Earth Force Defenders is a real-time strategy game where you are defending the Earth from an alien invasion. Game play has a tower defense feel to it but your defenses are more mobile and you'll have to carefully dispatch them or run the risk of being overrun by alien ships.
The Windows Phone game has simple controls, several ship styles to help defend the planet and a host of upgrades to give you a better chance at victory. Available for low-memory Windows Phones, overall, Earth Force Defenders comes across a decent time waster of a game.
The main menu for Earth Force Defenders offers up options to jump into game play, access the game's settings and view a brief series of help screens. Settings include the options to set the graphics quality, mute the sounds and reset your game progress.
When you first jump into game play, a brief tutorial will walk you through the basics of setting up a hangar to house your defense ships, upgrading the ships and dispatching them into combat. You do have a map view of the gaming levels that includes access to the upgrade menu where you will build up your defenses.
You have five locations around the planet to create your hangars. Hangars can house a range of ships that includes fighters, bombers and defenders. Each hangar starts out with two ships and additional ships can be added to the compliment. Should a ship get destroyed in combat, the hangar will rebuild that ship but it will take a few seconds. Once re-built, that ship will join the rest of the squad in space.
Ships can be upgraded to improve hull strength, damage capability and improve speed. You also have special abilities to add a moon cannon, a Earth shield and a instant rebuild feature (just tap the center pentagon that is on the center of the planet).
All of these hangars, ships, upgrades and special features will come at a cost. Earth Force Defenders starts you out with enough gaming credits to build one hangar and add one ship to the mix. From there you'll earn gaming credits during combat that can be used to build up your defenses.
Game play is rather simple with regards to mechanics, with the challenge of the game coming from the strategy aspects. You can zoom in or out of the game view by tapping the + or – sign at the bottom of the screen. Your active hangars will be displayed on the planet with the number of planes available aptly marked on each hangar. Across the top of the gaming screen you will find pause/fast-forward controls, enemy wave/Earth health meters and control buttons to activate your special abilities.
Red arrows will appear on the screen to mark in-coming enemy ships. To dispatch your ships to intercept the enemy, just tap on the hangar and then tap on the screen where you want the ships sent. They will automatically encounter any enemy ships the get within weapons range. Once your ships are in space, they will automatically seek out enemy ships unless directed otherwise. The entire squad from a specific hangar will respond to the same direction and cannot be split up to cover two areas of space.
The pace of the game will keep you on your toes at time and managing the space battles can get hectic. Once the dust settles and you have defeated all the enemy ships, you will be scored on your performance and gaming credits handed out.
Overall Impression
Earth Force Defenders is a decent time waster of a Windows Phone game. The fast pace of enemy ships trying to obliterate the Earth will keep you busy and controls will not overwhelm you. Graphics aren't bad but I couldn't help but think they needed a little more punch.
The game is free with ad-support that utilizes the full-screen ads. While I am not a fan of these ads but with Earth Force Defenders the frequency is dialed back enough to keep the ads from being too annoying.
Overall, Earth Force Defenders is an entertaining option worth considering. It may not knock your socks off but will grow on you. At last check, Earth Force Defenders is unrated in the Windows Phone Store and we'd place it in the 4 Star range. If you try Earth Force Defenders, let us know what you think of the Windows Phone game in the comments below.
Download Earth Force Defenders for Windows Phone (Free)
