Last updated on December 12th, 2025 at 07:29 am
Merge Defense 3D! – Board Game Review
Merge Defense 3D! is a Board/Strategy game from Tatem Games Inc., first launched in 9th December 2019.
It’s rated 4+ and currently has 1,096+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Merge Defense 3D! Stand Out
Merge Defense 3D is an easy to learn, hard to master Tower Defense game. Simple controls, turn based game play, and tactical depth makes this game best time killer game for a daring mind.
How to play:
• Enemy Blocks advance each turn
• Place new defenders on the board to protect from enemies
• Defenders shoot automatically each turn
• Merge two defenders of the same level to upgrade its power
• Collect Keys and Gems to use power ups and unlock new defender
• Survive as long as you can
Game Features:
• Challenging brain puzzle. Think ahead!
• Beautifully easy and simple, no pressure and no time limit.
• Offline play
• Completely free
Have fun!
This Board game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Merge Defense 3D! is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 14th March 2025
Recent improvements include:
Updated plugins for increased stability and performance.
Download & Availability
Merge Defense 3D! is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Get Merge Defense 3D! on App Store
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
So the game in itself is a good time waster but the ad block doesnt work so dont waste money on it like we did.
At nearly an ad per move, game is near impossible to play. In the last 20 minutes, we have literally made a maximum of 3 moves before an ad. Note: Maximum. And notice, all the ads that play are advertising games that are ad free, literally drawing you away from merge defense and trying to force you to quit!!! Developer: we cant even transfer our progress between devices. Why would we trust that the ad free would transfer.
We paid to get rid of the ads, and on apple it says we paid but on the app it said no internet connection and the ads never went away.
Ads are very annoying so why not spend $3 to get rid of them. Too bad the game scams you and says it cant connect the purchase. Keeps saying there is no connection but our WiFi works and the ads are still playing through WiFi so how is it not connecting our purchase.
Seriously, ads every 30 seconds. And if you pay for no ads dont change phones because any time you try to redeem your purchase the app conveniently doesnt have internet connection But the internment works fine to run ads every 30 seconds.
The ad looks easy but it is not and that is why we love it so much because hard apps are the best of the best.
So after the tutorial Im playing but it is so hard we cant finish lvl 1 the difficulty on this is insane and Im wondering if you can change it somehow because its is fun and all but WAY too hard, we cant make it even halfway past lvl 1.
- End turn button. It would allow us to move more than on turret before every single block moves. 2. Upgradable towers. Its annoying to have to start over at level 1 towers every time you lose, feels like no matter how hard we try, it just played around the same time. The blocks just feel more powerful than our turrets. Maybe be able to move your base tower limit up with gems? That might make the game more fun. 3. Dont max the towers out at 20. Just makes game boring.
We played for probably 20 minutes and Im that time had around 10 ads. Levels take about 5 minutes to beat so youre looking at 2-3 ads per level. There are much better games to play with little to no ad interference.
Game is great, but permanent progression is needed or else it gets boring after a week or two.
It has a really different take on things and that honestly is what gets you so hooked but we just started and we already cant drag or tap anything this might be a bug but besides that good game. P.S maybe add game modes.
Its an enjoyable game. We wish the towers went above level 20. We just completed 1800 levels and at some point most of the blocks go from millions back to only a couple thousand. We have both layers of defenses up to level 20 and theres no challenge anymore because the blocks dont increase in level or health. The big bosses also get stuck at 2.1billion health and get no higher. At this point you have to watch two adds to take their health to 500million in which two rows of level 20 turrets can then kill it. It would be nice if that changed. Overall a great game.
Honestly this game is pretty good, we do have 1 complaint though, we wish we were able to press a End Turn button to end our turn, what we mean is, we wish we could do more stuff before the blocks get closer, examples are merge more turrets together, move stuff more, stuff like that, so can you please add the feature we could do more things per turn and press a End Turn button to well, end our turn, and no, we dont want you to charge people to get that feature, just please dont.
So we really like the game but it needs special towers/enemies only problem but big problem, everything else is great.
Just the amount of ads is ridiculous and makes us lose interest in continuing.
Every 5 moves we get an ad. That is just excessive. It is a fun game but it seems to be more ad than game at this moment in time.
Its a very good idea of game but every ten merges you get equals an ad and we hate ads. We mean we like the game but when you get into it and you want to just merge towers and play the actual game. You some times click on the ad when you are trying to do something in game.
The controls arent very responsive. We keep trying to slide pieces over several times before they actually move.
It was fun while it lasted, which was about an hour. Now every time we open it it is just a black screen then it crashes. Speaking of which, when an ad would load sometimes it would crash. When an ad was done sometimes it would crash. Im definitely keeping the app in case this gets fixed.
We got to 26, for our first time, and the game broke. Permanently. The concept is nice, but honestly dont expect a lot from this game.
We opened it for about 5 minutes before it froze. We closed the game and reopened it but we still wouldnt let us do anything.
Started playing then it freezes and we cant even do any moves besides the power ups and we just felt pain in general pleas fixing before we die of boredom.
We downloaded the game. Started playing and things were fine. 15 minutes in and we cant place or move anything. We shut down the app and restart. Allowed one move then it freezes again. Removed the app.
We saw an add for the game and downloaded it. Then we played for a little bit and we were unable to move anything after just 5 minutes. It didnt say anything, it didnt tell us to do anything, we couldnt click on anything. Its not our phone because its a XR. We tried to redo it and reload it but it never fixed itself.
We think the game is great. We have one issue with the games ability to respond. We were unable to play because it would only allow us to take one turn before the entire game froze and we would have to close the app. We can no longer play because we are now stuck at the main menu. The play button doesnt seem to respond when we interact. Please fix these problems.
Can you add a start button after every turn? It would be very helpful for the newest people.
There is no zero star or lower star available. We believe the person that said you cannot pass level without gems or video. We tried and failed, we are good at games like this, yet we relied on ads and gems so it is deleted in less than one hour of playing on it.
It is annoying how you can only make one move when they throw a lot at you. You should be able to select when you want to fire.
There is no way to beat the level unless you use gems which you can barely get, im not gonna sit her and play this game when you cant even get pass score 50 when you just get the game, honestly you need to make it easier for the beginners bc when youre new you can beat the game and get nearly pass 40 score.
We find ourselves thoroughly enjoying this game. We do wish there was some sort of skill tree or leveling up mechanic, as the fourth stage is seemingly impassible without watching every ad or spending every gem to use powerups. Hope you continue to develop.
Beginning, very fun. Not sure what happened when we got our guys up to lvl 15. The enemies all dropped their health way below a one shot. Then the boss just from 100 million to 2.1 Billion. Had to use the 1/2 health delete to stay alive. And we finished every spot with each unit all lvl 20 and its still the same thing low enemy lvl 2.1 Billion health boss. Game has bugs. But still decent.
Once you get the hang of it, we really like it.
We love playing this game as it is very enjoyable and easy to play. The only draw back are the adds in the game. We paid for the no adds and still get adds all the time. Im a little annoyed that we paid for no adds and it still shows them which defeats the purpose. This is our only gripe about the game or it would be a 5/5.
Too many ads. If they were at the bottom or top that would be better, like many other apps. Even if you click No thanks to watch an ad to try a level again it doesnt matter, youll still have to watch that ad. Itll make you watch the ad, you dont actually have a choice.
Game is entertaining, but the ad quantity is ridiculous. As you get further along in the game the ads are for sketchy apps to clean the data on your phone.
The game was interesting enough to almost convince us to spend $3 for no ads. But we lost interest very quickly, when we were forced into watching an ad seemingly every 4-6 turns. Strangely the ads dont just happen when you win a game, or want bonuses, but rather occurring several times during gameplay making it impossible to see if the game is even worth spending money on.
Oh our god !!! You cant even get thru 1 minute of playing until an ad pops up . You get back to the game and have to remember what you were doing , to bad cause the game was kind of fun but now it is deleted.
This game is so much fun but geez louise – recently the ad revenue mustve really gotten into the developers head.. Theres an ad every 5 turns which is abt two ads a minute. In this state the game is unplayable.
So the actual game is an interesting ever evolving puzzle/strategy game that is quite fun! However u can barely play it as every 3-5 turns even if u say no to the add to boost your reward they still make u watch an add when u start to get to higher levels the adds start showing up faster and faster to the point where the adds will literally end your game at which point we have to close the entire program and can start over (even though u didnt lose) or u can come here and write a 1 star review when this has happened to u on 3 occasions cause it is absolutely ridiculous that we have to lose progress because the maker of the game cant stop adds from showing up every 2 freaking seconds and bogging the game down to the point of a critical failure.. We highly recommend staying away from this game due to the slap in the face treatment u get when (not if) the game freezes due to the devs greed for add space.
Currently at level 60, and every level is the same, the variations are so minuscule and are more annoying than anything, you WILL spend more time watching more ads than playing, ESPECIALLY because a few levels are legitimately unbeatable without power ups, which you have to spend currency or watch ads to get. Every level takes like 10 minutes, and its just monotonous. ON TOP OF ALL THAT, the game runs so bad, our phone overheats in like 10 minutes, and we have an IPhone 11. Its boring, bad, monotonous, and you spend more time watching ads them playing, and its so long So Boringly and depressingly long.
Deleted this after a day. Ads everytime we did anything and terrible interface.
Best game in a couple years!! Beside suduko.
We paid for an in-app purchase to remove ads, but it didn't work, Customers service is horrible they never even messaged us back.
Love the game but we spend more time watching ads than actually playing. It gives you rewards every few seconds and you can choose to watch an add to multiply it but even if you press no thanks it still makes you watch an ad. We would love to keep playing but we dont want to spend half our time sitting here doing nothing while an ad plays.
Bad gameplay and too much ads, the game is laggy and has to many ads even if you say no to any ad you still get a ad.
Levels take hundreds of turns to pass, but the app glitches and restarts constantly, completely losing all progress in whichever level you were working through. When we have gone through over 300 turns and am less than 50 away from finally beating it, through no fault of our own, we suddenly need to start from the beginning. In our opinion, the levels are way too long in general, but when progress is not saved, they are impossible and utterly infuriating.
Some of the ads dont allow us to exit and we keep having to start levels over. Im done with this.
Like the title says, you get bombarded with ads. Even if you press no thanks when prompted to watch an ad to get bonus rewards you still get an ad shoved in your face. No thanks means no thanks. If we want to watch the ad Id press the button and get bonus rewards. If you really absolutely need to keep showing ads just have an ad on the top or bottom of the screen while we play.
There are so many ads that you forget youre even playing a game. The game isnt even that fun either. Dont waste your time.
This game is hard because you have to be careful.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 2.3.622
- Size: 156.76 MB
- iOS: 13.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, JA, KO, ZH, ES, ZH
- Content Advisory:
- Developer: Tatem Games Inc.
Last updated: 14th March 2025 | Genre: Board, Strategy | Developer: Tatem Games Inc.