TouchArcade Game of the Week: ‘Lock’s Quest’

The idea behind the TouchArcade Game of the Week is that every Friday afternoon we post the one game that came out this week that we think is worth giving a special nod to. Now, before anyone goes over-thinking this, it doesn’t necessarily mean our Game of the Week pick is the highest scoring game in a review, the game with the best graphics, or really any other quantifiable “best" thing. Instead, it’s more just us picking out the single game out of the week’s releases that we think is the most noteworthy, surprising, interesting, or really any other hard to describe quality that makes it worth having if you were just going to pick up one.

These picks might be controversial, and that’s OK. If you disagree with what we’ve chosen, let’s try to use the comments of these articles to have conversations about what game is your game of the week and why.

Without further ado…

 

Lock’s Quest

After they had captured everyone’s attention with Drawn to Life, but before they became a household name with Scribblenauts, developer 5th Cell released a super quirky game on the Nintendo DS back in 2008 called Lock’s Quest. It’s a strategy game that mashes together elements of tower defense and hack ‘n slash action, and is all wrapped up in a surprisingly robust story-driven RPG package. It was the kind of quirky game that made the Nintendo DS such a fun handheld system, but despite receiving pretty good reviews when it released it’s a game not all that many people still talk about or even knew about in the first place.

Well this week the good folks at Handy Games have brought Lock’s Quest ($6.99) to the iOS and Android platforms where it’s getting a chance to find a whole new audience.

First off, as with many Nintendo DS games that make their way to mobile, Lock’s Quest was built around using the touchscreen of the DS and so it translates quite well to mobile device touchscreens. Battles take place in two different phases. The first is where you’re building up your defenses and placing your different turrets and weaponry around the battlefield, just as you’d do in any other tower defense game. Dragging items right onto the gridded playfield with the touchscreen works just as great as you’d expect it to.

The second phase is the actual battling, where the creeps will march into the battlefield and try to break down your defenses. Here you can actually move your character around using a virtual analog stick and help fight back against the creeps directly using your weaponry.

Since Lock’s Quest original release over a decade ago, tower defense titles have become commonplace on mobile, and perhaps this game isn’t quite as unique today as it was back in 2008. However, it has enough unique twists on the formula and a surprisingly interesting storyline to follow along with that even if you feel like you’re up to your ears in tower defense games I still think Lock’s Quest is worth a look. It also doesn’t hurt that it was a full-blown game created for a dedicated gaming system, and as such it feels like it’s more fleshed-out than a lot of the typical tower defense games you find on mobile. And because of that it also has the bonus of being a pay-once premium game in its mobile iteration, which is another thing that’s tough to find in a mobile tower defense game.

The under appreciated Lock’s Quest got a second chance at life with a re-release on consoles and PC back in 2017, but I feel like mobile is the type of platform where a game like this can truly shine. If any of the words I’ve typed out above are getting your motor humming, definitely consider checking out Lock’s Quest.