To be honest, old players who have been playing since the Saipan era always have a special feeling for tower defense games. I remember that I stayed up all night playing Plants vs. Zombies on the Nokia N73. Later I switched to Android and became addicted to Defending Carrots and Kingdom Defense. The tension of setting up formations, upgrading, and dealing with waves is something I can never forget to this day. I'm not going to brag about it. Although the tower defense category is now being overshadowed by all kinds of card-drawing and money-making games, there are actually people who are persisting in good works that truly focus on the gameplay and allow players to rely on strategies to make a living.
Recently, my hands were itchy, and I accidentally turned to a game called Kaka Royal. At first, I thought it was the kind of game where you can cheat people into downloading by changing skins. But after playing it, I realized that something was wrong - there was something special about this game. ☝️
Let's talk about the loading speed first. It takes only one second to enter the game, which is really not an exaggeration. Nowadays, many mobile games always make you look at the manufacturer's logo for tens of seconds, which is very annoying. Kaka Royal understands the pain points of veteran players in this regard: start fighting directly, no nonsense.
Let's talk about the content. There are dozens of basic turrets and more than a dozen special turrets. These numbers alone are enough to ponder for a while. There are also systems such as evolution, synthesis, and inscription, but they are not the kind of designs that force you to spend money. They are real growth that relies on brains and time. There are more than 500 levels, plus random maps. To be honest, after playing 20 levels, I already feel that I have to use my brain. I will definitely get more advanced in the future.
What makes me even more emotional is that this game reminds me of a classic game called "Defense Formation" that I played on Saipan back then. It was also a way of matching turrets and studying routes. Although the graphics of Kaka Royal are much more modern, the sense of achievement of "trying and error step by step to find the optimal solution" in the core gameplay is in the same vein as the tower defense kings of the year. 👴
There is also a world ranking list, which is particularly familiar to old players - at that time, being able to climb the rankings was the biggest motivation in the game. Nowadays, many game rankings on the market are based on krypton gold rankings. Kaka Royal is obviously based on lineup matching and operating skills, and there is nothing to say about fairness.
Of course, it's not without its shortcomings. For example, the random maps in some levels are really ridiculously random, and occasionally the turrets are placed in particularly awkward positions, but this can be considered a challenge. Overall, this game is worth a try for those who like to use their brains and want to get back to their original intention of tower defense.
The only thing that surprised me a little was that the developer was a Yichang company called Binyue Network. I had never heard of it before, but it could so naturally combine the classic tower defense gameplay with the lightweight and fragmentation of modern mobile games. To be honest, there are not many small domestic companies that can achieve this level.
Maybe we old guys can no longer play with those complicated formulas and social interactions, so occasionally keeping a strategy game on our phones is like keeping a memory. Kaka Royal, the name sounds a bit old-fashioned, but when you play it, it really has the energy of the all-night tower defense back in the day. 🤔