Spira Defence Pro

The tower defence genre is quite unique. It’s not entirely a self-sustaining game genre, more an amalgam of the strategy, shooter and real time adventure. But there are so many variations on the theme it’s pretty much become accepted as a game style in its own right, with a huge following of fans – both users and developers.

The challenge for developers of the tower defence sub-genre is in giving the concept an interesting new twist, whilst adhering to the unwritten rules the users expect. No small task, but Spira Defence Pro is about as imaginative an effort as we’ve seen in quite a long time.

Casting a cursory glance over the screenshots, you’d be forgiven for thinking this isn’t a tower defence game at all (it kind of looks like some sort of orienteering GPS application). But as soon as it’s on the screen in front of you, anyone who’s played a couple of other examples from the tower defence pile will realise how this game is played without need for a tutorial.

You’re given a small circle at the centre of the screen with five available ‘slots’ for your defences. The amount of money you’ve got determines which of the six different types of defensive armaments you can buy to place in your simplistic base. You’ve got the usual array of quick firing low powered lasers, slow firing high powered lasers, chain shots (which shoot several enemies at once – nice) and clever units that slow down the enemies for a brief moment.

The slots are arranged so there’s one in each of the basic directions, surrounding a central position. What this means in gameplay terms is that the circular range of each of your outer defensive positions is offset, and targeting the enemies on the far side of the screen can be tricky.

These enemies are simply squares with an energy meter – which naturally depletes as you take automatic pot shots at them – that, for the most part, spiral steadily inwards until they hit your base and begin wearing away at your energy. In later levels, these enemies spiral in faster, increase in number, and even begin heading straight for the centre instead of circling.

Your armaments can be upgraded as you score more cash from taking out the attacking forces, and you can sell back your units at half the price should you wish to rearrange the base (and you undoubtedly will, at least the first few times).

You can speed up the gameplay, thankfully, as Spira Defence Pro is admittedly quite a steady and sedate game. Not that this is particularly a negative point – it’s not meant to be a high octane shooter, after all. The slower rate of play and the much longer journey to your base taken by the enemies (in comparison to the usual path-following routes of other such titles) make this quite a meditative game, which is a real plus point for the casual strategist.

It’s about as simplistic as tower defence can get (in terms of visuals, gameplay and controls) but this all works in favour of Spira Defence Pro. It’s not particularly deep, however, and much of what you see in the first two minutes is what you’ll be seeing two hours later – though it’s worth noting that you will still be seeing it after two hours, and that’s not something we’ve often said about Android games.