Keep Defenders is a real-time combat strategy game where the object is to defend your keep from wave after wave of enemy attacks. While the game does require some sense of strategy, the gameplay is far too slow and you’ll find yourself more frustrated than anything else.

You start off each level with a few soldiers to defend your keep. To advance, you need to survive a specific number of enemy waves. The enemy soldiers will try to attack your soldiers and your keep. Once all your soldiers or keep are destroyed, you lose the game. There are only three types of units to fight with: soldiers, knights and archers. This is obviously the first major fault of the game. There needs to be some expansion in the types of units to fight with in order to boost the game’s value.

The enemies will appear on the map at various points around the keep. Enemy units will attack from all sides, forcing you to makes decisions whether or not to split up your army. When an enemy attacks, a green health bar will appear above your units and a red health bar above the enemy units. The units will automatically engage if you have selected the attack button. Repetitive and overly simple fighting animations will begin as the units attack. These simple animations take away a bit from the overall feel of the game. If you win, you gain gold that can be used to purchase reinforcements. If you lose, your unit dies and is not replaced.

The controls in this game are yet another major fault with can me improved upon. You need to tap on your unit and either tap on a location to go there or tap on an enemy unit to attack. Many times I found myself accidentally tapping on a location next to an enemy instead of on them to attack. Selecting units to attack is just not accurate or intuitive. Also, when selecting multiple units, you need to tap on the multiple unit icon on the bottom of the screen first, then tap and drag to select more than one unit, then tap on a location to move or attack. This process becomes cumbersome when you want to quickly select a group of soldiers to attack the enemy.

Each map is designed well, offering beautifully rendered scenes to battle in. However, the repetitive fighting animations are a major drawback and really do take away from the feel of the game. The ambient sounds are nicely done, but the combat sounds also leave much to be desired. Overall, Keep Defenders is a slow-paced, boring combat game that can sometimes be overly challenging. The game is just not very fun to play. For this reason, I cannot recommend making the purchase.