Augmented reality comes to tower defense games

ARDefender is a tower defense game with a difference. Using your iPhone’s camera, the real world is blended with the game, making it look almost like your tower really exists!

Perhaps the oddest thing about ARDefender is that you have to print out a PDF of ‘tags’, then cut them out and place them wherever you want to see your tower in augmented reality (AR). Place a tag on your desk, start ARDefender and after a moment a 3D tower appears, that you can physically move around. It’s an impressive toy! Tapping the screen makes a target appear, and you can then move around aiming and firing at the various attacking machines.

ARDefender has only one game mode, made up of timed levels that you simply have to survive. It takes a little getting used to, but it’s actually a really fun little arcade game. There are enough varieties of enemies to keep things interesting, and the fact that you can play on any backdrop you like means it can always look different. You can position your ARDefender tower on your wallet, kitchen table, sleeping cat or whatever you want!

ARDefender is a great idea, and it’s very well done. Hopefully one day you won’t need a paper tag to position your tower though. There also need to be more game modes to give it a longer life, and occasionally we experienced crashes.

It’s a great game to show your friends, and is also really good fun and an innovative take on the tower defense genre. ARDefender is the best AR game we’ve seen so far.