Magic Technology

Review

Tower defence are great casual games to play. They are usually easy at the start and become progressively harder as you go along. Then comes the level where you get stuck for ages . . . it doesn’t matter what approach you’re taking or how close you might be to finally getting through it, these wobbly little mushroom-thingies manage to pass through 20 out of 21 waves of enemies. I used to like mushrooms; the all-rounders, as the nutritionists call it, because of their impressive health attributes. They used to be one of my favourite ingredients, but not anymore. Rest assured, there are plenty of other enemies in the fantasy world of Magic Technology . . . and destroy these fungus!    

As you probably guessed from my intro, I might be slightly frustrated with Magic Technology, but if you are someone like myself, who has a competitive nature, you understand where I am coming from. Despite the frustration, you must clear each level to unveil the next part of the story, which is always fun.



The game consists of three chapters, each of which has six levels to complete. The first few stages of the first chapter are part of the tutorial, and are easy to follow. From then, the fun will start! As a player, you can choose which level of difficulty you want to play and there are the common ones: easy, normal and hard. The main difference is that on the easy difficulty, you are allowed a higher number of enemies to reach your gate than on the hard mode. For your information, I did lower the difficulty level where I got stuck, but the fungus got the better of me again!

Apart from these horrible things, what other foe will you be facing? Goblins, wolves, bees, bats, fairies and others that I haven’t had the privilege to see. All thanks to the fungus! I forgot to mention, they come in different sizes and colours too. It’s interesting, because when you kill a large mushy, it divides itself into two medium-sized mushies, and then when you eliminate those, they again divide themselves into two smaller ones, and if they are purple (my favourite colour!); they are truly the fungi from hell!

The question is, what weapons and other divine powers have you got at your disposal to combat these strong enemies in order to move to the next stage?  So far, I have unlocked the machine guns, canons, tesla, flamethrower, mortar, ice tower and hammer. The ice tower slows down the enemies and the hammer is probably the strongest unit of all so far, but has the longest cooldown. You can upgrade all your towers as long as you have the correct cash in hand. You’ll earn one extra coin each time you kill an enemy. You also have some divine powers, or power ups, to use, which were the lightning bolts and the ice spikes in my case (where I am at presently, which is half way through). They are deadly, so watch out, fungus!  The cooldowns for both of them are fairly substantial . . . damn!

In terms of the maps, they’re nicely designed and quite small in the first chapter and significantly larger on chapter two. Also, each time you beat a level, you’ll have more waves coming at you. The developers have a tournament with prizes up for grabs, such as a year’s supply of mushrooms. . . Nooooo!  Just joking, some serious prizes which includes $1000 from the launch of the game. However, you must download and pass the qualifying map to access the tournament. Please refer to the conditions on the steam store page.

Graphically, the game looks great and the animations are fluids. The soundtrack consists of one repetitive tune which you can turn off from the audio menu. It is a challenging game and it might get the better of you here and there. I was planning on a steak with mushroom sauce tonight, but . . . I opted for a steak with peppercorn sauce.


Positives

+ Great graphics and fluid animations
+ 18 challenging levels to complete
+ Three difficulty levels
+ Nicely designed levels
+ Achievements and trading cards

Negatives

- Can be frustrating
- Your love for mushrooms will be ruined

Review Summary

Magic Technology is a seriously challenging and well-designed tower defence game. Check it out!

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Zeepond Rating: 7/10

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