Crazy Kings

by DamienR (follow)

1 player (236)      iOS (98)      iPad (56)      iPhone (56)      Solo (30)      App (29)      iPod (9)      Tower Defense (5)      Tower Defence (5)      Crazy Kings (1)     

Summary
Crazy Kings is a massive free-to-play tower defense game with a card collecting aspect that should entice every fan of the genre.

Description
Type: Tower Defense
Platform: iOS
Players: 1
Age: 8 and up
Game Time: Unlimited
Developer or Designer: Wooga
Publisher: Wooga

Pros

Cons


Review

Crazy Kings is a tower defense game full of round cutesy cartoon characters. It is the most addictive tower defense game I’ve found since the original Kingdom Rush. Best of all, it’s free to play!



All the kings of the land have suddenly gone crazy and it is up to your hero to bring peace to the land. In the beginning the majority of the land is covered by clouds. Bits become uncovered as you defeat battles shown on the map. The map will eventually bring you to a castle where you must defeat level after level to reach the top to battle the king.



The best part about Crazy Kings is the sheer size of the game, there are literally hundreds of maps to explore and conquer. Each land also has it’s own race of enemies, from Minotaur to the Undead to giant humanoid birds. Each race comes with their own challenges, which keeps the game fresh, and has players constantly scrambling for new strategies.

Collecting Cards and Upgrading

One of my favourite aspects of Crazy Kings is collecting cards and upgrading them. In Crazy Kings, cards represent all your towers, heroes, spells and your avatar’s equipment. Players can gain new cards by defeating a map for the first time, or defeating the arena. Later in the game, players win even more cards be defending “The Outpost” once a day or by competing in the Grand Tournament in the Colosseum.



When a player gets two of the same card, they can be fused in the Card Upgrader. Fusing a card essentially levels that card up, which is indicated by the number on the top right corner of the card. Only duplicate cards of the same level can be upgraded. This makes reaching high levels challenging because to reach say, level 4 on a card, a player would need eight copies of that card to complete all the necessary upgrades.



Crazy Kings Towers and Heroes

Instead of the usual four tower types (barracks, fast ranged, slow ranged and slow massive group damage), crazy kings starts off with three towers and introduces new towers as the game progresses. Crazy Kings has opted against having a barracks tower in exchange for heroes. Some towers will make enemy creeps freeze for a second, or be slowed for a while but a player’s avatar, and his recruited heroes, are the game’s only method of stopping creeps for combat. The lack of barracks might turn off some hardcore fans of the genre, particularly in the beginning, when players don’t have any recruited heroes. Once you have collected a few heroes to manage, you won’t notice the lack of a barracks tower at all.

The Crazy Kings Avatar

The avatar in Crazy Kings is possibly the most important part of the game. A player’s avatar is a pudgy prince who can run almost anywhere on the map to battle creeps. Heroes can do the same thing, but your avatar is the only hero who can don specific equipment to become more powerful. Item cards picked up can give the avatar more health, can make him faster, do more damage per hit, and give him some poison resistance. Each equipment card has some base stats and buffs but when a player picks up a duplicate of that equipment card, it can be upgraded to provide improved stats. Special powerful equipment is earned by defeating each land’s kings.



Crazy Kings Spells

Along with hero cards, and tower cards, players can also get spell cards which are god-like magics that can decimate creeps on a map. The truth is, for me spells were the least used cards in my arsenal. They take up precious resources that could be used to upgrade towers or bring more heroes into play. The spells themselves are actually pretty cool. They look neat, and there are a lot of them, but there are only so many slots available in a player’s battle line-up, and there is only so much mana to use during battle. Spells are single-use, so when compared to towers and heroes, they just don’t stack up.

Crazy Kings Gems and Pay Options

The currency in Crazy Kings is gems. Gems are readily available as prizes for defeating a map for the first time, but they can also be mined. A mine has to be uncovered by defeating all of the maps along the path that leads up to the mine. Once uncovered, gems are automatically mined over time. Each mine can hold up to 15 gems. Once maxed out, mining is ceased until the player taps on the mine to collect their gems.

Gems are used for three main purposes. First, when a hero or a player’s avatar dies in battle, they can be brought back to life using gems. Gems can also be used to speed up card upgrades, or to quickly repair stairwells in each kingdom’s castle, allowing playing to progress up the castle levels faster.



Gems and card packs can be purchased with real-world money through an in-game shop. Unfortunately, prices in the shop are steep with an eight pack of cards running at $5.79 and gem bundles ranging from $5.79 all the way up to $119.00. Free to play games of this caliber don’t come around very often, and supporting developers who make free games that are this fun is important, but the Crazy Kings prices are simply too high. Luckily, Crazy Kings sometimes has special offers that pop up for $3.49, which provide a special hero, a tower and some gems. It’s a worthwhile deal and if you are enjoying Crazy Kings, I suggest you jump on it when it’s offered.

Crazy Kings Battle

All this talk of collecting and upgrading, but to what purpose? Battle! Each map in Crazy Kings is quick and fast passed, but if you find things slow, there is a fast-forward button for make things even more challenging. Crazy Kings offers pretty basic tower defense mechanics. Creeps run down an outlined path and there are designated spots along the path where players can place towers. Prior to starting each map, players have a battle unit line-up, where they must choose what towers, heroes and spells they plan on bringing into battle with them. This means each player can develop their own strategies for each map. No two players will play the same way. This may seem like a slight difference, but it has a massive affect on the game and the genre.



Players place towers and can then upgrade their special abilities. Calling heroes, casting spells, building towers and upgrading towers takes mana. Players start off with a predetermined amount of mana for each map. Additional mana is earned by defeating creeps or by calling a new wave of creeps early.

The maps are evenly paced and all are challenging in their own unique way. Crazy Kings is a wonderful addition to the genre that should please any fan. If you’ve never played a tower defense game before, Crazy Kings is a great place to start!



Want more tower defense fun on your mobile device? Then you may want to check out Kingdom Rush Frontiers and Star Wars Galactic Defense.

#Crazy Kings
#Tower Defense
#Tower Defence
#iOS
#iPad
#iPhone
#iPod
#App
#1 Player
#Solo
#Wooga

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