Babel Rising, provided to me by publisher Bulkypix and developer White Bird Productions, lets you control God in an attempt to halt the construction of the Tower of Babel. A never ending stream of people will try to build the tower. You have six powers to use to stop them!

People come from two sides of the screen, walking towards to center where they will drop stones in place to construct the tower. The taller the tower becomes, the longer it will take people to climb to the top to drop the next stone. As the game progresses, people will come in larger groups. Eventually they will succeed in building the tower, ending the game, but the replay value comes from improving your high score.

You have six powers that you can use to stop the builders. Power of the Divine allows you to tap on people to kill them. Zeus' Thunderbolt, triggered by a downward swipe, electrocutes a group of people. Divine Wind blows people off from one level of the tower and is triggered by swiping horizontally. A tsunami is summoned by swiping horizontally with two fingers. It can kill many people but only effects the lower levels. The Flood of Fire power, triggered by swiping down with two fingers, hits everywhere, summoning a meteor shower. Lastly an earthquake is created by shaking the device. This also hurts everyone. Powers charge over time, becoming more powerful if you wait to use them when they're charged.

The strategy in Babel Rising comes from managing power usage. When a charged power is used, it goes back to being completely uncharged. You have to decide whether it's better to use a power frequently but less charged or infrequently while more charged. The powers don't hurt the tower, but it would have been nice if they had. This would have given an extra depth to the game, especially if some powers hurt the tower but not the people. Babel Rising uses OpenFeint, a cross-game network featuring friends, achievements, chat, and more. You can earn trophies in Babel Rising for accomplishing various tasks, and these are updated to your OpenFeint account. After the game ends, it displays all new trophies you earned. Unfortunately, if you view your new trophies too quickly, they won't update to OpenFeint. This can be prevented by viewing them slowly or fixed by viewing your trophies again from the main menu. If you view a trophy of which OpenFeint wasn't aware, it will immediately update. This is a minor problem, but it would be nice to see it fixed.

Babel Rising is very easy to control. The powers are simple to remember, and the gestures to activate them correspond well with their powers. The graphics are nice and animation is smooth. The music is fun, consisting of a sort of chanting that, at least to me, seems to fit very well.

Babel Rising is a simple game and is quite fun if you like tower defense or similar games. It seems very polished (as is common with all of Bulkypix's games). Games can run over ten minutes, but you can continue where you left off if you decide to exit the game. While it would be nice if the powers could hurt the tower, Babel Rising is still quite enjoyable at a low price of $0.99 US. If you enjoy defense games pitting yourself against endless enemies, try jumping into God's shoes and stopping these heretics!