GGMoji Tower Defense Force Game Review

Who are GGMoji? We want to know right now, because they accomplished an impressive feat—they got the first ever game they created into Facebook Messenger’s Instant Games. Said game is called GG Tower Defense Force, one of the newest games on this messaging platform.

We got so giddy with excitement when we saw a few days ago that a tower defense game had been launched on Instant Games. Tower defense games are probably somewhere near the top of the list of our most favorite game genres, together with endless runners, match-3, and cooking games. And they’re one thing that’s been conspicuously missing from Messenger. Until now.

But as you will see in this review, our hopes for a good tower defense game were crushed the minute we started playing this game.

Graphics

If there’s a specific look and feel the game designers were aiming for, we guess that it would have to be “cute and adorable”. The faces of the characters were all inspired by square-faced emojis. And by the looks of it, GGMoji are probably going to design all their future games around the emoji theme. (Their site says they have an upcoming game called Super Ninja Puppy Rescue, and it looks like it will have the same emoji artwork).

The 3 heroes defending their towers are girls that sport purple, blonde, and blue hair. They’re probably elves, since they all have that Arwen look going for them, complete with bows and arrows, hooded cloaks, and pointy ears.

Their enemies are, you guessed it, orcs. They come in four kinds— the regular bald one, the one with the helmet, the wizard, and the huge boss with the bombs. We’re not sure if there are others more, so tell us in the comments anything we missed.

The artwork is not the best we’ve seen though. In fact, what comes to mind is the word “mediocre”. We hate being negative, because we are lovers of all games (except perhaps Trivia Blast Ultimate). But when we hit the Play button, and saw the hideous tile background (which caused some of us to get a vertigo), we instantly knew we were gonna be writing another bad review.

Seriously, we know 10 year olds who can draw better than this. It’s almost an injustice that this game is listed among the likes of Everwing or Lumines. We sincerely hope that GGMoji’s next effort would be much better.

Gameplay

The player’s aim is to defeat as many waves of orc onslaught as possible. This is achieved by tapping on the orcs, which releases arrows from our 3 elven girls. There’s a limit on the speed at which you can shoot, since there’s a limit on the rate at which the arrows reload.

Each girl is given 3 hearts (lives) at the start. A heart is lost with a hit from an enemy projectile. When all 3 girls run out of hearts, the game is over.

There are objects on the field that can be shot to help the girls succeed. These include the heart, the orb, and the arrow booster. Respectively, they give health, shield, and infinitely-loading arrows.

In addition, the girls each have a unique Ultimate ability, which can be used when the indicator shows 100%. Purple has Fire Storm, Blonde has Earth Shake, and Blue has Life Rain. Fire kills all orcs it hits, Earth Shake stuns orcs and pushes them back, and Life Rain restores health.

These boosters and abilities are upgradeable. For example, maxing out the heart upgrade gives each girl 6 starting hearts.

Music and Sound

The background music made us think of 1980’s NES action games. But unfortunately not the appropriate choice for this game. Again, the devs made us feel like they didn’t think the music and sound effects through.

Fun Factor and Replayability

This game is fun for the first 5 minutes of play. And then it’s not fun anymore. No visible changes when you upgrade the heroes, no exciting new challenges, nothing to make us go back and play it again.

Summary

We dislike ourselves for disliking this game. We wanted so bad for Messenger’s first tower defense game to be a blast, but it fell short of our expectations, much shorter than we could mask with our niceness. We’re trying to think of this game’s redeeming value and the best that we can think of is that, at least, it is not a horrible game. It’s just not a good one either. We give it a 4.5/10.

Now our question is, why is Blue’s cloak blue when she has her back turned to us, but is green when she faces us? Reply below!