Mote Massacre (Mote-M) Review

Mote Massacre was developed by Grant Jones and is selling for $.99 under the name Mote-M at the Apple iTunes App Store.

Mote-M is an iPhone variation on the widely popular Tower Defense strategy games. For those who’ve never played Tower Defense, the game play consists of building and upgrading towers which automatically shoot the waves of enemies that pass by. The fun thing about Tower Defense style games is determining what configuration and placement of towers most effectively stop your advancing enemy. There are tons of free Flash based Tower Defense games available online and all of them seem to have their own little spin. For Mote-M the main draw seems to be open ended tower placements. Unlike some other variations of the game, Mote-M allows you to place towers anywhere you want as long as there is an open path to the exit. The motes, which you are trying to massacre, make their way from the start point and try to choose the shortest path to the exit. For each mote that reaches the exit you will loose a little health, eventually ending your game.

There are a three basic tower types in Mote-M. The Physical Tower does multi-target long range damage, the Frost Tower does multi-target slowing damage and the Fire Tower does single target high impact damage. Each of the three tower types can be upgagred 4 times on Tier 1 before unlocking other types of towers. Unfortunately, Mote-M was released before it was finished and the only Tier 2 tower available is the “temporary wall.”

I’m a sucker for Tower Defense games and have wasted many a work day playing the inevitable “one more game”. For the most part Mote-M does a pretty good job at recreating Tower Defense on the iPhone. The ability to place towers wherever you want works well in Mote-M and adds a bunch of replay value to the game. Mote-M also keeps track of your own high scores and offers 3 different difficult settings. While it all works pretty well, Mote-M is unfinished and missing a quite a lot of features. *See Update

As previously stated, some of the Tier 2 Towers and all of the Tier 3 towers are not available in the initial release. Additionally, there is no sound in Mote-M, no online score submission, no in game help, no air towers and no support for widescreen play. There’s also a lot of little annoyances with Mote-M. For example, in order to remove towers you have to upgrade them to the Tier 2 Temporary Wall. There is no way to tell how much towers and upgrades cost and no way to sell your towers. Additionally, the build tower screen seems to keep the game board behind it active which often leads to Hammer Towers (tower foundations) being placed accidentally. Motes in the game come in three basic colors, but it’s not explained if the colors represent immunity or susceptibility. On a smaller not I tried three very different configurations of towers and tower types and each one yielded almost the same score (3030). This leads me to believe the tower and mote types are not substantially different.

Mote Massacre, aka Mote-M, is a great Tower Defense game for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The newest version of the game features three different field types, fully upgradable towers and an online scoring page. If you like tower defense games or are just looking for a fun strategy type game I would strongly suggest you check out Mote-M.

By: Aaron Robbins