If you’ve played Kingdom Rush or Kingdom Rush Frontiers, you’re familiar with this terrific franchise.Kingdom Rush Origins (US$2.99 with in-app purchases), available today, adds to the awesomeness with more cartoonish, fun and challenging tower defense.

Looks

Kingdom Rush Origins is one of those beautiful games that makes you say, “Oh wow.” It’s got a fantasy them with a cartoonish feel that immediately engaging and fun. In fact, a sense of fun permeates the whole experience, from the tiniest hero (“You have my sword!”) to the sound effects and music. But at its heart, Kingdom Rush Origins is a fun tower defense game.

Game play

This edition is a prequel to the original Kingdom Rush, if you like a little flavor with your game play. Long before Vez’nan sought to unleash the gem of power, these brave souls fought ogres, worgs and more across the kingdom. Now you can command soldiers, archers, mystics (new) and stone druids (new). In all, there are eight new tower updates with 18 new abilities.

You must carefully place the various types of towers along a route that the enemy will take as they march towards the goal. Upgrade towers as you play and unlock special abilities to defeat wave after wave of bad guys. The story gets more epic as you play with tougher enemies and the dawn of the dreaded Twilight Army.

In between battles you can use gems and in-game currency (or real currency, if that’s OK with you) to buy upgrades and unlock new heroes, each of whom brings a unique skill to the melee.

Look, Kingdom Rush is a wildly successful franchise and Origins embodies the “why.” Great looks, super fun game play, enjoyable music and fun Easter Eggs (see above). Anyone who loves tower defense games ought to have this on their device.