Ottoman Defence Review

The Orcarian army, previously held back by a mountain prison, has breached the mountains through the use of blue crystals and is attacking the world! In Ottoman Defence, the peaceful Ottomans have no choice but to counter-attack and destroy this fearsome foe.

Ottoman Defence is a tower defense game built around the art of counter-attacking. The goal of each level is to get enough of the Ottoman forces into the Orcarian tower to take it down before Orcarian soldiers over run the Ottoman tower. The game is played on a board with a tower on each side and a straight path between the two. Soldiers emanate from their respective towers as they are produced and will walk straight towards the opposing tower unless they apprehend enemy forces along the way. Resources, gold to build soldiers, and blue gems to improve tower defenses are earned at the end of each level. Gameplay itself is rather simple: build soldiers to throw at the enemy’s tower and manage special attacks, such as balloons and mortars, to give soldiers the best shot at reaching the opposing tower.

Ottoman Defence is really a game about resource management. At the start of the game, the player receives 100,000 gold and 100 blue gems. As the game progresses, resources are not very plentiful. Progress is based on cities, and each city has 2-3 levels. Intermediate levels reward the player with 100 gold and 5 blue gems while final levels (at each city) reward with 1,000 – 3,000 gold and around 100 gems, increasing through the campaign. With each soldier averaging around 50 gold each, and other tools such as Balloons and Teleporters averaging around 100, gold is a commodity that is spent quickly. Gold may be purchased using blue gems but blue gems are only available after completing a level. These fairly meager rewards mean that without carefully planning tower improvements, the player may find themselves broke moving into the final levels.

As with many free games, Ottoman Defence offers IAP in the form of purchasing blue gems. The purchase price for blue gems is quite nice. For example, 1,000 gems may be used to purchase 200,000 gold coins and 2,000 gems may be purchased for $9.99. With a few purchases a player will find themselves in quite the nice position to complete the game, however I think that the meager reward system is a bit of a heavy-handed approach to encouraging IAP.

The artwork is colorful and lush and allows the game to explain itself without much direction needed. The lovingly created 3-d worlds mean that the player can change their view of the game at their whim and even zoom in to watch skirmishes up close. The game also loads quite quickly from tap to gameplay. The music has a distinctively Eastern flair to it that is enjoyable, but unfortunately the music does become a bit repetitive.

Ottoman Defence is a beautiful take on the classic tower defense genre. While gameplay has the potential to become a bit monotonous, this is balanced out by the very pretty graphics and the prospect of new weapons, new soldiers, and new highly satisfying ways to destroy the invading Orcarians.