Inkub

When faced with the choice between something new and something familiar, it’s human nature to go for the latter option.

That’s the only reason I can think of that explains why the majority of tower defence games stick to the same worn formula every time they’re wheeled out onto iPhone and iPod touch.

Inkub tries to do things differently, eschewing corridors of turrets in favour of splitting the gameplay area and pre-determined routes. However, just because a feature is new, doesn’t mean it’s a great idea.

The aim of Inkub is to protect your incubator from being attacked by cartoon aliens descending through the machine’s pipework. To do this, you place a series of defensive items such as foam barriers and bombs in order to stop the extraterrestrials in their tracks.

Since the path the enemies take is limited to the tubes, there’s no need to create corridors of turrets. Instead the game plays out a lot like a vertical Plants vs Zombies in which creatures proceed along a few set paths towards the oncoming fire of your defensive emplacements.

Much like PopCap’s title, there are a few occasions where large waves of critters swarm down at once to overwhelm your defence.

Unlike that game, though, the whole experience never gels. The reason for this is ironically to be found in the new features.

There are two sides to the incubator – front and back – that you can switch between with a swipe of a finger. The tubes on the other side of the machine are visible in the background at all times, but this doesn’t make hectic moments any less disorienting.

This confusion is accentuated by the layout of the tubes. Quite often there are large parts covered up, making it impossible to place turrets and identify enemies making their way to your incubator.

While this wouldn’t be so much of an issue if it were all on one plane, this lack of visibility makes it extremely easy to miss a creature unless you’re constantly flicking between front and back. Without knowing which tube to focus on, Inkub quickly becomes frustrating.

The amount of energy (i.e. cash for purchasing new defences) produced is so limited that removing turrets to fund others is the only way to succeed. Combined with the slow pace of the upgrades, victory is a matter of memorising the order of enemies that appear.

It’s great to see developers trying something new when it comes to established formulas, but Inkub’s layout and design ends up more of a hindrance than a help to the entertainment.