Space Station: Frontier – Bolster the defenses and make a stand to hold off the oncoming onslaught of alien hordes.
If you’ve had the pleasure of playing Sentinel, then you’ll be pleased to hear that the same developers have ported their latest tower defense title onto the Android. The game sounds like something from Star Trek, and some of the Alien ships look a bit Ferengi like, but it packs way more of punch and is very strategic. Check out our review below to hear about this challenging game.
Gameplay: Waves of Alien hordes fly in at your Deep Space Nine-esq station and you need to hold them off until you meet your mission objectives. Unlike Sentinel, the resources don’t come from killing enemy ships but instead come from mining asteroids. Don’t forget that we’re in the vast expanse of space, so there are no paths and everything is free form… no channelling or fixed turret positions in this game.
The array of weapons provided are within the realms of realism, so think along the lines of Battle Star Galactica, rather than Asteroid Defense. So there’s no slow towers like in most tower defenses… instead this is pure strategy and old style gunning. Also you need to expect to take damage and focus on the main mission objective – there’s no dominating or owning the computer.
Awesome Blend: As with the later Sentinel games there’s great graphics and animations. The music combined with the sound effects gives an excellent gaming experience. Everything feels good to look at and you can focus more on playing the game.
Sounds too good to be true… Yeah we think the key thing to remember is that Origin8 appeals to tower defense gamers and that they probably have a cult following already. So if you do like this genre, then this is right up your alley. If you don’t like this style of game, and you don’t like a challenge, then you may well detest this game. The designer actually planned that you must play the survival or mining games eventually in order to accumulate more credits which would then allow you to buy more upgrades.
Verdict: 5/5 An excellent game with an original twist for tower defense addicts! If you like strategy and challenge games then this is where you should spend your money. The fresh variation in gameplay is enjoyable for any tower defense addict. Unfortunately, it’s not free so if you’re unsure then you should probably try demos of other Origin8 games before buying this one.
Space Station: Frontier Promotional Youtube Video
Space Station: Frontier Tips from Android Games Review
- Check the mission requirements carefully – don’t expect it to be a breeze to win, and also don’t exit the mission before it’s over to try again. Keep playing until the end because you may unexpectedly win, and even if you don’t you’ll accumulate credits.
- You’ll eventually need to play the survival or mining games in order to accumulate more credits. (Survival is unlocked after level 3, Mining is unlocked after level 8, Protect is unlocked after level ? – yeah we haven’t got there yet!)
Upgrades
- If you’re unsure about which upgrades to get then select them in order from left to right.
- Generally we’ve found that power is a big issue because building or shooting weapons drains power – you can be left totally defenseless even with a great set of guns. So for a quick and easy simple way of getting more power you can invest in the Emergency Battery. But for a proper solution one should go for the Power Generator and Power Storage. Although the other base station power upgrades seem tempting, the benefits aren’t as clearly seen as the two suggestions above.
- Getting the different guns is important to counter different defense scenarios
- The Missile Launcher is for dealing with many small fighters (Although gun turrets can do the job, your energy would be depleted too fast … (unless you’ve built generators))
- The Interceptor Laser is for dealing with Destroyers which shoot missiles… unfortunately, it’s necessary pure defense against one enemy ship’s missiles.
- The Rail Cannon is an important and difficult gun to implement because it’s health is low so it gets destroyed easily. It also has a slow charge time which means you need to build this one in advance to be beneficial. The slow firing cycle time means that upgrading the range on this gun is crucial… but this gets very expensive.
- Power generators allow weapons to continue working even if the powerlink to the main station has gone. But it seems as though they will only kick in if they’re not connected to the parent station after they’ve been constructed. Look carefully at the small blue bar underneath them to see how much power they have left. They can operate for quite a fair amount of time, but not a sustained long attack.
- Power Storage combined with Power Generators allows your islands of networks to survive through those long attacks.
- Although Power generators and storage are a winning combination to alleviate power drain on your mother ship, it’s very difficult to gather the minerals necessary for building this setup and also upgrading your turrets at the same time.
- Repair Stations seem like they’re going to be really useful, unfortunately, this isn’t the case. They’re expensive to build, slow to repair, and their range is abysmal. It seems as though they drain power when fixing things too – so don’t get this until you think you’re close to getting a good defense setup.
Layout/Build Style
- Each node has a maximum of 4 links. So to allow for an expansive network you should only really have up to two turrets/miners on each node.
- If you’re fairly sure of what you’re going to build then you can put your nodes in a straight line very close together. This lets you put your turrets close together, but it can also cause problems if you were to put new nodes down before you’ve finished building your line of defense.
- Creating islands of turrets which have self powered generators and batteries become crucial in later games for a proper sustained (and powered) defense.
- Don’t forget to sell items which are no longer needed – for example mining stations, or turrets which are no longer defending anything
- If you need to buy time, you can distract the computer by putting down a huge array of power nodes for them to shoot… in the meanwhilst your cannons get the time to recharge and pick off the enemies.
- Try and place Rail Cannons behind turrets so that they’re not targeted first. If you can’t do this, make a network of power nodes to slow down the alien attackers.
- Power is a biggie, and even the AI knows to target the power connection weak spots! So put these key points behind your turrets where possible.
- You can also build in rings so that power will still flow to your turrets if one connection is severed.
Space Station: Frontier QR Code
(Click on the image or scan the barcode with your Android Phone to goto the Android Market)
Developers: Origin8
