The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

I listen to all those Asymmetric podcasts, and one of the games I’ve heard them mention over and over was Gemcraft. I didn’t know much about it, but I guess it was a flash game they really enjoyed, and it got mentioned a lot. One day, I noticed it was on the App Store. Gemcraft HD! I decided to give it a try. High definition crafting of gems! What could go wrong?

Nothing, really. It’s a fine tower defense game.

There’s a map with maps on it you play tower defense on. When you get there, you tower defense. But where the twist comes in are the gems. Appropriate, no? Basically, towers, which sit on the side of the path and shoot, and traps, which sit on the path and attack people walking over it, are powered with magical gems. These gems have properties, like Splash Damage, Slowing, Poison, or High Crit Chance. You have to build the tower or trap, but then you also have to buy a gem to put it in. These gems affect what kind of towers you have. Since the cost of building a tower increases with each one you build, making the towers you have better is of the utmost importance. Upgrading a tower simply requires putting a better gem into the tower. You can simply buy more expensive gems, if you want.
However, what makes it interesting is that you can also combine gems to level them up, Horadric Cube-style. Two gems of the same level can be combined to make one gem of one tier higher. What’s more, it’ll have properties of both gems. So if you combine a Poison and a Splash Damage gem, you’ll get a more powerful gem that does both. You can basically make towers that are jacks of all trades as you upgrade, having a little of all abilities, or focus just on certain ones. It’s a bit of strategy that makes for a nice Tower Defense change.

As you complete levels, you unlock new modes on that map, which is nice. You also gain skill points you can use for overall growth of your character, letting you lower the costs of towers and whatnot, which is appreciated, though not particularly overwhelmingly important, from what I played. There are a ton of levels and modes, too. This was a dollar well-spent, if I actually worried about amount of content.

In reality, though, I found the game really damn hard. Because you can mix and match your towers so much, and can’t cover your ass by building lots of towers, it makes figuring out what to build really hard. I quickly got to the point where I simply wasn’t mixing my gem types together enough, or was building just one too few towers, because I thought I needed to save my money to upgrade gems quicker. I understand that’s the strategy, but after the first few levels, you start to not have any margin of error. Maybe people who beat the flash games would be prepared for that, but I kind of wasn’t. I enjoyed making all sorts of weird tower combinations, but the game quickly told me I needed to min/max, and I wasn’t quite sure how.

I do have to say, though, that the fact that you can turn the game up to 3x speed, if you want, is a fantastic addition every tower defense game should have. Makes the game so, so much better to play. Being able to pause and issue commands was nice, too, though that’s not as required as the speed thing, as I could see why a developer wouldn’t want you to be able to take action while paused.

There is a shit-ton of tower defense here for a dollar. If you want some of that, go for it! If you enjoyed the Flash games, I’d think this would be a good way to give back, too. If you don’t like tower defense, though, this sure as hell won’t sell you on it. It’s a twist that makes tower defense much more finicky and such. I enjoyed it, but I put it down when I hit that wall. Got plenty else to play instead.