A long time ago, a few months at least, I was prepared to join the IBlog Empire by starting a video game blog, IBlogWhatIPlay. That didn’t exactly pan out, and the Empire has since crumbled and nature is reclaiming its territory, all except IBlogWhatIHear, where thankfully, Steve continues to hear stuff.
So today, I’m going to blog the way I would had I started that other blog idea. The point is just to write about the new games I play, and possibly introduce you to something you’ll enjoy. Which brings us to…..
The Creeps!

“The Creeps” is a tower-defense game for the iPhone. I’ve been playing almost as many iPhone games lately as I have computer games because of the 2 hours I spend sitting on the subway each day. Tower defense games, for those of you who don’t know about them, are strategy games where you have money to buy defensive towers. You place these towers where you want, which then automatically attack enemies trying to invade whatever it is you’re defending. When you kill the enemies, you get money to buy more towers, etc..
I’m a big fan of tower defense games, having played 7 or 8 of them a good deal. For me, “GeoDefense” was the best tower defense on the iPhone, but now “The Creeps” may be taking away its title. There are just a few things that make “The Creeps” special, but they work well and the game is overall very solid and polished.
First “The Creeps” has about 10 different towers, some of which are quite original. For standard towers, the biggest innovation is the flashlight tower, which ramps up its damage the longer it stays on an individual enemy. The towers are mediocre for killing normal enemies, but are vital for kill the bosses that come every 5-10 waves. There are also several “super towers” in the game which can only be used every once in a while but then have a large cooldown. Each of these towers also require you to use the iPhone’s accelerometer to do whatever they need to accomplish. For instance, oil slick towers make you tilt the phone so enemies slide up or down as if they were standing on your phone. UFO, Spider and Whirlwind towers make you move your phone to control the position of, well, your UFO, Spider or Whirlwind. These super towers add a lot to the strategy as they are quite powerful, but force you to ration out when they are used and plan ahead.
The other major innovation are the obstacles on the board. Enemies have a path that they move along to reach their goal, which in this game is a scared kid in his bed at night. Outside of the path there are lots of trees, rocks, seashells etc. which block you from building towers until they are destroyed. They also give you money when blown-up so you have to efficiently divide your time between blasting enemies and blasting obstacles.
I’m very happy with the game; certainly worth the 2 or 3 bucks I paid. I’ve beaten the 2 modes of play I like the most on hard, and am now going back and working on getting perfects on all of them (no enemies reaching their goal, and destroying all obstacles on the board).
I’m posting this in part, because the friend who introduced me to this game was having trouble on the 5th survival stage, called “A Sticky Situation”. I just perfected this level, and wrote up my strategy for her. There are some spoilers here, so if you’re planning to get the game and want to learn on your own, you’d best avoid what is to follow.
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*Note, I don’t endorse the setup of towers in this picture, it’s just the only pic of this level I found on the internet.
In the beginning, I always try to destroy as many obstacles as fast as I can. Once you get a money lead then you can afford to buy extra towers which can then be dedicated to destroying more obstacles etc. If you get a good start things tend to be really easy until you run out of obstacles to blow up.
On this level in particular you start with the spider tower to slow enemies, and the first boss creep doesn’t come until wave 10 or so, plenty of time to allow the tower to recharge. What I do is use that tower immediately to slow down the first batch of creeps while my lvl2 laser tower blasts away at the smaller rubble. Because waves do not have set starting points, but are timed based on when the last creep from the previous wave was destroyed, you get the most total time by placing the bulk of your towers away from the door, closer to the bed. On this stage I place my first tower on the open space within the circular area on the left. Also don’t be afraid to pause the game while you plan and build, as you waste less time thinking and clicking, and have more time to blow up obstacles.
Laser towers aren’t very good until upgraded fully to lvl 3 so my first couple towers will be laser towers and I upgrade them as soon as possible. I specifically place them so that they can reach the maximum amount of obstacles. Once you get ahead money-wise, you should be able to always have one tower blasting obstacles, while still having enough firepower to bring down creeps.
When I have the money to spare, I buy a flashlight tower and place it right in the middle of that circle. This tower sucks on normal creeps, but is vital for the bosses. Keep it moderately upgraded, use it in conjunction with the spider tower for each boss and you’ll be set. My one issue is that two bosses come just 5 rounds apart at one point, and my spider tower hasn’t yet recharged. If I plan it right however, I can kill the first of those two bosses without using the spider tower, but to do so I have to put a lot of money into my flashlight tower(s).
Other than that, I’m debating the usefulness of boomerang towers on this level. Boomerang towers do damage within a certain radius of their primary target, and is especially useful against grouped up creeps. On this level however, you have no glue towers, so creeps are a little more spread out, you may just get the most usefulness out of straight up laser towers.
One last tip, if you’re running into trouble on the last wave you can sell your spider tower for 600 bucks right after you get your final use out of it. That’s enough to pick up and extra flashlight tower for help on the last boss. On later levels, where you can build super towers instead of just starting with them, you can sell and rebuy them to avoid waiting for them the recharge. Since you get 80% of your money back when you sell, it will usually only cost you $150-200 bucks per use, which is a pretty good deal.