Tower defence has recently become its own genre as flash game development has picked up. The idea of defending a path against a near-unlimited number of random enemies using nothing but stationary defences appeals to a lot of people, and there have been quite a few games that have followed this formula. Some have been good, some have been bad. Defendin' de Penguin is, besides a game with a title that assaults my grammatical senses, not one of the latter.

The story is fairly simple: you are Blue the penguin, a young lad. Every season various arctic creatures come to steal fish from his village, until he discovers that with a little muscle, the village can start defendin' itself. All it takes is some ingenuity, planning, and towers that throw a variety of icy materials at fatal speeds. Not too hard for a penguin, right?

The core of the game leads Blue in his defence of his settlement and, eventually, the settlements of other fish-deprived penguins against a variety of arctic creatures. In case you haven't actually heard of the tower defence-style of game, let me break it down for you: a number of enemies stream out of a designated spawning point, and begin to follow a set, linear path. To stop them, you must construct defences along the side of this road, towers that will fire upon the moving creatures, slowly depleting them of health. If you defeat all the enemies without a certain number of them reaching the end of the path, then you win. It's not too complicated, but leaves room for strategy.

The strategy involved in Defendin' de Penguin is all about what kind of towers you build. There are four different types of damage: ice cubes, icicles, snow, and cold. Each enemy in the game has a weakness and a strength against one type of element, so you have to balance your construction in order to maximize your towers' efficiency. You can also upgrade your towers, which costs a little more money but allows you to save some space. In all you've got options ranging from snowball flingers, icicle mortars, ice cube gatling guns, and cold emitters that slow down the enemy and given them frostbite. And that's not all of it, either.

Through it all Blue can run around the level, picking up coins and fish dropped by enemies. He can also 'target' creatures that you want towers to attack, and if he jumps inside one of the towers, they become more effective. This way, you're not just blandly staring at a line of enemies for the entire match.

That's really all to say. The game is pretty simple but keeps that addictive quality of other tower defense-style games. The strategy involved with Blue's actions allow a little more interaction besides simply building the eight towers you're given. A decent game for all ages, Defendin' de Penguin is something anyone can pick up and play. All in all, it's certainly a fun and enjoyable title to lose a couple hours in.

For the context of this review, the platform primarily tested was the Wii release of the game.

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