Unusual Times:

In Brief:
Unusual Times is a top-down tower defence game with frozen water as snowflakes, ice cubes, icebergs and snowmen taking the part of the tower defences. You can choose from English or the Russian language and there are three levels of difficulty to choose from.

Thankfully there's no installer included with today's game, so no advert at the beginning of the game and you only get your browser opening once when you first install the game.

You can see a video of game play HERE.

The Game:
Unusual Times only includes ten levels; however, each level includes ten enemy waves. You can play the game at normal speed, which will extend the game time to a reasonable length, but do bear in mind, this is another of those Gameiron competition entries, so the developer had a limited time to create the game. In my opinion, further development of this game to add more levels as well as other tower defence niceties would yield a good playable tower defence game instead of a reasonable Tower defence game.

The game it does include most of the elements you'd expect from an expensive version of the genre, though it doesn't include rechargeable extra weapons that can be randomly placed anywhere on the route the enemy take; in this case enemies take the form of flowers and the boss wave is the sun. Rechargeable weapons that you find in expensive tower defence games usually do a significant amount of damage compared to the towers, but only have limited use due to recharge times for the weapon.

If you find the attacking flowers too slow, you can increase the game speed from 1 to 2, 4 and 8 times faster. At the fastest speed, you'd better be quick on the draw with respect to placing your tower defences, otherwise those attacking flowers will overrun your base camp (in the form of an igloo) quick sharp. That said, the fastest speed is useful when you've got most of your towers already placed.

If any enemies reach the base, which looks like an igloo you lose 5% of the igloos health for each flower that enters. You'll see a health bar above the igloo; if it reaches zero, you lose.

You have for different tower defences; the basic towers cost from 10 for a snowflake that does five damage, 25 for an Ice Cube that does 25 damage, 50 for Icebergs that do 40 damage and 100 for snowmen that does 65 damage. Each of the towers can also be upgraded four times to improve their stats. As with all tower defences, you earn in game currency by destroying the attackers. Level one towers show as a single symbol, level two as two symbols level 3 as three etc.

When you hover over any tower defence you'll see the towers characteristics, that shows the level, it's cost to upgrade, the amount you get for selling the tower, (useful in the end stages of a level where you need to upgrade the towers nearer the igloo) it also shows the damage the tower causes, the range and the speed of attack.

Don't be fooled by what appears to be small levels, they are bigger than what you'll see on your monitor. You need to move the level via your right mouse button to see the whole of each level.

In the bottom right of the game arena you'll find a button, clicking on it opens two butt more buttons, the first allows you to restart a level from scratch, even if you are on the last wave and the second takes you back to the level map. In the top right there's a button that will immediately launch the next wave instead of having to wait for the countdown to complete.

Controls

LMB = select and set tower level
RMB = Move the game field, a single click removes towers.

Useful Tips and Information:

1) ... From the top there are buttons to accelerate time and launch the next wave of enemies.
2) ... Towers can only be placed on the snow!
3) ... Locate Mouse & Click on individual towers to improve or sell them.
4) ... Towers of the 4th level are the most powerful and shoot self-guided missiles unlike the others.
5) ... In the game settings, you can always change the level of difficulty (easy, medium and complex), and also reset the game or change the language (Russian or English).
6) ... Different flowers move at different speeds
7) ... Near the end of a level, sell the towers that are no longer useful and spend the in-game currency on upgrading or adding towers nearer the base before the boss arrives.
8) ... The game is automatically saved immediately after passing through each level, and that's loaded at start-up.
9) ... You can replay any level once unlocked to improve the star rating.

(The above tips and info are introduced at the beginning of levels 1 and 2. To close the overlay, click on the screen. The game starts to run as soon as the information shows; so, the longer you leave it up, the more enemies have progressed along the road to the base without any towers being placed. See the fifth and ninth images for details).

Conclusion:
Considering Unusual Times was created as part of the Gamiron #14, and despite its relatively simplistic looking graphic, it's actually well-constructed and as tower defence games go, is a pleasure to play. Although the game is limited to ten levels, playing it on the default speed should give you three or four coffee break sessions to work through the complete game; if you want to improve your star rating for each level, game play can be extended significantly, unless you manage to gain three stars for each level on your first run though set to the hardest difficulty. Personally, I only got three stars for level one on my first run though. I failed to beat level 4 several times playing on the medium difficulty setting. Also, the nature of TD games, makes this game re-playable over and over because of the random way you can place towers; that said, there are ways to play the game for example tactical, to get the most out of your tower defences, i.e. placing the initial towers where they can do the most damage, usually where the enemy's route takes them around corners or when the road does a 180 degree turn, This means a single tower can cover a much large section of the roads they protect if placed in certain positions.

I'd score this an 8 out of 10, despite its relative shortness, basic graphic and less than inspiring music, because it has all the attributes expected that an expensive and decent tower defence game would have.

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found zero hits from 63 antimalware engines. You can see the completed scan results HERE