Alien Robot Monsters

I love good strategy games. Two of my favorites are Defense Grid and Bloons. Kingdom Rush is also excellent. For me, a good strategy game is challenging, but not overwhelming. It let's you win a little but also makes you learn. Most importantly, you should be able to learn and in learning, succeed. That's what makes it fun. And to do that, the game design has to feature consistent game play as well as a learnable upgrade path. Upgrades should be consistent. logical and learnable. There should be some essential information about defenses and enemies that let's you try strategies. I don't feel like this game offers that. Not only are some of the early levels very difficult, but I'm clueless how to win. How do I defeat the swarm of flying robots? More soldiers? More electro-towers? More snipers? For me, this game just became a trial and error that soon became both frustrating and rewarding. On the plus side, nice graphics and animations.

The game provides weak upgrades, with a high price for those upgrades. If you can't get through a level, you have no way to increase your level. Hordes of enemies are coming out and your weapons are weak and upgrades are too expensive. It's just another game where the creator thinks that making it too difficult means some quality.

It seems to me that everyone who praises this game has played it up to the third level, or they are masochists. So often there is no point in reading reviews.

The sci-fi military setting is great and the towers are great fun to use and upgrade. However, I refuse to take responsibility for the unholy TD design philosophy that got popular thanks to Kingdom Rush, where enemies are always one single tiny bullet away from slipping by... a 3-star run ruined because your infantry was standing one inch too far on the side or something, I'm sure all TD players experience those moments. A flying unit slipping by with 1hp, stuff like that. And then you have to do the whole mission over again.

ARM has several chapters and is great fun until the swamp. Is this a great TD, especially for the price? Absolutely. It would be wrong not to recommend it.

Will I ever bow my head and blame myself for barely leaking that one unit during that one wave?
No. The game designers are wrong.

I like it. But sadly no Steam cloud save option (I'm using multiple boxes depending where I am) and no level difficulties or modes for more replayability. :(

I really wanted to like this hideously ugly game but despite being an extremely basic mobile game, and despite having a plethora of patches, it is simply not a finished product, and the bit that is finished isn't any good. There are way too many bad design decisions on show here that will scare away just about any player, even a hardened TD vet like this author.

First the good: The game is very cheap (and I got it on sale). The graphics are bad but campy 90s bad so in some ways the art is a plus even though the actual art is ugly beyond description. I played C&C1 via DOS4GW and, gasp, I can still actually remember what it was like, so in some ways this ridiculous, native 4:3 TD copypasta is right up my alley. The sound is mostly annoying low budget but occasionally there's some mildly clever/funny bits, so like the art you really want to like it even though there isn't much to like. The soundtrack is passable but hilariously out of place and doesn't match anything about the rest of the game (except that it was a terrible design decision; that much is consistent). The setting is as generic as it gets and the actual gameplay is likewise as derivative as it gets, but had the basic design and gameplay been solid, the game itself would have been fun and recommendable to fans of TDs.

But the core design is TERRIBLE. There's no balance at all, no indication what the developer expects players to do, and few clues about what strategies work and don't work. The tower upgrade paths are ludicrously designed, with some upgrades carrying over and some not, with no indication which is which without raw trial and error. There's no excuse for design this bad when the TD genre has largely passed by this particular brand of stupidity decades ago. Worse, of the approx 3-4 possible strategies in the entire game (there's only 2 base tower types) only 1 will typically work on any level, and often then it will only work in a completely linear way that can only be found with mind numbingly tedious trial and error. The interface is also extremely clunky and cumbersome (I never found any hotkeys at all) and obvious holdovers from mobile ("Tap screen to change rally point") are numerous.

I've seen this game compared to Kingdom Rush a few times but that's just nonsense. There are a few similarities, sure, but they're all skin deep. Kingdom Rush has a logical system and uses it. Kingdom Rush has some thought put into strategies, upgrades, and the dynamics of player choice. Kingdom Rush has heroes. Kingdom Rush has easter eggs. Kingdom Rush has charming, Warcraft-style art, and in this respect Alien Robot Monsters isn't even Command & Conquer. Hell, it's not even Dark Reign! Above all, Kingdom Rush is inherently fun to play and Alien Robot Monsters is inherently not fun to play.

Sorry to the dev, but I cannot be any kinder to this game (and before heavily editing this review I was a LOT harsher!) I love tower defense games but Alien Robot Monsters really, REALLY sucks, and that's despite all the actual hard work of refining the genre's formula already being done by others. This dev could have simply copied all that good stuff as well, but instead they just copied (and badly copied) the irrelevent fluff and bad ideas discarded by others. What an odd strategy.....

Game starts well .. but it gets forced half-way through .. the upgrades are terrible .. tried my best to enjoy the game .. but it is not worth my time .. not the worst TD i have ever played .. but i am not a fan ..

Interesting TD concept with mediocre realization!

First of all, I was very skeptical when I downloaded this game, because it looks... not good at all. After I played a little I confirmed my thoughts, this game has a low quality visuals, but I also found some interesting features.

The story is simple and unnecessary. You came to planet and found hostile aborigines. You task is moving to the centre of planet and cleaning enemy forces. Nothing extraordinary!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1148128562

The most interesting part for me was the tech tree for towers. You have 2 basic tower: a depot for marines and a techlab. Each one has 3 upgrades. For example for outpost you can research 1) +1 marine (equal +50% dps); 2) grenade throw ability; 3) Training, which increases attack range by 40%. After you research any of upgrades, new towers unlocks.
+1 marine unlocks the barracks, which puts marines on the road. Training unlocks the outpost tower with better damage and attack range.
Each new tower has 3 upgrades too. 2 of them lead to new towers. New towers save upgrades which were only before them. It means tower lose grenade throw ability if you gone with "Training" path. It's really interesting to unlock new towers and make decisions which tower needs all side upgrades and which one needs to be upgraded to next tier. This is the first TD game with such mechanics, so only because of it I gave the game a positive review. Because, it was fun... for the first couple of hours.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1148128774

But the game have a lot of negative sides. The filling of waves are boring, monsters and their abilities are usual. I think the balance of towers is average too. I found some of them are owerpowered and some totally useless.

Pros
- Interesting concept of techtree for towers
- Skill tree. You get stars for completing levels which could be spent on different 16 passive skills
- No bugs was found
- Cheap

Cons
- Poor visuals and animations
- Boring enemies with usual abilities
- Boss fight are extremely disappointing
- Game becomes monotonous after the ~10 missions
- Balance issues

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1148128833

Resume

The game is cheap. I bought it on a discount. I had some interesting hours while I was playing and unlocking new towers and upgrades. But it wasn't enough to keep me engaged to pass the game. At the middle of the game I have found new missions uninteresting and unbalanced, so I didn't want to spend more time on this game. But, I am a veteran in TD genre, so it's hard for me to find a game which could entertain me from the start to the end.

I can recommend this game with 50%+ discount for TD fans, because I think you will find some enjoyable hours there!

6/10 - Not great, but it's hard to find simple TD games that aren't in the fantasy or zombie genre.

PROS:

- No elves or zombies in sight!
- Simple, classic style TD game
- Decent graphics (but not really 16bit style in my opinion)
- Good music and voice acting
- Upgrades are explained well


CONS:
- A bit dull and boring to be honest
- Upgrading is going to take forever
- Doesn't really bring anything new to the TD genre
- It wasn't clear that the screen could be scrolled up and down
- Sometimes trying to call the next wave early pauses the game (WTF?)

Very solid tower defense. Most levels are challenging and you have to try many different strategies before you find one that fits. The progression is not immensly original but at least it's decently interesting. You get more stars if you ace a level. You can then spend said stars on a dozen different upgrades - all resettable at the click of a button. So you can change up your strategies a lot and it gives you a strong incentive to go back and clear earlier levels 100% to give you a better chance at the later ones.

As the sucker I am for achievements I enjoyed how you can complete pretty much all of them in one playthrough. (So yeah maybe a bit on the easy side.)

The bad stuff:
* The controls and UI feels like a bad port from a mobile game. The tapping (upgrading towers, troop rallying) and swiping (map scroll) would make sense on a tablet or phone but feels stupid on PC. There are also many missing keyboard shortcuts and nothing is rebindable. This is easily my biggest gripe with this game.

* I have found no way to see what in-game upgrades carry over when you evolve your tower into a new type. Range upgrades sometimes carry over and sometimes not. Amount of marines in a tower sometimes carries over and sometimes not. Even if you learn with time you'd still expect to be able to see what active upgrades a tower has (in the tower stat screen perhaps?). This is inconsistant and very annyoing early on.

The linearity of skills and upgrades *seems* to be boring and underwhelming, but the strength of the game is the time you spend figuring out what towers/upgrades are the most exploitable in any given situation so perhaps the subtle ramping in upgrades is one of the game's strengths. (But some progression upgrades certainly feel superfluous!)

To sum things up:
Even with the bad points I think it's safe to assume that any real fan of tower defense will enjoy this title immensly - I recommend it even at full price.

'Alien Robot Monsters' is not just a tower defense game. It is the most diffucult tower defense game ever. I doubt that there will ever be a harder tower defense game than 'Alien Robot Monsters'.

In principle the game is fun and comes with the typical addiction tower defense games offer. Graphics are fine and the music is very good. Towers and enmies are interesting. And although I really like tower defense games 'Alien Robot Monsters' was a rather painful experience.

The problem with this game is that it only allows one solution. You have to play maps again and again and again to find out which setup works. IMO that's not how a tower defense game should work. If you look at 'Defense Grid' you can use tons of different approaches to beat maps. 'Defense Grid' does not let you down. It allows you to experiment and reach your goal with different strategies. This is not the case for 'Alien Robot Monsters'. There is only one way and you have to find it in order to collect three stars on a map. It's like a racing game with 200 different cars but all players select the same car because it's the only car that allows you to compete with other players. Try 'The Crew' to find out more.

I consider a game a good game if it's fun. 'Alien Robot Monsters' caused me far too much frustration to recommend the game. Since I do not want other players, especially not friends of mine, to go through the same painful experience, I can not recommend the game. There are very many other tower defense games available that simply do better than 'Alien Robot Monsters'. But if you feel like Superman or like playing single maps for hours again and again, go ahead and try. You have been warned.

You like tower defense games, 16 bit graphics and to much upgrade options?
Like a challenge and playing the same round over and over and not learn from your mistakes?*

Then you should buy it :)

+Tesla towers
+Tesla towers
+Frustration that they don't handle well with shields
+Tesla towers

-Might consume to much time
-Gave my a fetish about Tesla towers

Buy this briljant piece of game, unless you dislike Tesla Towers and get frustrated quickly :)

10/10

*(maybe a good idea to turn broadcasting off so people don't laught at you ::) )

What a lovely TD game! It offers great variance, a resonable challenge, and hours of fun.
The game has a fairly complex tower structure where new upgrades/types are added continously. Although I was tearing my hair out trying to remember where the thing I needed was (always in a wary stressfull situation), this is also what adds variety.
The game play is standard TD but with very different levels with different constrains and challenges. I was never bored.
The graphics are good and clear (love that the ammo chasing drop from the towers) without any fuss or overly detailed. This is about beating those robots!
I liked that I didn't have to go back and replay levels to earn upgrades. That seems to be a rule in many games.
It is not an easy game but at no point did I feel it was hopeless. I always felt I could solve the levels, if I just tried one more time... And that is exactly haw hard a game should be.

Wow. Just wow. Shortly, this is one of the most brilliant and tactically challanging tower defence out there. Every tower can be evolved into many different directions and there are way more tactics to try out than your average TD. Visuals and audio are also just fantastic. A real gem. 5/5

One of my most favourite tower defense games. It is in the puzzle genre within tower defense (as in you cannot place towers everywhere so you have to make good decisions and tactics are important). Difficulty is well balanced and its easy to get into. There are only some moments where the curve increases a bit but you can always ask for help at the forums (helpfull community and the dev too).

There are plenty of towers and lots of variety between them (for example there are towers that spawn marines which can actually stop enemies or e.g. have abilities like laying mines). There are plenty of maps (~35). Maps are not too long so it doesn't get boring. The enemies are also varied.

And finally you get 'star' points after winning a level which you can use for upgrades which give you a passive bonus on each map or give you an active ability.

I would give it a 9. Could be improved with even more maps :).

I was actually really shocked at how awesome this game is. It is a solid defense title, with a quite bit of depth to it.

I would recommend stats being displayed for monsters and towers and maybe an enhanced tutorial. Im still unclear as to whether upgrading other aspects of a tower before upgrading it to a different tower have any effect, or if its just a waste of money. Also memorizing the order for building certain towers it frustrating as well.

With that being, I still think this is a great game and have hope that some updates will be made in the future to address some of these issues.

Overall a solid 8/10 in its current state.

I really like this game! It has a skill tree for the tower enhancements, whichs ups the playability! Alot of thought and creativity went into this game to make it fun to play! There's alot of tower defense games out there, but this one will be worth the purchase!

I write this in english to reach more ppl, but that's not my main language, feel free to let me know if I do some errors.

• Ambience and music♥ are brilliant
  
• Lot of fun and jokes, aliens and spaces marins are really fun
  
• Directly immersive, start the game and play, no 9'943 things to understand before having fun
  
• A ton of upgrade. After each level you earn from 1 to 3 stars if you win. And you can spend them on a upgrade tree. You can reset the tree and spend your stars in another way to try a different strategy for a specific level.
  
• You can transform your towers into marines basecamp and have soldiers on the battlefield
  
• Really a lot little nice idea who make this game great
  
• Polished, bug free
  
[*] It cost only 6$

I totally recommend this game for any Tower Defense lover. If you like too sci-fi theme it's a must to have.

Here is a 15min video you can see an entire level. Don't believe this level is easy like that the first time you play without next level upgrades. It's just to show you a bit what contain this game and how it look.
https://youtu.be/8vniMxkkOug

This is one of the easiest recommendations I'll have to give. Alien Robot Monsters (ARM) is a really addictive tower defence game.

The goal of each mission is simple. Your base is invaded by swarms of enemy robots and you must fend them off by strategically placing various military towers and tech buildings in the area. The enemies come in a variety of shapes and sizes, as you'd expect from any tower defence game, each having their own strengths and weaknesses. Likewise, each of your buildings is made to deal with a certain enemy type better than with others. Getting overrun by hordes of weak enemies? Get yourself some mortar towers. Having trouble with armoured tanks? Build an orbital laser. And so on.

After completing each mission, you get a rating out of 3 stars. If none of the enemies got through your defences, you get full 3 stars. If some went through, you get 1 or 2 stars. If too many get through, you lose the mission. The stars are not just there for you to feel proud, either. They're used as skill points to purchase upgrades to your buildings. Hence there's a lot of incentive to do well on each mission and even a chance to replay the harder missions later in order to get a better rating on those.

Normally there's no way of knowing what sort of enemies to expect in each mission, so the latter missions often require a bit of trial and error and can be quite hard. Regardless, I'm having a blast with the game. Fun gameplay and a great presentation. What more could you want?

If you've ever remotely enjoyed any tower defence games, give this one a try. It's really cheap and affordable despite its high quality.

Great game! Entertaining with a fairly large tower upgrade tree that allows for a great deal of variability and strategy. Static upgrades can be purchased with badge points from winning a match (1-3 points per), and can selecting the right upgrades can mean the difference between winning and losing the next match. Fortunately, you can reset these points any time for free!

The only thing I would like to see added into the game is a statistic on how much damage each tower is outputing. AND it's been added!!!

Buy it. Buy it now!
10/10

Very Nice td game.Your defending infantry reminds me a bit of starcraft units.Gameplay is similar to kingdom rush with alot more upgrades.I would like to see a slider bar to turn music down a bit to match the gameplay sounds. 9.5 out of 10 i give this game. One of the best ive played so far. Great work devs i love this game. A must buy if u like td games and the price is very affordable!!

I'm really enjoying this game - the multitude of tower upgrades give this TD game a unique selling point. It's also got a lot in common with Kingdom Rush and that's no bad thing, e.g. in-lane warriors, missile strikes and para-troopers are similar to KR's knights, meteor strike and re-enforcements, but it's all sufficiently different that I feel that this is money well spent.

The pacing is nice, perhaps a little slow, but some of the linked tower upgrades are fantastic and the pacing might be required to introduce you to them. Linked upgrades mean that you don't just build, say, a flame-tower. Instead you build a MG-tower, upgrade its range, which unlocks a ranger tower. Upgrade the ranger tower with rockets and that finally unlocks the flamer. It's a neat system and reasonably logical so you don't have too much to remember. But it adds flexibility to your strategy overall.

If you like TD generally and you like Kingdom Rush especially, you'll love this - it's slickly done and dirt cheap for the quality on offer.

A few videos have noted that there's no option to change music/effects volumes, but you can at least togglel each on/off.