Defense Zone

What a blast! (pun intended); I've completed the 21 levels in easy mode with 20/20 lives; the second half of the levels either require you to swap assets and/or to place them in locations that are not necessarily obvious... especially since the weakest/nearest/strongest feature isn't behaving as it should. I've now restarted each level playing them in medium then hard difficulty, which require optimizing your budget by selling some assets and purchasing new ones as the robustness of the adversaries increases significantly.
Not the most complicated tower defense game, and the videos+carousel of pictures on the store page gives you an honest look and feel for the game. Price is adequate, especially for the length of gameplay, which doesn't have NOT rinse-and-repeat for each level.

great game

A very tepid thumb up. Missing a lot of normal bells and whistles, but it all seems to work (so far) and it's not bad.
It's top down, with a modern warfare aesthetic. My weapons so far are a machine gun and a rocket launcher. There are more guns to unlock.
The guns do have upgrades, and nicely the first upgrade adds a hell-fire option, improved fire for a short period, takes awhile to recharge.
Oddly there is a target selection option, but the options are odd, nearest, strongest, weakest, but not closest to exit? That is my usual default.
The enemy units so far are infantry, trucks and jeeps (which disgorge infantry when destroyed) and tanks. Assuming there might be more interesting units ahead? Fliers join in at level 2.
There is no pathing, which a lot of people enjoy, but it's not a deal breaker. Tower placement is mostly free, though you can't put them in places like the water, which makes sense.
No strategic options or tactical attack, which is always a bummer. No fluff, a pet peeve of mind, but this is so basic I doubt it would help any anyway.
Worth a buck? Maybe, if you like the genre, and aren't looking for anything new or interesting.

I love this old Tower Defense game! Oldie, but Goodie.

This is a fairly straightforward tower defense game. It has decent graphics and good game-play. It is entertaining for a few hours. I wouldn't classify it among the best, but it is pretty good.

What can I say? First game sucks too like part 3 with insane difficulty even on easy difficulty level. Devs don't have good balance with their games....

DODS has aged well. it has good graphics and sound effects, even in 2022

These are the games I really love.
I discovered them very late, which I also blame myself!
You have to put the weapons in the right positions otherwise it will go completely wrong. I hope more of these games are made. I have quite a few now ;-)

Nice detail and playable. Hard levels are challenging but not impossible.

identical to Android / iOS version, but better ;-) highly addictive, very entertaining.

The newer versions may be better but this first version of the game just devolves into Mortars and Freezes in every single map as its the only way to win. So the strategy is just finding where to put the freezes and mortars and when to sell all your other turrets except rockets for air. Not a great TD.

It's a nice little Tower Defense game. Classic gameplay. Runs well. Easy to learn, etc. But guess what?! Surprise, surprise: Yet another TD game absurdly difficult!!
Other experienced players also wrote "the EASY level becomes unplayable at some point!!"
I have no time for this...And here's my EASY solution for these games: Uninstall !
SOOooo glad I only bought DZ1 before buying 2 and 3. Just saved some nice little dough right there...! You can do even better buy avoiding DZ1 altogether! ;)

I just found out this author has a newer version of this game, Defense Zone Ultra HD...I haven't played it yet, but it was on sale for less than a buck. I have however played this game for well over a hundred hours (which is a lot since the average game only lasts about 15-20 minutes. It is challenging, it is very entertaining, and well worth the few bucks you spend. I'm only half way through the levels on this thing, none of the levels are easy to the point of being boring. Very nice game to relax to, with some nice strategy (I like the options to attack weakest, strongest, or nearest). And placing the towers can be challenging because you are limited in space, which makes you think about what you're doing. Thanks to the author for a nice game for a very low price.

Very generic tower defense game with very limited tower options, and no real upgrade depth at all.
Only both with this if you have already cleared out the long list of much better games including both Defense Grids, Sol Survivor and Kingdom rush.

Even most lazy mobile ports have more depth than this.

This is one of the hardest tower defence games I have played.
Its tough IMHO and thats why I like it, its not over complicated, but does require you to think tactically as you only have a few weapon types (7) and they need to be placed well.

If you like TD then add this to your collection

For $4.99 this is a good game. A person can burn 1 or 2 hours playing this game with out even knowing it which is great. Different types of weaponry and landscape provide you with a variety of choices of defence tactics. (WARNING!!! WEAPON CHOICE IS LIMITED-There are only 7 different types of weapons for the whole game.) but, choosing the right weapons and the correct placement is key. The weapons have different firepower, rate of fire, firing range, blast radius and price. Again DO NOT expect much from this game, it's fun to quickly wast a hour or two, but beyond that it's limited on what you can do.

I picked this up on sale, and now that I have played it, I would have paid full price for it. I have found it to be a simple and addictive tower defense game that surpassed my expectations. My game play experience is based on playing under Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit with nvidia graphics (mainly) and on Windows 7 Pro 64-bit also with nvidia graphics.

It runs very well in both Linux and Windows, with no noticeable lag or other issues of any kind. I am sure this will play even on older hardware as it has multiple resolution options from 640 x 480 – 1920 x 1080, and 6 graphic options as well ranging from Fastest – Fantastic.

The game has a progressive path, starting out simple and getting a little harder with each level you play. Each level has 3 difficulty settings, Easy-Medium-Hard, which would appear to correlate to how many Hit Points each of the enemy units have. There are 6 different types of Defensive structures that can be built, which can be seen in the games screen shots, and each one can be upgraded 4 times after being placed for money which you earn by killing the enemy units. The building upgrades are progressive in cost, each one doubling in price.

You can pause, speed up, and save the game play as needed. I personally found that saving the game on the Hard difficulty allowed for an easier less and time consuming way to get the Steam achievements.

Some people have had problems getting past levels on the last wave or two. A tip I can suggest that works for me is to sell my structures the enemy unit/units have passed and rebuild further down the path as needed.

I have read some negative reviews about the defensive towers AI not being the best and not targeting units correctly. While I agree they don't always target they way I want them to or think they should, you can predict how they will behave and build accordingly to overcome their shortcomings. I observed this during the first 5 or so maps and then built accordingly for other maps and no longer was bothered by this issue.

If your looking for a simple, fun tower defense challenge then this game is great and definitely worth the purchase!

Play the insanly better game 'Defence Grid' (instead). Or 'Defence Grid 2' (not released while writing this review)
For those who have done that (and only for those, every body else: play DG! It's really so much better) and are still looking for a tower defence game ... well I try to make it short.

Very small selection of towers, enemy types don't have any special abilities (just more hit points), unspent ressources are not awarding interest (so no need to act economical), only very few in-game tower statistics and important stats like Kills or DPS of towers are missing, the 3 different targeting choices of towers work unreliable at best, towers are just placed next to the path the enemy takes (so no option to place towers on a free grid to influence paths etc.).

On the bright side: over 20 maps, even on medium difficulty some early maps are challenging (esp. if you are looking for a flawless win) and an interactive feature (> hellfire; activated manually) to increase DPS considerably. Hellfire charges with time for each upgraded tower and adds a nice real-time tactic effect to the game.

Conclusion: A tower defense game ... best suited on mobile platforms, rather less for PC.
(I played it anyway while waiting for the release of DG2, so I should give it a recommendation I guess ... such a confusing world we live in ;-) )

This game seriously sucks; save your money and do not purchase. Too often towers will shoot at everything except the enemies who are right next to them and/or moving out of the zone. You've got three targeting options: attack nearest, attack strongest, attack weakest. As far as I can tell, these do absolutely nothing other than make your tower spaz out and waste time aquiring targets and not attacking at all. Once again, this game sucks.

I like to play tower defense games when I am relaxing. I don't want a huge challenge. That being said, I bought this game because it was cheap and I like tower defense games. It has eighteen or nineteen maps. I have been playing them on "easy" difficulty, not really wanting a challenge.
But, I can't seem to beat the eigth map! Even on easy mode, I have tried it three times and seem to have made no progress in beating the last wave. So, I seriously doubt if I will ever see anything beyond the eight map, considering that the others are locked until I beat it. So, I would have to say the game is too difficult and probably wasn't play tested very much.

Update: After playing it for a while, I have gotten farther. Now I'm stuck on level eighteen. LOL!

It is fun, but rather simplistic. It only has a few types of towers, which can be upgraded twice.

Very unimaginative. Feels like a port of a mobile game that weren't that great to begin with.

Not exactly bad, not as in "oh my god, this is actually painful to play", but not at all exciting either.

If you get it for 90% off or something, and you have exhausted your other gaming options, you might want to consider this one. But even then, know that there are MUCH better TD games out there.

2 bored pandas out of 5.

Very Good Game. Defiantly helps burn some hours without realizing you are doing it. Very Addicting. Had to turn off the music though, it was driving me insane. Two Thumbs up.