Don't you want to try shooting back?
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| Source // Steam |
You're not bored of tower defence games, are you? Fieldrunners hopes not, because it wants to keep you glued to that new iOS device of yours...
Fingers at the ready, now.
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| Source // Steam |
Frustrations
That must be one of the shortest introductions to a game I've written in years, and there are a few reasons why. First and foremost is that Fieldrunners doesn't do anything that any other tower defence game doesn't do.
It is a safe, polished, mobile-friendly tower defence challenge that can entertain you for however long it is you want to play it. It wouldn't be the first game on the 1001 list to do nothing new and won't be the last
As you may well know, there's no chance of me playing iOS games, but Fieldrunners has been ported seemingly everywhere since, so I fired up my PC port to check it out.
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| Source // Steam |
I wished I hadn't. What may look nice in the screenshots is actually an unplayable mess of a port. The mouse doesn't smoothly glide across the main menu, it teleports from one place to the other, and never to where you need it. I've had mouse-based input woes before, but this was a 'Whoa! Not touching that until there's a fix'.
I couldn't find one, not quickly, anyway, so I opted for a trusty PlayStation Portable port instead, only for that to emulate poorly too.
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| Source // Steam |
It ran, at least, and was playable, providing you didn't care about not knowing how much money you had to buy towers with, or how much health you had to protect with your best-laid plans, because those vital numbers weren't displayed for me.
But play it blind I did, plopping down some gun turrets and goop shooters and rocket launchers and watching streams of stupid soldiers swarm in from one side of the screen, single-file, snaking their way around my defences towards their goal, repeatedly getting shot and doing nothing about it, and after five minutes I'd seen enough.
Final Word
I was monumentally bored, and being introduced with a broken port and emulation issues wasn't the greatest of starts to warmly being welcomed into proof that mobile gaming was now a thing when an iOS device can offer games like Fieldrunners - simple, straightforward, not punching above their weight, but something nice to look at. A game you can immediately poke a few fingers towards and see something interesting happening.
Interesting, but not for long. The theme is more colourful than other tower defence games but no more inspiring. Different difficulty levels are there to make your life easier or harder, but what's the point in worrying about them? Fieldrunners isn't here to change your life.
Is it a solid game? Probably. It was what tower defence games do, and no more. I'd probably pick it up and try it out, were I to have had an early iOS device. What's the harm in having a look?
You can still have a look at Fieldrunners today, across multiple devices, even the PlayStation 3, but it's not going to knock your socks off.
Fun Facts
Each fighting environment, released update by update, has enemy waves spawning in from different directions, flowing around both your defences and obstacles on the map itself, with modes taking you through up to 100 waves of enemies, should you want to play that much.
Fieldrunners, developed by Subatomic Studios, first released in 2008.
Versions 'played': PC, 2012.
PlayStation Portable, 2009, via emulation.