Star Wars: Galactic Defense is an addictive, Mobile Strategy, Tower-Defense, Top-down and Single and Multiplayer video game available to play on Android and iOS platforms. The game lets the player select his side from light and dark and dive into the game world.

• Galactic Champion

Updated at 9:53 a.m. Pacific time.Star Wars: Commander has been a success for Disney Interactive. It’s a top-10 strategy game in the App Store, it has seen more than 10 million downloads since its Aug.

21 debut, and it’s held a ranking as high as 32 for all games on the charts in Apple’s shop.Mobile developer DeNA wants to re-create Commander’s magic with its next release, Star Wars: Galactic Defense for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets (it even works on an Apple TV). It’s a key free-to-play release for the Japanese publisher in a mobile gaming market that could hit $20 billion by the end of the year, and from what I saw earlier this week at its San Francisco office, it offers more than what you usually see from tower defense games. Star Wars, DeNA styleUnlike Commander, Galactic Defense pulls in heroes and units from all six Star Wars movies and the The Clone Wars (nothing from the latest animated series, Star Wars: Rebels, yet, though executive producer Kevin O’Neal would like to see the already popular show included in future updates).

Also like Commander, it offers two campaigns — one featuring Light-side units (The Old Republic and Rebel Alliance) and one with the Dark side (Separatists, bounty hunters, and the Empire). The two games also share a similar, cartoony style.While the two games share much in common, O’Neil says similar structures — like two sides — and visuals aren’t a mandate from Disney Interactive, which is now responsible for Star Wars after the House of Mouse acquired Lucasfilm and LucasArts in 2012. Image Credit: DeNA“This wasn’t a mandate from Disney. We really pushed for it because we do want to appeal to players who like both sides,” said O’Neil on a video call from DeNA’s Santiago, Chile studio. “It gave us a lot more characters and content that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.”You get your standard tower defense fare here: turrets you can buy, destroy, and upgrade; and abilities called Support Cards, which give you powerful orbital bombardments and other potentially game-changing abilities (though these have timers on them).

While card games may be popular right now, O’Neil said they’re calling these cards as a “metaphor that makes sense” more because of the user-interface usage and not to piggyback on a popular trend.It’s a free-to-play game with in-app purchases. You can play five missions before you run out of energy, and you must wait for it to refill (or get energy from the Facebook social component).

Credits are the in-game currency, and these bag you Champions and Support Cards.But DeNA’s take makes the strategy deeper. The towers don’t stick to just ranged and area-of-effect attacks.

Melee towers disgorge foot soldiers (such as Rebel troopers armed with force pikes) that engage Stormtroopers. This seems like an easy way to get Jedi and Sith into combat with their lightsabers, and O’Neil confirms this was part of the idea behind it.

But this also provides a path for troops such as the, the red-cloaked helmeted elite of the Empire, and their force pikes to get into battle as well. Image Credit: DeNA We are the ChampionsChampions are the most noteworthy twist in Galactic Defense. These aren’t just a good way to get the famous names from that galaxy far, far away into the action — it also gives you different ways to take on challenges.

These powerful characters have special abilities: Luke Skywalker summons a seeker drone that stuns enemies, the bounty-huntin’ droid IG-88 sprays blaster fire in all directions, and Darth Vader uses the Force to hurl Rebels away from him.You start with one Champion and add more as you level up. I played a later mission on Endor with three Dark side bounty hunters — IG-88, Boba Fett, and my favorite character from The Clone Wars, the spaghetti western-inspired. The Rebels swarmed me, coming from separate lanes (something I’d never seen in these kind of games), even though I could move these heavy hitters around the battlefield to deal with threats — a nice change from other tower defense games. O’Neil pointed out that DeNA made sure to have “synergies” for its Champions. Have three Jedi in play, and they boost each other’s abilities. This was supposed to work for my bounty hunters, but the Rebels crushed them anyway.

Champions also earn Relics you can equip that improve their stats.It even has some special nuggets for old-school Star Wars fans. Yes, I geeked out when I noticed that a toy I once had as a kid — one of the silly mini-rig vehicles that never appeared in the movies — rolled onto the screen as the Rebels were attacking the Empire’s positions on Hoth. As far as I can tell, the has never appeared in a game (it was in a comic book once; Lucasfilm can’t confirm if this is indeed its first in-game use), and I immediately pointed out this peculiar little artillery unit to O’Neil.DeNA has experienced success with a number of games since jumping into the market in 2009. The strategy game Godus (from Peter Molyneux’s 22cans studio) ranked as high as No.

2 on Apple App Store. On the Android side, the card battler Hells Marys ranked 54 on the Google Play shop in August. Of its big-name mainstream brands, Transformers: Legends (another card game) ranked as high as 18th on the App Store. Transformers: Age of Extinction, an endless “combat” runner from DeNA subsidiary Mobage, hit a high of No.

11 on the Google Play Store. All of this info comes from market-research firm App Annie.But Star Wars: Galactic Defense could blow all of those away.

And even if it doesn’t, O’Neil is grateful to work on one of the world’s most beloved franchises.“Everyone in the studio was super, super-excited,” O’Neil said, who’s working on his first game in Lucas’s former sandbox. “You don’t get the opportunity to work on something that’s this well known and this beloved. It was really exciting for us to have the chance to work on this, work with the Lucas and Disney folks, and try to do the lore justice.”.

I put around 6 weeks into the free-to-play game, Star Wars: Galactic Defence & didn’t spend a single penny of real money on it. Unlike most free-to-play games I wanted to until something happenedA star Wars free-to-play huh?

Doesn’t exactly fill you with excitement, right?How you feel about tower defence games will no doubt have some influence on how you feel about this game off the bat. Me personallyI like them & have played many a good one but I had never played a free-to-play one.

I was interested to see if it was any good & I was pleasantly surprised.Firstlythe music. I’m a Star Wars fan so hearing that music will always put a smile on my face.

Secondlythe choice, light or dark side. You can chose to play as the Jedi or the Sith.

I had hoped for more variation between the 2 but the differences are made up of:. Colour palette. Choice of hero/villain.

Galactic Champion

Enemies/Bosses. MusicIt’s not much but it adds some much needed longevity to the game.So the point of the game is to defend your base from the invading enemies. Your base has 20 health points that will drop as enemies pass through with some scoring double & bosses scoring much higher.To stop them you have to set up weapons along their path using limited resources. The weapon choices are limited as well but all are upgradeable as more resources become available.As enemies are killed more resources become available so it becomes all about balance. Survive the first few enemy waves & the resources will be following in allowing you to really up your defences. As enemies become tougher & arrive more frequently it becomes a much more desperate battle to stop them crossing into your base.

Lose all your bases health points & its game over.There are a few things that can help though & this is where the currency comes in play. Before you start a mission you can select a hero to come with you.

These guys are active on the battlefield & will automatically attack enemies as they come. You can have up to three at one time on the battlefield but only the first is actually free.Any additional will have to paid for with the games currency which comes in the form of galactic credits.

To gain an additional champion you have to send recruitment pods10,000 credits will launch a carbonite pod & 30,000 credits will launch a durasteel pod. The difference between the 2 is the quality & rarity of your potential champion as well as a higher level cap.To give you some kind of idea of just how much a durasteel pod costswhen you first start the game as a new player you have 5000 galactic credits.More galactic credits are bought with the premium currency, gems. The lowest amount is 5,000 credits for 10 gems while a pack of 20 gems will set you back £1.49. It’s not the worst pricing I’ve seen but it does go up as high as £34.99 for 750 gems.To get a durasteel champion you would need 30,000 credits. The nearest package to that mount is 36,000 credits for 60 gems.

The nearest amount to 60 gems is a pack of 55 for £2.99. Add that to the lowest pack of 20 at £1.49 & you get £4.48. A new champion would cost you £4.48.Oh & let’s not forget that to unlock the next champion slot costs 20 gems as well so that’s another £1.49.However this is not the only way in which your credits can be spent. Before each level starts you can buy ‘active support cards’. These range from orbital bombardments to reinforcements & cost credits as well. 5 uses of the orbital bombardment will cost you 2,500 credits while 5 uses of the reinforcement’s card will cost 500.So what, you don’t have to use them to beat a level, right?Wrongat first you’ll be coasting by easily enough but the game quickly gets tough. By the second planet you will be forced to use the support cards if you want to gain anything above a 1-star rating.

The stars matter because this is how you unlock the next planet of which there are loads!Your credits are spent super-quick this way & the only way to gain credits in-game is to beat levels. You get a small number for beating a level as well as a random prize. Don’t get excited9 times out of 10 you get a small amount of bonus credits (rarely over 100).Can you see the problem? Unable to progress without support cards, wanting new champions to back up your battlefieldyou’re going to have to spend real money or prepare to waste a lot of time.The thing is it’s almost worth dropping a little bit of cash into it as it is addictive & fun. I wanted to progress to the next planet without buying my way there.

I would recommend that maybe you spend a couple of quid on it to help your enjoyment of it. I would recommend this except for something that happened to me in the game that amounted to theft.Let me explainI had been struggling to get past the last level of Endor with the light side. The amount of enemies thrown at me followed by the eventual boss, The Emperor is crazy. I tried & failed several times so spent about a week replaying other levels to gain enough credits to buy lots of different support cards.

I used almost all of them throughout the mission & just before the Emperor fell to my attacksthe game crashed.This has happened before & I’ve shrugged it off even though your progress in that level isn’t saved & you’ll have to do it again. So I loaded the game back up to play the level again & discovered that even though it hadn’t saved my level progress it had saved my usage of all my support cards. That’s righteverything I had spent a week saving up for was gone in a flash. I was spitting mad & I hadn’t even paid real money for itImagine spending £5 on lots of support cards, using them, having the level crash halfway through it & all that money being wasted? That is just theftThis would have been a 7/10 easily if it wasn’t for the great support card theft. The game crashes too frequently for it to be acceptable. The game is fun with plenty to do & feels authentically Star Wars.

One of the better free-to-play games out there.