Having been a Starcraft and Warcraft player in the past, I’ve played my fair share of tower defense games. Fortix 2 is a reverse tower game where the main character, Sir Fortix is tasked with taking out a besieged island where the evil mage Xitrof was being held captive until his recent escape. Of course, it’s up to the one knight (Fortix) to destroy this menace again!
The way the game works is that you have the enemy towers that defend a central core; usually with monsters and other obstacles in the way to give you grief. The outside edge of the map is your initial safe zone and you must expand your path by moving inwards on the map. Wherever you move, the foundation for a barrier is lain which only becomes fully constructed when connected with the edge of the map. This can sound very confusing at first and it definitely took me a few moments to figure out how it worked as I’ve never played a game of this type before.
To vanquish creatures such as dragons and ogres, you basically have to use the magic line behind your knight to box them in. Many of the monsters, cannons/turrets included are easy to destroy. Their movements are slow and predictable which means they won’t present too much of a challenge. To make the game more difficult, the developers threw these normal mundane monsters in with smarter types. Some of them move towards you as you leave your safe zone while others move faster as soon as you leave your safe zone or will immediately turn towards you and spout fire at you.
As you progress through the game, the monsters get more challenging and various terrain obstacles come into play. During the course of Fortix 2, the player will encounter different terrain types which will slow down movement speed. So you move slower on certain terrain types, many turrets shoot at you, slow creatures move against you as well as other flying creatures that also shoot at you; even walls are put in your place to block your movements. The game challenges you by compounding creatures and obstacles which force you to think carefully about how you’re going to expand your territory and how you want to box these creatures in to capture them.
Players looking for an additional challenge should also check out the included zombie mode. Instead of dragons and towers, you get zombies and graveyards. The graveyards slowly spew out zombies and they quickly begin to add up and sometimes your areas for capturing them become cramped and confined. Also, with the zombie mode there is no safe zone. Even if you’re on your line, they can still attack you. Getting to this mode requires a little ingenuity and good old-fashioned game Easter egg hunting.
Now with all of these monsters that keep attacking you and the constant turret fire, you may feel Fortix 2 can be a bit overwhelming. Fear not, for there are power-ups. In any given level there will appear little yellow stars in contested portions of the level. Upon capturing these stars you will receives bonuses which will allow you to stop turrets, gain some extra free lives, momentarily stop all monsters, gain super speed, or allow you to fly over obstacles. These temporary pick-me-ups, as you can imagine, allow you to be a bit more daring in how much you take of a map and really help in beating the tougher levels in the game.
Fortix surprised me very much. I have never heard of this type of game before playing and the concept proved challenging and fun. I found myself thinking after I’d taken a break how I could go back and beat other parts of the games.
In addition to a PC version currently available through Steam, there are also versions of Fortix 2 currently being developed for smartphone and the iOS platforms.
