Review Insights · App Store
The Tower - Idle Tower Defense
Tech Tree Games LLC · 18,766 ratings · ★ 4.2
4.2
★★★★★
18,766 ratings
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Top complaints - extracted from 45 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
40 negative reviews mention this · 89% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Progress too slow. The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress." - Epicxxrachael
2
"money"
23 negative reviews mention this · 51% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Progress too slow. The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress." - Epicxxrachael
3
"playing"
13 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Progress too slow. The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress." - Epicxxrachael
4
"play"
13 negative reviews mention this · 29% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Progress too slow. The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress." - Epicxxrachael
5
"slow"
11 negative reviews mention this · 24% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Progress too slow. The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress." - Epicxxrachael
6
"progress"
10 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Progress too slow. The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress." - Epicxxrachael
7
"players"
10 negative reviews mention this · 22% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unbalanced. Spent $20 on the game. Played it for hours today so I'm not mad about the money. Cheaper than a movie lol. But making paying players farm to increase game speed time is diabolical. Would gladly give more stars if this mechanic was removed f…" - holbomb17474
8
"free"
9 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Progress too slow. The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress." - Epicxxrachael
9
"devs"
9 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Pay to Win. Exactly what the title said. It’s an app that the devs treat is as a cash grab. There’s a small community online where they receive feedback and areas of improvement, but lately all they seem to care about is cranking out p2w items to rake …" - SirWesselton
10
"spend"
9 negative reviews mention this · 20% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Good gameplay feels like spending money is forced.. Gameplay is good. Advertisements for Free to play options never end though. I watched 10 minutes of television until one of my ads closed and I think that’s ridiculous and unacceptable." - Hoovs21
11
"unless"
8 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Meh. Great time waster. It is not an idle game at the start. Requires your constant attention. Unless you drop money on this game to bypass the atrociously slow progression. It’s also just a random chance you make it far." - Havvaiian
12
"spent"
8 negative reviews mention this · 18% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Too much pay to win. The insane level of pay to win aspect of the game is deplorable. The rewards are minuscule per dollar spent. Don’t start playing this! You will be wasting so much time, and it requires running all the time on your phone or other devices." - Jim Aegert
📋 All 45 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Meh
Great time waster. It is not an idle game at the start. Requires your constant attention. Unless you drop money on this game to bypass the atrociously slow progression. It’s also just a random chance you make it far.
Pay to Win
Exactly what the title said. It’s an app that the devs treat is as a cash grab. There’s a small community online where they receive feedback and areas of improvement, but lately all they seem to care about is cranking out p2w items to rake in as much as possible.
Do I play this game more than I should?
-Yes.
Will I continue playing?
-Also yes, for now.
Would I recommend this game to anyone else?
-No. It’s a waste of time
Do I play this game more than I should?
-Yes.
Will I continue playing?
-Also yes, for now.
Would I recommend this game to anyone else?
-No. It’s a waste of time
Slow and repetitive. Pay to win
3/10
Another Pay to Win
Been playing for about a week now and still can’t beat lvl 50. The game is designed to only progress if you spend money. Go figure. After watching all the adds about endless upgrades you’d think one would progress through the game at a steady pace but instead you’re stuck playing the same levels over and over again to gain some coins to unlock a SINGLE upgrade after each game. The upgrade costs skyrocket every time you level one up. I haven’t unlocked 95% of the perks of the game yet either which just proves it’s a damn money pit. Sad. I was excited when first starting but now I’m just over it. Find a better free game
Too much pay to win
The insane level of pay to win aspect of the game is deplorable. The rewards are minuscule per dollar spent. Don’t start playing this! You will be wasting so much time, and it requires running all the time on your phone or other devices.
Increasingly Pay2Win
I have a played this game for a few years now, and I've gotten a fair bit of enjoyment out of it, but I cannot personally recommend it to others as it simply demands too much for the average person while the game is trending into an increasingly greedy, pay to win direction. Additionally, many of the new updates ship with significant bugs, and changes several days in when the owner of the game realizes something that just released was too strong or generous. No, you won’t be compensated for anything you spent on it (unless you ask support, maybe?).
If you want to get far you need to have a dedicated device to run it 24/7 and be prepared for an ecosystem that thinks of you as F2P if you aren't dropping $150 a month (no joke!). Your time and money are better spent elsewhere. In other words, if you aren’t prepared to whale, and to whale HARD, just stay away. The devs won’t care about you.
If you want to get far you need to have a dedicated device to run it 24/7 and be prepared for an ecosystem that thinks of you as F2P if you aren't dropping $150 a month (no joke!). Your time and money are better spent elsewhere. In other words, if you aren’t prepared to whale, and to whale HARD, just stay away. The devs won’t care about you.
Unbalanced
Spent $20 on the game. Played it for hours today so I'm not mad about the money. Cheaper than a movie lol. But making paying players farm to increase game speed time is diabolical. Would gladly give more stars if this mechanic was removed for customers that paid for ad-free. Boring to start a new game, set your tree, and just watch everything on autopilot for the first 30 stages. I can only imagine the horror of higher levels past day one.
Boring
The game is so slow-paced and repetitive, and you lose interest
Broken ads
Broken ads are the reason I stopped playing this game. After a long time, I tried to play again today… and once again, an ad got stuck on the screen forever. How do others play this?
Could be great, but its not
I really want to enjoy this game, but the devs are unbelievably malicious. The devs literally do their best to mislead their player base to immediately exploit them. Ive never actually encountered anything in my life that is this exploitative and underhanded, it really is surprising. I would just stay away from this “game” its really nothing more than a scam.
Great idea, terrible dev team
Dev team is sloppy and out of touch with what the average player wants. Constant nerfs and dramatic changes to small problems. Latest changes have negated the money I’ve spent on this game. Avoid at all costs.
Don’t trust what devs say
Recent patches show devs are turning what was a fun game into a blatant cash grab
Amazing Community, Disgusting Developer
The most predatory game you could ever play. Don’t bother downloading unless you’re ready to spend $500+. The developers are always looking for ways to promise the world and then pull the rug out from under you. You will never be able to catch up to players that spend $1000+/month on the game. The developers are getting really greedy and it has soured the vibes. The community on Reddit and discord used to be a wholesome group of people, and it has gotten to the point where there is nothing but complaining because of how unfair the devs are treating their core base of people that only spend a couple hundred $’s on the game (the bare minimum to make any meaningful progress over the first 2 years of playing).
The Tower of Greed
This game started off incredibly fun. And then has just gotten consistently worse over the year or so I’ve been playing. From rug pulls from the developers to outright lies and broken patch shipments, I strongly encourage you to play another game or if you do play this one, don’t pay for anything. The value of your money is not respected by this development company.
you either pay to have fun or struggle at the bottom
unless your willing to spend thousands goodluck trying to have fun with all the features this game has to offer
Predatory Practices
Developers communication is slow is purposefully misleading to ensure players are left behind unless they cough up their hard earned money. The game is also not an Idle Tower Defense as the name suggests. You will not progress if your screen is locked or using another app. You must keep the game on at all times if you want to progress which will chew through the life of your phone battery.
It’s a trap!
This game has some interesting mechanics, and definitely will appeal if you like min-maxing optimization and spreadsheets. Unfortunately, long term progression is gated behind competition, and players with older accounts and who have been spending lots of money will always win access before f2p, casual, and new players. Keep this in mind and take a look at the purchase prices ($15 for a two week bonus, stone and gem packs for $50-$100) before you decide to commit! Development and release process feels like playing a beta. For the analytical basis, it seems like data is an afterthought (clunky export, inconsistent reporting) and the devs have clearly spent a lot more time thinking about maximizing income rather than things like UI and QoL features that would ultimately make it a lot more enjoyable long term.
Ultimately, it’s a cool idea with a predatory implementation. Run away!!!
Ultimately, it’s a cool idea with a predatory implementation. Run away!!!
Greedy Devs
I’ve been playing since June of 2022 (they have a stat screen) and am quitting this game. I used to love it, and played it obsessively for years, during which time they made increasingly blatant decisions to increase money spent, often at the expense of FTP players.
Don’t waste your time.
Don’t waste your time.
Money hungry developers
This game is a money grab. Unless you’re willing to spend loads of money, you’ll be stuck with no where to go in the game.
Turning into a pay to progress
There are play to win games, TTG has gone one step further with pay to progress. It is no longer a game where you can slowly build up your tower, it has devolved into a game where if you don’t pay, you don’t progress and fall behind.
The developers regularly release bugged content. The leader “Fudds” regularly ignores the feedback of the community. The game has several types of currency, and keeps adding stone sinks (a rare currency) with no added ways to gain stones.
The developers regularly release bugged content. The leader “Fudds” regularly ignores the feedback of the community. The game has several types of currency, and keeps adding stone sinks (a rare currency) with no added ways to gain stones.
More and more predatory
When I started this game it felt like you could buy a $10 ad-free pack and be playing a fair game. Every update has been more and more predatory, especially on new players
Progression/Ads
Progression isn't the worst it's just insanely slow. My personal problem is the ad's in the game. I'd love to watch them to get the rewards but they don't close once the ad's are done. Only way to go back to the game is to reset the app and my progress which is terrible.
Scam
Not idle at all. Absolutely zero progress made outside of running your phone (actually) 24/7/365.
Ads that don’t give rewards
Pretty self explanatory. Ads just get stuck after you sit through it. It’s already unbearable as is. Either give us the rewards without ads or at least make them work correctly since it’s basically half of the game
The most pay2win game that destroys your phone
This game is not idle, you have to leave your phone active for it to continue playing. This has destroyed many players' phones by causing battery failure. Your lithium ion battery will expand like a balloon and possibly explode because of this game.
You have to spend over $400 a month to make any amount of meaningful progression. This game is disgustingly pay2win, and the developer almost exclusively makes new content for the top 1% of players who have spent, at minimum, tens of thousands of dollars. It has time-gated research, so you'll never catch up. Unless you spend tens of thousands of dollars.
Do not waste your time or money on this.
You have to spend over $400 a month to make any amount of meaningful progression. This game is disgustingly pay2win, and the developer almost exclusively makes new content for the top 1% of players who have spent, at minimum, tens of thousands of dollars. It has time-gated research, so you'll never catch up. Unless you spend tens of thousands of dollars.
Do not waste your time or money on this.
Skip this one
Weekly missions to watch ads. Watch a 2 minute ad - game spins and errors out. Don’t get credit.
Pay to win
Slow pay to win game. It’s mildly fun but then you realize it isn’t idle either. You have to keep it active 24/7 on a device to compete at all. Recently it started showing advertisements again even with the purchased no-ads pack. Don’t waste your time and money on this.
Once promising, now a cash grab.
I played the tower for over a year. First, it is not an idle game, you need to play it almost 24/7 to farm coins to advance. The creative team has made many, MANY, questionable choices in the last year; choosing to focus on ways to extract cash from players over balanced gameplay. Recently there was a bug pushed to production that allowed thousands of users to ‘unlock’ features worth about $700 in the game currency, for free. This was patched within hours, but other bugs that cause players to be unable to log in, or to properly save progress get ignored for MONTHS. They say there are unlimited ways to build your tower, but mysteriously, only the build that costs thousands of real world dollars in game money are competitive in weekly tourneys. (The only way to get said in game currency through play, not purchases.)
On top of that, they use their big spending players as QA testers, and the lead game designer has openly stated that he hasn’t played the game for more than a week or two.
Promising idea that simply values your wallet over actual game development.
On top of that, they use their big spending players as QA testers, and the lead game designer has openly stated that he hasn’t played the game for more than a week or two.
Promising idea that simply values your wallet over actual game development.
Don’t do it
This one hurts to write. The tower has been a constant for me… running 24/7 in the background of my life. It’s slow progression, addictive loops, and you spend money to advance. It took up physical space in my life, but it was never a burden. I loved this game.
Then they dropped v28. They added a feature nobody asked for, but everyone loved. Then they pulled it(or modified it). No warning, no time to adjust. They called it a mistake.
The adjustment they made after their mistake was still amazing. But that’s not the point. This is the 4th time they’ve pulled a feature that benefits everyone, and they did it without communication.
I’m not mad about the change. I’m disappointed at how they changed it. We always knew they served the big spenders in the game. It was an accepted reality. But to disrespect a very vocal and passionate community of players by saying “whoops” then silencing everyone in Reddit for calling them out is a new level of low.
Save yourself the trouble. Don’t play this game.
Then they dropped v28. They added a feature nobody asked for, but everyone loved. Then they pulled it(or modified it). No warning, no time to adjust. They called it a mistake.
The adjustment they made after their mistake was still amazing. But that’s not the point. This is the 4th time they’ve pulled a feature that benefits everyone, and they did it without communication.
I’m not mad about the change. I’m disappointed at how they changed it. We always knew they served the big spenders in the game. It was an accepted reality. But to disrespect a very vocal and passionate community of players by saying “whoops” then silencing everyone in Reddit for calling them out is a new level of low.
Save yourself the trouble. Don’t play this game.
Devs failures
I don’t write reviews like ever but I care about and love this game devs don’t seem to listen to feedback and seem to only care about whales money it’s a shame
Devs don’t care
The recent update showed that if you aren’t a whale or have been playing 3+ years then you don’t matter. Way too late for any new players to start playing and try to compete. The idle part only applies to maybe 10% of the player base. I used to be a heavy spender but even with the money I’ve spent, players that have been playing longer than me have the advantage. There’s no catch up mechanic. If you didn’t start playing at the release of the game, you’ll never get to the top tier QOL and new gameplay mechanics the devs release once a year.
Waste of time and money
The owner of the game is supremely motivated by profit. He has created gridlock unless you are a whale. I can’t recommend.
I don’t normally write reviews but…
This game could be really fun, if the developers stopped ruining it to appease the top 1% whales. Without spending money it could probably take a decade of running the game 24/7 to maybe get to where the whales are now, and they’d be long gone by the time you got there.
Furthermore, the constant bait and switches and obvious priorities in squeezing money out of everyone is awful.
The tournaments in this game strait up suck. They claim there are so many builds that you can do but any good build is locked behind resources you can only really get from tournaments. One of these resources is only accessible to the top bracket and unlocks a whole feature to the game that I don’t think most of us will ever see.
Furthermore, the constant bait and switches and obvious priorities in squeezing money out of everyone is awful.
The tournaments in this game strait up suck. They claim there are so many builds that you can do but any good build is locked behind resources you can only really get from tournaments. One of these resources is only accessible to the top bracket and unlocks a whole feature to the game that I don’t think most of us will ever see.
Progress too slow
The game wants your money. Playing for free = soooo little progress.
Freemium done right. Terrible PvP.
Free to play with ads. Pay to remove ads.
Do not expect to ever catch up. Game is a pyramid. The only way you get better is if people join after you or people ahead of you quit.
Do not expect to ever catch up. Game is a pyramid. The only way you get better is if people join after you or people ahead of you quit.
Good gameplay feels like spending money is forced.
Gameplay is good. Advertisements for Free to play options never end though. I watched 10 minutes of television until one of my ads closed and I think that’s ridiculous and unacceptable.
Don’t play
Upgraded my stuff and now they make more blocks spawn even faster and makes my upgrades useless so I was making it past wave 20 now I can’t pass wave 4.
Slow and a lot of micro transactions
Honestly, kinda mid. the game play is super supportive of making you spend money and to even start to actually play the game free it takes like 3+ hours. The ads also use ai and basically just lie. The only reason I’m writing a review is because I believe a lot of the current ones are bots.
Fun
But don’t give the developer a single cent. The game is designed for you to spend money.
Very slow
You unlock new upgrades incredibly slowly, and in order to earn those upgrades you need to just sit there while your tower shoots for you. The only interaction during the actual game is clicking a button once you have enough cash for an extra 3 points of damage. It can keep you entertained, but there are certainly better alternatives.
Please fix ads
Was a great game but recently within the last week and a half I can no longer activate my 1.5x coin boost because it gives me ads that don’t pop up with an x and this only happened not long after I bought the pass that I got theirs 1, 2, and 3
Not worth investing more time in.
I know I was still a low level player but I unlocked up to level 6. It’s a tedious game. Slow and repetitive. But that’s not why I quit. I’m quitting because some ads freeze the game and i can’t exit them. I have a app policy that if the ad system is broken where I can’t exit the ad I delete the game. Also the option to get gems for playing other games is tedious and glitchy. Trying to be as free to play as possible that makes this slow and repetitive game unplayable for me.
Build it, Break it, Nerf it
This game has become incredibly frustrating to play. Every time a new update drops, it’s quickly followed by a patch that nerfs the very features they just introduced. You spend time adjusting your build, only to have it made useless shortly after.
Want to fix your build again? Sure, just spend more money on gems or stones. Progress starts to feel less about strategy and more about how much you’re willing to pay.
On top of that, some features are essentially locked behind paywalls, which makes it hard to stay competitive without spending.
What’s most disappointing is that player feedback doesn’t seem to be welcomed or acknowledged at all. It feels like the developers are more focused on monetization than creating a balanced and enjoyable experience.
Want to fix your build again? Sure, just spend more money on gems or stones. Progress starts to feel less about strategy and more about how much you’re willing to pay.
On top of that, some features are essentially locked behind paywalls, which makes it hard to stay competitive without spending.
What’s most disappointing is that player feedback doesn’t seem to be welcomed or acknowledged at all. It feels like the developers are more focused on monetization than creating a balanced and enjoyable experience.
Used to be alright, but now ads are broken.
Ads can no longer be closed to claim rewards, and it feels intentional so you get all the revenue from the ads but give no rewards.
Disappointed
Started the game and loved it from the start but the recent handling of the game has really ruined the fun. A lot of poor choices from the creators. Communication needs work and constantly moving the “finish line” leads to a game where progress is meaningless. Not to mention the P2W is super predatory
Sentiment summary
83%
Positive (4-5★)
4%
Neutral (3★)
13%
Negative (1-2★)