Square Enix's Crystal Defenders comes to Android

Square Enix's simple tower defense game, Crystal Defenders,has already made its way to the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, iPad, and iPhone, and now Android users can finally get their hands on it.

Tower defense games are nothing new. The idea is to simply line up a path with strategically placed towers, which shoot at oncoming enemies as they cross the path. The towers, which are autonomous and not controlled by the player, must gun down every enemy before it's able to cross the path.

The difference in Crystal Defenders is that the "towers" are replaced with mystical creatures that only a Square Enix game could deliver. The result is an intoxicating mix of addictive gameplay, strategy, and colorful anime sprites. Or at least, it should be, butreviews of the game havenot been hugely kind.

Android, which has kind of become the platform that developers turn to only after they've found success on other devices, is starting to gain a bit more traction on the gaming front.

Square Enix was one of the early big-publisher supporters for the platform and it must be doing well because it continues to release games on Android. Crystal Defenders W1 and Crystal Defenders W2 are available now from the Android Market, priced in its local currency at 600 yen, which today roughly translates to about $7.

Jan 26, 2011

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