I enjoy a good tower defense, so I figured i’d take a quick look at some of the demos available. I’m honestly surprised at how few I’ve written about, though I see so many are in some sort of drafts/notes stage over the years. Also I had one tagged with defence rather than defense, which I’ve gone back and changed for consistency. I’m going to cover a few of the newer ones I’ve played due to the fest, and go back through older ones I missed posting about, or maybe posted to social media before I started this site.
First up is Minimalist Tower Defense. As advertised, it’s simple graphically, and in overall design. You have a base to defend (the sun tower) which generates some basic resources and stores energy that it’ll release in a big burst come the next morning. You get a brief respite each morning, some easy waves during the day, and harder waves at night. I played several levels of the demo before moving on, but it was solid. I’m not sure it was anything special as far as TD’s go. That said, it’s only a few dollars, so I might pick this one up.
Tower Factory was next. It’s interesting with it’s automation aspect, but I found myself really feast or famine on resources at time due to random placement. It’s got a roguelite progression mechanic, which kept me going, thinking that if I just kept grinding, I’d be able to beat the demo level. I think it’s probably tuned a little too tight somewhere. You don’t get any sort of breathing room outside of the first minutes, you have to both use the resources dropped by killing monsters to find the enemy base, but also expand near your own if you deplete the resources there, but also find the crystals to destroy the enemy base. You have a hard tower cap, so there is only so much you can build before you’re going to be overwhelmed as the days progress and waves get harder. I eventually gave up so I can move onto other games. It’s interesting, but, frustrating in the end. I feel like this really has the juice with some tuning.
Emberward is also a roguelite, where you’re using essentially tetrominos (a few aren’t 4 blocks, but most are the same familiar shapes) to help adjust the enemies pathing to your base. You start off with a choice of a few tower types, your character (only one choice in the demo), forge, tetro’s and passive bonus. You then progress down a map towards the boss, choosing your route as you go. The routes conclude in a big boss battle fought over several rounds and add new mechanics to counter it. It’s bright, colourful, and the enemies and towers have enough variety to be interesting.
Now, plenty of other games I’ve already played in the past are in this fest. Kitchen Crisis, Plants vs. Zombies, Bad North: Jotunn Edition, the Orcs Must Die! series. As I said at the top, I should probably cover ones from past next fests I haven’t posted about yet.
Cats on Duty is a PvZ style TD that adds in a match 3 game mechanic for resources. It also has a unit upgrade mechanic where you’ll combine similar units in a row, which at the time I played the original demo, was fairly hard to get a good sense of control of which you’d end up with. You could risk leaving one lane lacking in defenses if you’re not careful and match vertically. It does have some neat stuff going on, and is very positive now that it’s been released a while.
Bella Wants Blood is a tower defense from this most recent Next Fest. It’s got a dark vibe, as you’re killing monsters to feed Bella their remains. I found I had to work on the balance between building out my lane with pieces from beating levels with new weapons.
Another from the June Next Fest is Super Fantasy Kingdom, though I’m not sure I’d call it a tower defense myself. I dumped a good amount of time into this roguelite city builder. You do assign out heroes in a fashion similar to a TD though, so close enough. It has a mix of permanent and temporary unlocks for each playthrough, and a story that sorta weaves through it’s progression. It had a fairly satisfying loop and easy to just play “one more run”.
Toy Shire has some cute vibes with the toy on toy battles and the child imagining the fights. I did come up hard against the boss at the end of the demo, it’s got some real promise.
TDS – Tower Defense Strategy is one I feel like I bounced hard off of. I could only manage a few waves of the first level and changing up my strategy over multiple attempts felt like I just could not get enough to beat it. Neat voxel graphics, a bit of resource harvesting and some active gameplay, but just doesn’t seem to be for me.
Dungeon Tycoon and Drill Core are both games I feel like should get fuller write-ups at some point, as this articles getting long. Tycoon mostly because of my play experience with it, Drill Core for being a fantastic game that needs the extra words.