I take these DSiWare reviews at random. This one happened to have the word “dragons” in it, so I assumed—wrongly—that it would have something to do with giant, hexapedal flying reptiles. Maybe it was a dungeon crawler, a roguelike, or even something like Panzer Dragoon. But no, it’s just a terrible tower defense game. Remember my last DSiWare review?  Based on the fact that I take these things completely at random, I have to believe that the only thing coming out on DSiWare are tower defense games (this assumption is completely scientific).

This particular tower defense game has some innovative gameplay. You hold the system like a book, and the enemies, rather than flooding in from the right or left, come at you from the top of the screen. Amazing!  Of course, this completely changes the game. You start each round placing defensive and offensive items on the field, then press “go” and attack enemies by tapping the screen while they’re slowed down by your traps. If enough enemies reach your castle and drain its HP, it’s game over.

So it’s actually just like every other tower defense game ever made.

Tapping the screen during an enemy rush causes your off-screen character, Archer, to fire arrows toward enemies. You can fire four types of arrows, three of which have added effects. Those three special types, however, are in limited supply. As enemies die, they drop random items like arrow bundles, gears, coins, and attack upgrades. You also earn coins for getting combos—hitting multiple enemies in a sequence. Unfortunately, you lose your combo when you tap on a dropped battlefield item, which seems like a gigantic gameplay oversight.

You’ll die a lot, but you keep your gold, which you can spend on upgrading your attack power, quiver size, trap effectiveness, and tower HP. So in a way, it’s like a roguelike. But it’s still terrible. The game runs out of unique enemy types during the second level, relying instead on palate swaps. Switching arrow types is awkward because you have to tap on the D-pad, which doesn’t mesh too well with the book orientation. And because your arrow types are listed on the upper screen, you can’t just tap on them.

So even if you’ve got DSiWare points burning a hole in your pocket, there are hundreds of other games that are more worthwhile, like those My Notebook apps. Yes, My Notebook is better than this crappy tower defense game.