phone with regard to the camera controls. We have over 115k downloads between the two major platforms. Do you think it is too responsive or not responsive enough? We know that a lot of tower defense games have static camera controls and we were wanting to do something very different to enhance the experience and add flexibility. But it seems it is not for everyone. Maybe we will put an option to lock the controls for panning and zooming.

Regarding the comment, Unclear directives and levels? Which mode was this in?

Regarding this statement, "The delay after the appearance of tombstones is extremely disorienting" They pop up for a couple of seconds then disappear. Do you think there is too much stimuli (extreme)?

Upgrades: We do show how upgrades are implemented in the tutorial, but not the complete upgrade path. The upgrade path is like other games. You complete a level and the next level upgrade is available. We went with the typical implementation…to reward a user based off of experience. When you click the tower the first time the first upgrade is available, which is greyed out when used, this indicates that you must be using the upgrade level earned thus far. That is shown in the tutorial, but I understand that perhaps we should show the complete upgrade level path in the tutorial for some users. We find that approximately 99% of users never review the tutorial, and we do not want to force them to do so. I think maybe you are suggesting like a tower information screen, which we do plan on making one outside of the tutorial. Most users jump in and start figuring it out as they go and do not want to spend time reviewing all this. We know there are some users that want as much detail as possible to explain everything, but we had to weigh the decision of which to release first as we are an indie shop (3 total people) and limited budget.

We appreciate your review. You have the depth of knowledge of someone who might work in the mobile game industry.

Great Game!

This tower defense brings packs a great theme, plenty of levels, towers and great gameplay into a free package. I love the way it looks and how you can manipulate the camera angle without it being cumbersome. Also, the ads are not overbearing and the no-ads in app purchase is very affordable unlike other apps I’ve played.