How do you stop people getting comfortable in a tower defence game? I think you know what I mean: that point where you’re deep into a game, your defences are well established, and anything that tries to get through this, your abattoir, is made mincemeat of. You, at that point, are effectively hands off, admiring what you’ve built, and all the game can do is bulk up the enemies and try to brute force its way through. But what if there was another way?
Isle of ArrowsDeveloper: GridpopPublisher: GridpopPlatform: Played on PCAvailability: Out now on Steam, coming 6th October to mobile
Isle of Arrows has an idea: a second base. Just as you’re beginning to slouch and get comfortable, it introduces another base, and it’s like starting all over again but at the same time as managing something else. Only now, you have one pool of resources to spread across both bases. Even more importantly: both bases share the same overall health pool. If enemies get through to your core in either one, you’ll take damage, and as you only have about 10 hearts, and one life, this is important.
In other words, the danger is doubled, and if you ignore one base for the other, and allow a bad situation to fester, you could quickly find yourself in a precarious situation indeed.
Isle of Arrows Gameplay Overview Watch on YouTube
But Isle of Arrows doesn’t stop there with the ideas: it also plays around heavily with space. You know how in a typical tower defence game, the space you defend is usually defined and set? Well here, it’s not. By laying new paths you can extend the runway enemies have to walk down, therefore increasing the distance and time it takes for them to reach your core. You can also wind paths around defences, getting maximum usage out of them. It’s not, however, as easy as it sounds.