Galactic Alliance 2: multiplayer tower defense with 5 levels, 3 difficulty settings, and endless mode.
Galactic Alliance 2 – $1.99 (iPad only)
I played a version of Galactic Alliance by Vectorform a couple years ago at PAX on the Microsoft Surface Table. It’s a space-based tower defense game that handles up to four players simultaneously, working together to prevent various aliens from reaching Earth (or entering various gates). It was a lot of fun, and I played several rounds of it with random strangers. I hadn’t realized there was a version for the iPad for free (some are complaining that the latest update isn’t working), but now there’s Galactic Alliance 2.
Playing a 4-player game of Galactic Alliance. (I stepped away to snap a photo.) Photo: Jonathan Liu
The game has two modes: campaign or endless. Campaign has you work through a series of five levels: the first simply has two gates, and you have to survive twenty waves of aliens. Later levels include floating asteroids that block where you can place your defenses (and where the aliens can travel), or multiple entry/exit points for the aliens. Also, you get a different set of defenses on the various levels.
There’s a set of controls on each edge of the screen, and a player can jump in (or leave) at any time by pushing the little fingerprint “scanner” on their edge. Everything is color coded and oriented toward the correct player, so when you tap on an item you’ll see the “upgrade/sell” menu facing you. It doesn’t mean you can’t tap on somebody else’s item and sell it, but you should be working together. I did find that the hard difficulty setting even on the first level can be incredibly difficult with only one player, but with many players working in concert it’s a lot of fun.
I’ve played this a bit with my kids, who have gotten the hang of tower defense (though not necessarily the idea of setting up a maze that forces the enemies to weave back and forth for maximum damage). This past weekend I broke out the iPad briefly at a retreat and roped in two kids and a teenager to try out a four-player game, and it was a blast. The teen (who was pretty familiar with tower defense games) said he could just sit and play it for hours, and the two younger boys kept asking me later if I was going to get the iPad out again. (I refrained, though, because I was trying to limit screen time for the weekend.) Suffice to say it was a hit, and I think it’s well worth the $1.99 price tag.
