Game Reviews

Era Deluxe

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iOS
| Era Deluxe
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Era Deluxe
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iOS
| Era Deluxe

This is a freemium game review, in which we give our impressions immediately after booting a game up, again after three days, and finally after seven days. Click on the links to jump straight to day three or day seven.

If you look at most of the truly successful sci-fi stories told - regardless of the medium they're told in - there's always a human element.

We wouldn't care about Luke's journey on the way to becoming a Jedi if he were a heaving blob monster, we wouldn't root for the characters of The Twilight Zone if each episode didn't have some link to our own human experience.

Era Deluxe flies in the face of this, and is a tower defence game with faceless towers and inhuman UFOs. So will I end up caring about it after a week of play? Let's find out.

First impressions

I'm not sure if I really "get" Era Deluxe after a day of play. It's a tower defence game - I'm confident of that at least - but I can't see its appeal at first blush.

Okay, that's not strictly true, the art style has a brilliant otherworldly quality to it, with each element of your defences that you put down - to stop bad guys attacking your base - looking beyond recognition as something constructed by human hands.

Everything is alien: all purple shimmers and bright blue lights firing towards enemy creatures, and all the action is viewed at a distant, near-Godly level.

The action though? There's not a whole bunch to its systems of play so far. You have multiple tower types, and the enemies by-and-large follow preset tracks on the ground.

You place the towers down and the opposing forces die. Some are a bit tougher than others so you upgrade the towers you have or plonk more down.

It seems decent enough, but I'm not really gripped. I guess I'll report back in a few days to let you know if that's changed.

Day 3: It came from (the desktop) space

Era Deluxe isn't short on content.

The Campaign mode has dozens of levels; there's a Challenge mode, in which you must complete a mission using a specific number of Forces (the name for the defensive towers) or less; and an Endless mode, in which each map awards you bonuses for reaching a set number of waves.

Yet, somehow, I'm just not that enthralled by it all. There's no real complexity to the gameplay - just a vague sense of the unknown conveyed through its visual design.

This is a basic tower defence game in which certain defences work better against certain enemies, and though there's some variety in the maps - which either determine a route for you or allow you to determine your own - there's little else of note.

There are no doubt some who feel the tower defence genre has had its day. Nothing will ever improve on the best examples, like Plants vs Zombies and Anomaly Korea. Whether or not this is true, Era Deluxe isn't looking like the game to quash all doubts.

Day 7: TeDious

You already know I'm not a massive fan of Era Deluxe, and nothing has changed as we come to the seventh day. But after you've spent this much time with the game you do start to notice some of its finer points.

You can upgrade your forces, and when they're fully boosted they begin flashing. It's a small visual cue, but an effective one that stops you wasting time tapping each Force to see which can and cannot be modified.

Though there's no finesse to it, the inclusion of a digital on/off option to speed up the game is sensible - especially in the tedious earlier levels, where your defences outclass the opposition so much as to be dull.

There's also a special move you can pull out once or twice a game (it has a cool down period) that will obliterate any enemy. So if you falter near the end, or simply haven't prepared for one type of enemy, it needn't be Game Over, as you can simply blast them away.

Along with the interesting art style and boundless content, these are the positives of Era Deluxe that don't make up for an otherwise uninspired tower defence game. The Forces remain confusing until you commit them all to memory, but the over-familiar gameplay means that you'll probably never reach that point.

How are you getting on with the game? You can tell us and the rest of the PG community about your experiences by leaving a comment in the box below.

Era Deluxe

Can't get enough tower defence? Then, this is exactly what you've been playing for the last couple of years, with a beautiful but confusing aesthetic
Score
Peter Willington
Peter Willington
Die hard Suda 51 fan and professed Cherry Coke addict, freelancer Peter Willington was initially set for a career in showbiz, training for half a decade to walk the boards. Realising that there's no money in acting, he decided instead to make his fortune in writing about video games. Peter never learns from his mistakes.