Lock's Quest (Nintendo DS) Review

Lock's Quest takes place in a world rife with conflict between Lord Agony's mechanical Clockwork army and Kingdom Force. After his sister is kidnapped and his village attacked by Clockworks, an orphan named Lock sets out to become an Archineer (turret/defence builder) in support of Kingdom Force. Both sides require Source — the game's power source/currency — to strengthen their forces. Archineers can use Source to construct increasingly powerful defences, while Clockworks simply need it to remain operational. Battles are, therefore, often shaped around securing or defending Source Wells while fending off hordes of foes in the process. It's a simple enough premise, but the execution is more than deep enough to ensure that the game remains consistently enthralling.

Each battle is broken down into a series of rounds that begin with a brief Build Phase. During this time the player is free to place structures on the grid-based map — a process that is mostly intuitive, but occasionally hampered by irksome touch screen controls — without fear of being attacked. Structures consist of wall segments, turrets, traps, and helpers. Strategic placement of said structures is crucial to mounting a successful defence, but the multitude of options available ensure that you never have to rely on the same strategy twice. You could, for example, place a wealth of traps close to enemy spawn points in order to weaken foes before they get close, but you could just as easily dedicate your precious Source to building a tightly-knit turret layout closer to home. Whichever route you choose, though, you'll want to make sure you leave some paths open for Lock to pass through in the Battle Phase.

The Battle Phase places you in direct control of Lock, and allows you to explore the map at your leisure. With a gradually increasing selection of special abilities at his disposal, Lock is more than capable of holding his own against most enemy Clockworks, but he must also repair friendly structures. How much time is spent on either task is left entirely up to the player, and will depend on decisions made during the Build Phase. Certain helper structures can also be used to repair and beef up other structures over the course of the battle, making them somewhat self-sufficient. Even without these, however, an all-out attack strategy can work just as well as a cautionary, repair-focused one. Lock's Quest is extremely successful in this regard, allowing you tackle each battle in a variety of ways without unduly penalising you for it.

Furthermore, if you discover that a strategy isn't working particularly well on a certain map, you can rest easy knowing that a new Build Phase is never more than a couple of minutes away. Any deployed structures can be recycled and/or moved during a Build Phase, ensuring that it's always a breeze to try out new strategies. Heck, you can even choose to restart the entire battle from scratch at any time with no penalty. That's not to say that battles are without a sense of pressure, though. While setting up a perfect defence and gliding through a battle with ease is extremely satisfying, it can be even more rewarding to barely scrape through with only a handful of damaged turrets to your name as the countdown inches towards zero and the enemy pours on its final assault. The blend of simple-but-deep strategic options, lightweight combat action, and tense last second showdowns is handled wonderfully, and always keeps you coming back for more.

Although its main campaign should keep you busy for somewhere in the region of 20 hours, Lock's Quest also includes a couple of bonus features that help to improve its lifespan. The first is a fairly trivial affair, but it's not without its charm. In a direct throwback to classic tower defence games, a simple mini-game is included that will be extremely familiar to anyone who has wasted away an afternoon playing flash games such as Defend Your Castle. It's undeniably basic, but it's fun, and you can even use the Source you earn in upcoming battles. The second bonus feature is, in turn, far more comprehensive: Multiplayer takes everything from the core game and simply multiplies it by two. In addition to building structures, however, each player can also construct friendly Clockwork units. Unfortunately, being limited to local multi-card DS setups will likely restrict the mode's accessibility for many players.