Following Pushmo and Sakura Samurai: Art of the Sword, the bar was set pretty high for Nintendo's latest 3DS download, Dillon's Rolling Western . While it perhaps doesn't reach the heights of those two titles, Rolling Western still has plenty to offer for eShop fans looking for a quirky, new tower defense game to play on the go. As you'd expect, you play as Dillon - an armadillo with attitude who has a squirrel for a partner. The two are self-declared rangers trying to earn an honest living by helping out villages in need. That basically amounts to protecting their Scrog herd from the attacking Grock monsters. There are 10 villages in all, each progressively more challenging than the last, and you spend three days and three nights at each.

Get+the+scruffles!!

Looks+painful.

During the day you roll around searching for mines, where you can find resources to either sell or help build defense gates. You also collect scruffles, white flowers that can be donated to the village to increase their Scrog count. If you want to, you can visit the towers spread across the level and build them up, repair them, or equip them with various weapons - if you have the free cash, of course. You can only visit the village and upgrade towers during the day segments, so you have to make sure you've taken care of all your business before nightfall.At night is when the action starts. That's when the Grocks begin their assault and it's all on you to keep them from reaching the village and nabbing the poor, defenseless Scrogs with the help of the towers and gates you built up during the day. You engage a Grock by rolling into it, which then takes you to an enclosed arena where you have to take down all of the Grocks in that area before returning to the level. The other Grocks keep progressing toward the village even as you battle, so it's in your best interest to take them out as fast as possible. The battling, which involves using the touch screen to perform a variety of attacks (rolling, grinding, claw attacks, etc.), is pretty enjoyable once you get the hang of it, and taking down the larger Grocks can be especially satisfying. The more Grocks you kill and Scrogs you save, the bigger your paycheck once the three days are over, so there's plenty of incentive to hone your skills.Rolling Western is fun and full of personality, though a couple of things bring it down a bit. It's a bit confusing why the sun doesn't gradually set, rather the squirrel pops up and tells you it's night - next thing you know, the sky is dark. Some of the quests you can accept in between day and night segments are also basically just repeats of previous quests, which feels a bit cheap. The map is also confusing. While you can see the Grocks on it, sometimes they'll appear or disappear for seemingly no reason. It has to do with the location of your watch towers, but this isn't ever really explained - and when you're on the other side of the field because the area near the village was clear, only to see a Grock appear out of nowhere at the gate, it can be a bit frustrating. Rolling Western is still completely playable - and, these minor annoyances aside, the game itself is still a blast - but it's a shame the developers didn't spend more time to get the map just right, especially for a tower defense/action hybrid such as this.