It’s always a good time to be a Nokia owner, but especially when a new exclusive app or game comes around. We’ve just received another surprise exclusive, this one turning up quite randomly on a Friday evening. A little advance notice would be nice, but it’s still good news for people with Lumias in their pockets.
The newly released Xbox Windows Phone game is iBomber Defense from Chillingo (EA) and Scottish developer Cobra Mobile. Like Jet Set Go, this one wasn’t part of the first 20 exclusive games announced by EA, so there could be even more titles included in the exclusivity deal that we don’t know about.
Tower time
As the name might’ve clued you in, iBomber Defense is a tower defense game. That genre is a little overpopulated on some platforms, but not Xbox Windows Phone where all we have are Plants vs Zombies, both geoDefense games, and Zombie Attack 2. Unlike those games, iBomber utilizes a realistic military theme, with the player’s towers fending off attacking soldiers, tanks, ships, planes, and the like.
iBomber is a highly approachable game, thanks in part to the art style reminiscent of Flight Control. It plays a lot like the first geoDefense, with enemies approaching from one or two points and following set paths towards the player’s base. By building and upgrading towers as soon as you can afford them, you’ll hopefully keep the foes at bay and protect your base’s precious hearts.
Lots to defend
The game consists of two campaigns (one for each side of the conflict), each with Achievements for perfection completion (not taking damage). The campaign difficulty seems quite reasonable when played on a lower difficulty setting – you can even rewind back to a previous wave if things get go all Saving Private Ryan on you. Players looking for a challenge can simply crank up the difficulty. I’d save the higher difficulty for your Quick Play mode playthroughs though.
Quick Play mode allows players to jump into any of the 22 missions they’ve unlocked from the campaign. Most of the Achievements revolve around perfect Quick Play completions on various difficulty levels. Here’s a pretty good guide if you need help. Additionally, the Windows Phone port includes two bonus missions which might be new to this version, much like the Mango levels in Chillingo’s Contre Jour.
iBomber Defense costs $2.99 and has a free trial. It works great on both WP7 and WP8 (though it did crash on my Lumia 920 once so far). You can view its WP Store page here, but the game can only be purchased from Nokia Lumia phones.
Thanks to Jonas and SlowSlayer for the tips!
Steamed about exclusivity
Don’t have a Nokia Windows Phone? You can still grab iBomber Defense on the PC or Mac. The Steam version just so happens to be on sale for $1.24 through January 5th. It’s also available in a bundle with the sequel iBomber Defense Pacific for just $1.99 during the same sale. Don’t gripe about the Windows Phone version’s price too loudly though, because the Steam game regularly sells for five bucks.
