I enjoy a good tower defense, and Islets Defense is a delightful entry to the genre. Almost as much a puzzle game as it is a tower defense, you’ve got 4 options for your turn (as it is turn-based rather than real time waves) to alter the map to your liking.
You have 4 actions you can take on your turn, Build, Upgrade, Explore, and Morph. They are arranged left to right, increasing in strength to the right, and go to the back of the pile to the left when used. You’ve also got an ability to move one card to anywhere in the order, with a bit of a cooldown. So the Build action in the leftmost slot can only build a lumber yard, at full strength in the fourth slot, it can build anything, including cannons. You also have to manage resources, with food and wood being ongoing turn by turn, while stone is semi-limited and a one-off from when you blow up the deposits. Of course, with Morph, you can place more stone (or other tiles).
The enemies move one slot at a time, with numbers on their head for how much damage they can take. so you can plan around your cannon placement and upgrades to ensure they’re taken down before they get to your castle. Additionally, each level has challenges tied to it, such as building (and maintaining the upkeep) of four cannons, or blowing up 5 mushrooms hidden in the fog of war on the map. As you uncover the map with the Explore action, you may also find treasure chests that give you a choice of a special building or a large amount of resources.
The demo for Islet’s Defense is overall fairly short, with only a few maps, but I had a great time working through the challenges, the arts great, and I love how they’ve done everything. There isn’t a release date set beyond “2025”, so hopefully this demo sticks around for a while to make sure people get a chance to play it.