Lair Defense: Dungeon

Summary

Got time to kill? Well, I’ve got three words for you: Tower Defense games. They’re the kind of games that will keep you on your toes without stressing you out.

There’s a recurring theme in most Tower Defense games: evil villains are trying to overthrow a castle, and your job is to prevent them from doing so by strategically placing towers along the route.

Lair Defense differs in the sense that while the villains are just as villain-y, rather than defend a castle with towers you must defend a bunch of dragon eggs using dragons.
 

Test device: Samsung Galaxy S2
Android version: 2.3.6
Mods: None

Upon starting up Lair Defense you will find yourself in the game’s main menu. This is where you can choose to start a game, rate the app, see the list of dragons, check out other DroidHen apps and de/activate the soundtrack.

Hit start and pick one of three possible storage options. Next you will see a map revealing the locations of the dragon nests, all of which you will have to defend. A small tutorial shows you how to play levels one and two, and then you’re good to start playing.

The currency in this game is meat because dragons like to eat, too.

So long as one egg remains on the map you will have successfully completed a level. You will receive gold for however many eggs remain and however many enemies you killed. The gold can be used to purchase upgrades for dragons or spells—and that’s where my biggest bone of contention with this game lies: the upgrades are much more expensive than the amount of gold you receive, meaning you will either have to play certain levels over again or you have to make an in-app purchase to buy more gold.

There are eight levels per arena and 48 levels in total. Should you manage to make it through all the levels the nightmare mode will be unlocked. This mode brings more upgrades and an infinity mode with it.

Bottom line:
Lair Defense is a fun alternative to more classic Tower Defense games. The game is free, which is great, and we definitely recommend checking it out. The only drawback is that an in-app purchase of more gold is pushed so strongly.
 

Lair Defense isn’t a masterpiece when it comes to graphics, but it’s nicely done. The same goes for the animations, and overall the game looks better than other Tower Defense apps (Robo Defense, I’m looking at you!).

Controls are satisfactory but nothing special. If you’ve played other similar games you will be familiar with these types of controls.
 

Lair Defense runs nice and smoothly, loads quickly and hasn’t crashed on me once so far. What more can you ask for?

Lair Defense can be downloaded for free and while ads are displayed within the menus, there are no ad banners when you’re actually playing a round, which is something I really appreciate.

However, I mentioned earlier that the gold stash runs out, hence ‘motivating’ players to make an in-app purchase, which also permanently deactivates the ad banners. I don’t like feeling as though I’m being pushed into purchasing something, but then again the game is very well made and no one is twisting your arm to buy more gold.