Help a tribe of warrior bunnies defend their stash of carrots from the thieving foxes (but what would foxes want with carrots?) in Carrot Watch, a cartoony tower defense style game for iPhone and iPad. When the game starts, foxes will march from the bottom of the screen to the top, where your pile of carrots is kept. Select from a variety of different bunnies and strategically place them about the level with your finger to whittle down the foxes’ energy and keep them from nabbing your stash. When a fox reaches the top, it’ll take away one of your carrots. Lose all your designated carrots in a level and you’ll have to start that stage over again.

There are several bunnies you can choose from, each with different attack power and range. Boxer bunnies will punch nearby foxes as they pass, while Indian bunnies use peashooters to snipe foxes from a distance. The lady bunny distracts the foxes and slows them down, giving you more time to hit them. Each bunny costs a certain amount of coins to hire, and you start each level with a given number of coins. As you destroy foxes, they’ll drop more coins for you to use to buy more bunnies. Just tap on the screen to collect the coins. Sometimes a present will appear on the screen. Tap it to get a special weapon, like bombs, which you can use when you’re in a bind. If you can manage to survive the waves of marching foxes, you’ll move on to the next level.

After each level the game will give you a score based on how many carrots were left at the end. You can also earn stars which unlock more bunny fighters, although it was a little unclear to me how you get those stars. There are five worlds with four levels in each. It may seem like a short game, but the stages get challenging pretty quickly. I guess the only other problem I had with this game is that you have to be very careful and precise when placing your bunny fighters around the screen, because sometimes they can fall to the next ledge if you aren’t paying attention to where you drop them. But if you love cartoony games and can’t get enough tower defense, then you may want to watch out for Carrot Watch.

Kid Factor:

Carrot Watch isn’t rated by the ESRB as far as I can tell, but if it was, I’d say it would be E for Everyone with an ESRB descriptor of Cartoon Violence. When the foxes get defeated, they either just fly off the screen or turn into a pile of ashes with their eyes still blinking. Like Wile E. Coyote in the Road Runner cartoons. In fact, the game’s art style kind of reminds me of Looney Tunes. Reading skill is helpful, and while the game starts out super simple, it gets challenging pretty quickly, so little ones might get frustrated. But if you think your kids would enjoy tower defense style games, this is a good one to start them out with.

Tags: Game Reviews