Xbox Series X
Tower Defense games are some of the most simple but complicated fun you can get. Picking your towers and creating a death maze for whatever crosses can lead into hours of fun. Sadly with Xboxs latest TD game, Call Of Toys! it comes off as more of a cheap imitation of what TD games should be.
The game visually looks like an iOS product with simple textures and graphics. You get random items which have like old WordArt thrown onto the map like a giant Santa which then just layers itself over the map itself. Same goes for trees, or light posts, or wells as the game just doesn’t bother to either layer items or put them in any places that make sense.
Youtube footage by Jayster’s Project
Though that could all be overlooked if the simple TD mechanics themselves were any good. Levels are broken up into quick sections where its multiple levels for an area and your towers continue through these. These leads to a simple mistake nearly crippling you as the games difficulty starts off hard and doesn’t get much easier. Towers themselves feel weak even at a higher level and their special abilities don’t feel much better. You never get that satisfying moment on being on a high level wave and experiencing what is going on, be it good or bad either, as the games level system breaks everything up into really quick segments.
It doesn’t help either that the game doesn’t explain much but tries to be overly complicated. New towers are added with your only references on what they are being a page on the main screen or reading the stats. All tower have multiple items to equip which require finicky controls (same with the main menu) and upgrading each item on its own. The game takes a simple premise and tries to add more than it can handle instead of just focusing on a simple base game. It doesn’t help either that even after recalibrating my system the game has issues with the screen not formatting right. Campaign mode for me cut off the top screen meaning I was never able to see enemy wave, health, gold, or purple mana type stat for upgrading my towers. Duel mode cut it off a little less but instead cut the sides of the screen off in half for the towers.
The Duel mode itself is a fine idea but because of how limited the game is even going against AI only lasts minutes as enemies quickly just rush past all towers you build.
For a game made by seemingly one person and being only $10 it feels bad to critique it so much. It clearly has some fine ideas that with fine tuning might work better. However with Tower Defense games being a plenty including ones like Bloons that are AAA TD games pretty much, its hard to justify what plays like a broken iOS port.
Score : 1 / 5
Review code provided by the publisher
