Survival Arena review - Can it bring tower defence to the new generation?
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| Survival Arena TD

The tower defence game used to be a staple on mobile, but it seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years.

Survival Arena looks to be trying to bring it back with a few modern advancements, such as Clash Royale-style unlockables and a focus on competitive play.

But while these additions may have sounded good on paper, in practice it leads to a repetitive, slow experience that won't hold your interest for long.

Avast!

Survival Arena takes place on a giant ship, with pirates rushing out a door to come and destroy your extractor.

The main Sudden Death mode makes it so that should even a single enemy get past your defences then it's all over, and your hard work is lost.

To prevent this, you have to place your turrets around an open arena to construct your own mazes, making sure that enemies take their time getting to the end without blocking it off entirely.

Survival Arena

You have a range of turrets open to you, and you can make use of power-ups and spells to deal direct damage to enemy units as they run through your maze.

The problem here is that your units start out pretty weak, and it's only through opening chests won by completing objectives that you'll be able to progress in a meaningful fashion.

Man the cannons

Early objectives aren't too hard to finish, but you don't get your items straight off the bat – instead you'll have to wait for them to unlock from a chest, much like Clash Royale.

Except instead of Clash Royale's ability to throw you into some more match-ups against real people to keep you interested, Survival Arena simply has the exact same waves of enemies for you to fight against until you get stumped once more by having under-levelled towers.

It's just frustrating to have nothing to do but play the same level on a loop, dying in the same spot again and again until your chest finally opens.

Survival Arena

You can speed up the process by watching an ad, or paying for the privilege with crystal shards you earn in-game, but you'll most likely just find yourself turning the game off and doing something else with your life.

There's online PvP thrown into the mix too, where you'll need to build intricate defence mazes while also sending over units to your opponent, but this doesn't fix the core issues of the game – and it's just not that much fun to play.

Drop anchor

Overall, Survival Arena tries so hard to make the tower defence genre relevant in a post-Clash Royale world that it completely forgets what actually makes the genre fun.

Its focus on tiny amounts of progression, long wait timers, and repetitive game modes prevent it from being any kind of fun for more than a few minutes.

Sure, it's functional, and graphically not too unappealing, but it's about as average as average can be as an overall package.

Survival Arena review - Can it bring tower defence to the new generation?

Survival Arena wears its design influences on its sleeve, but outright fails to do anything remotely interesting with them
Score
Ric Cowley
Ric Cowley
Ric was somehow the Editor of Pocket Gamer, having started out as an intern in 2015. He hopes to take over the world the same way.