Carrot Watch! Review

The Tower Defense genre is a highly competitive one with a huge variety of different interpretations of what's required. While some might follow the Fieldrunners way of doing things, others might stand staunchly by Plants vs Zombies. I'm not sure what route Carrot Watch has taken, but it's one I'd strongly advise others avoid.

The potential is there, mostly in the form of Carrot Watch's simple controls that could lend themselves well to introducing the genre to young gamers. Placement of defensive units feels more fluid than having to stick to grid shapes, like in other games. The one touch nature of everything also paves the way to being kid-friendly, but it also introduces a pivotal problem.

Carrot Watch lacks a lot of common features for the genre. For instance, place a unit down and there's no way of removing it or moving it to somewhere else on the screen. This immediately takes out one of the strategical elements common within the genre. More frustrating is the difficulty level. Money is scarce with the tirade of foxes, travelling across the screen, only providing a precious few coins once defeated. Often, the money provided at the start of a level is all the player has available to them making it tough to complete any stage. Inevitably, this leads to a matter of trial and error rather than genuine fun.

Other problems come in the form of repetitiveness. Carrot Watch's enemies are cute to look at but the backdrops to each stage are dull and predictable. There's no sense of evolution as the game progresses.

Carrot Watch might have been a great introduction to Tower Defense games for kids, with its simple one touch controls and cutesy graphics. Instead, it feels like a game that demonstrates how not to do things.