Game Reviews

Alexandria Bloodshow

Star onStar onStar onStar onStar off
|
iOS
| Alexandria Bloodshow
Get
Alexandria Bloodshow
|
iOS
| Alexandria Bloodshow

It's not easy finding new ways to make tower defence games interesting. There are only so many settings, and only so many unit combinations and twists in the tail before you start confusing your audience.

What Sega's Alexandria Bloodshow manages to do so well, much like its predecessor Samurai Bloodshow, is keep the core of the genre intact while subtly infusing it with the mechanics of a collectible card game. The end result is a title that feels fresh and familiar at the same time.

Tickets to the Bloodshow

In the original game you took control of clans of warring samurai. Here you can choose between an army of ancient Egyptians or an army of ancient Greeks. Once you've picked, it's up to you to defend your king against waves of enemy attacks.

You start the game with a deck of 20 cards, representing simple foot soldiers. Three cards are revealed at the start of each level, and you use these to build the first part of your defensive force.

As the game progresses you earn gold, which you spend on drawing more cards from your deck. Duplicate cards, which you'll have a lot of to begin with, can be used to level-up warriors who are already out on the battlefield.

Play your cards right

Winning battles unlocks new cards to add to your army, each of them offering different styles of units. The more cards you unlock, the more choice you have when it comes to changing your deck.

Building your own custom setups makes you think more tactically about your units, and the random way your warriors are dealt out means you'll need to create a well-balanced army if you want to succeed.

There's a hefty single-player campaign to slog your way through, but the real meat of the game lies in the intricate multiplayer battles that the clever system offers up. Defeating the AI is fun, but conquering a real-life opponent is something else.

Alexandria Bloodshow is an enjoyable mash-up of styles that really sparks into life when played against another person, and it shows how entertaining tower defence games can be when they take the tricky route and try something a little bit different.

Alexandria Bloodshow

A great mix of card game and tactical tower defence, Alexandria Bloodshow picks up where its predecessor left off, and builds an entertaining, surprisingly deep experience
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.