Hidden Gem: Pyra Tower Defense - Bringing new things to tower defense games

Time for another Hidden Gem and this time it comes courtesy of Local Space and their Pyra Tower Defense game for Android. While this game features a lot of what you would find in tower defense games, it also brings some new features as well, plus it gets incredibly challenging.

Sometime it isn't always about the eye candy a game can offer and while Pyra Tower Defense does have some decent visuals to enjoy, the real treat with this game is the actual gameplay and some of the features it comes with. This games comes with plenty of maps, 25 to be exact, and a ton of achievements to unlock. It also comes with some rather unique abilities that you can use in the game.

There are a total of 7 different towers, each sporting many levels of upgrades. Also some towers end up taking more than one tile on the field so you will have to play things accordingly. On top of that you will also have 7 different abilities to use throughout the game which changes up the entire dynamic of how a tower defense game runs. A taste of these abilities include:

- '+block' lets you expand the map by adding an extra tile to the map. This leads to all kinds of unexpected mazes.
- '+speed' & '+damage' boosts a tower's fire-rate and damage for a few seconds.
- 'nuke'; getting overrun by enemies? Try this last resort nuke.

The ability to expand the map during gameplay is one of the more interesting abilities since, if you are having problems killing the waves of enemies, you can add extra space and therefor add more towers. The abilities come in especially in the higher levels of difficulty which there happens to be 20 of them.

Pyra Tower Defense Features:

- 25 maps
- 60+ achievements
- 3D graphics & camera movement
- 7 unique towers
- 7 special abilities
- 20 difficulty levels

The game could use a bit of polish in a couple of departments although it certainly isn't game breaking by any means. The user interface could use a bit more polish to it visually and the ability to zoom out further to see the entire map would be a plus. Again, more of a convenience thing and definitely not game breaking.

Pyra Tower Defense has been out for a little over a month with the free version sitting around 500-1000 downloads while the paid version rests at 5-10 installs which is a shame considering the challenge this game provides and the unique features. If you want to give this game a whirl you can test it out in the free demo version before buying the full one for around $2.16.

Developer Website: Local Space

Android Market Link: Pyra Tower Defense