Tweet Defense

It's all I can do to resist the temptation to review Tweet Defense in 140 characters, but that's just not enough space to describe its many shortcomings and strengths. Clever as it might be, there's sadly more to criticise than compliment in this mediocre tower defence game.

Tapping into your Twitter account to leverage your statistics for booster towers gives the game an inventive edge. One of six towers, these boosters amp up your defences to really dig in against the waves of zombies that run through each of ten levels.

Classic mode offers a set number of waves for each stage across three levels of difficulty, whereas Endless lets you test your endurance with a neverending line of zombies.

This is all standard stuff and the arsenal delivers an expected line of projectile, splash damage, and elemental weapons.

The nail gun serves as your basic shooter, while more expensive bomb catapults, flamethrowers, electric towers, and decelerating gloob guns serve to slow down and whittle away zombie health. Money collected from defeated zombies lets you buy new towers and upgrade your existing ones.

Excellent level design has waves of enemies winding through narrow paths and open spaces, which allow you the freedom to cordon off zombies with strategically placed towers. The game lets you place towers along the edges of the path or directly on it, though any defence blocking the exit will be destroyed.

Instead, you're encouraged to create mazes to slow down the zombie assault. It's completely optional since levels can be completed without using these open spaces, but it caters to the more strategic player.

Such smart design has little opportunity to shine when the game is so thoroughly unbalanced. Putting aside the limited enemy roster, the difficulty undulates wildly from easy to ridiculously easy. Over-powered booster towers tip the game in your favour too much, making levels so easy that you could set your iPhone or iPod touch down and eat a slice of celebratory cake while enjoying your victory.

On the other end, finishing levels is easy enough without booster towers. Poor balancing negates the need for any tower other than the nail gun. Plopping these down in the right spots and upgrading them is all you need to win.

There's absolutely no challenge involved and any strategic brilliance encouraged by the level design is completely lost as a result.

Tweet Defense has the appearance of a great tower defence game: nice visuals, on-the-mark level layouts, and just the right number of waves for each stage (most tower defence games drag on with too many waves, 20-30 waves is ideal).

Unfortunately, it gets the most important element wrong and the result is unbalanced gameplay that lacks strategic depth and variety. An interesting concept, but no more substantial than a 140-character message.