Here there be Tower Defense discussion

I have always wanted to make a post of this type:

Rise to Ruins is the Dark Souls of Tower Defense games (YMMV).

But is it a roguelike? That would sell me!

Actually I already bought it and played for 5 minutes. I had no idea it was a tower defense game, how so?

I do like PM2 but it’s very much PM2 and doesn’t make any concessions to the way TD games have evolved since PM1. Unless you really liked PM1 it may not be appealing.

Keeping it on the wishlist, it will probably be bundle fodder like most of the Pixel Junk games eventually are.

The wave of enemies get tougher each wave and theres a lot of economy systems to balance. And you lose because your towers fail to kill the zombies. I choose to put it in the TD category, but is really a hybrid.

So are you liking it? I bought it because it looked inteeesting, but haven’t sat down to learn it.

I can’t say yet. [You can stop reading here]

I started a town in a bad spot, had to pick other region. On the next town things where going good, both the economy and defense. So I was overconfident, and tried to extend my base next to the corruption area (the corruption grown from a corner and get stronger every day). It seemed a good idea. I got incredible lucky with a moon night so no attack that night. But when they did attacked, they deleted my defenses, and the wave reached the main base (where other defenses stopped it, but I loosed some buildings). I think if I continue building in this town the next wave is going to destroy the whole town. I also losed a lot of people from starvation because mismanagement.
My problem is that I am in love with this tiny town and the well being of the citizens.
The game uses a multiregion system where you can play multiple regions and sent resources from one another, so I could probably start somewhere else, then send a excess resource to this town to continue the fight.

I am going to lose, but thats ok, because the game is also a lot like a roguelike, and what I have learned I will use for future runs. Then theres a small achievement rewards system so help a bit (only a small benefict) the next runs.

Theres a lot of game in here, and I have only scratched the surface. I don’t even know if I am going to play again, I dont want my villagers to die!

The game is tower defense in the sense that you defend with towers …and towers that generate defense units, is factorio in the sense everything is a economy and a production chain (even magic!), is dwarf fortress in the sense it create narratives and is sim city because is a god planner where you design a city.

You can make your perfect design, and have the enemy attack a summer day, the peasants having to walk too long to feed the towers with arrows, they will get hot, and if they have not water, they may start dyiing. You did not planned in advace having enough water, and the roads to the towers where not good enough. Since towns are not that big (mine had 56 citizens) each peasant dead is a small tragedy. But even when a peasant dead, theres his childrens, and his partner… And some nights you may see their ghost in the forest, so you can try to rez him using his ghost. Or if he died in the middle of a attack the zombies may find his corpse, and raise him has another zombie.

New game incoming!

I find the idea of being a “First Sergeant” in a quasi-medieval world quite amusing.

Same here. I tried X-Morph: Defense the other day, and it’s just too much when you have do participate in shooting enemies, going in and out of god mode to build, upgrade, etc. If I want that level of stress in my life, I’ll just play a regular RTS.

I also tried Alien Shooter TD, and man that was rough. The user interface wasn’t very self explanatory, the tutorial kinda bad and the graphics extremely non-polished. And why couldn’t they have the map on a single screen. Having to pan slightly in all directions just sucks. I played Kingdom Rush afterwards and it was just such a more enjoyable experience. In fact, the Defense Grid and Kingdom Rush games are the only TD games I’ve managed to really get into.

So I finally got around to playing Evil Defenders - Unknown to me, I must have purchased it b/c it was already in my steam folder.

It’s a polished game, much like Kingdom Rush, with many, many more upgrades.

Each map has like 7 different difficulty levels, and you get coin for completing each one - which you can then spend on tower & special ability upgrades.

I’ve found this to be challenging - it can take time to figure out a good strategy with no leaks.

However, the upgrade mechanic means you could in theory just grind to get upgrades, and going back & replaying levels isn’t satisfactory as you never have the same upgrades later in the game as the early ones.

So I think for a playthrough, it’s a good buy for TD fans - It seems longer than my 15 hours Steam says I’ve been playing it so far. Not sure how many levels, but new maps keep unlocking and I’m not sure how close I am to getting done.

well I finished Evil Defenders - clocking in at 25hrs. I left a few achievements on the table - and I’m OK with that. I don’t feel the need nor the desire to grind some of them out (one of them you have to kill more than 2x the enemies I’ve already killed!).

In the end, on most levels - except for the last one, I felt like it was a bit rote. You get to a point where the real challenge is the first map - it’s only 10 levels, so you can’t really generate the income to upgrade your towers to the biggest baddest version.

Subsequent levels increase by 5 up to 30 for “Inferno”, where I found myself frequently having it on 4x speed and only half paying attention.

I would still recommend it. The maps are interesting, and some are downright challenging. All maps have some sort of “landmark” that you can activate that will help you. And I found most maps I don’t need to really activate it, but the ones where I did I really couldn’t figure out another solution. Along with the devil hero you can place every so often, a teleport ability as well as a lightning ability means you are not just placing towers - you do have agency during play.

I know there are mixed feelings on Particle Fleet Emergence but I’ve been enjoying my time spent with the campaign so far, 10 missions in. Gotta love any game that makes you mop the map clean.

Just my usual statement that if you’re going to play a Knuckle Cracker game, I’d highly recommend Creeper World 3 over Particle Fleet. Vastly more depth, strategy, and control. I’m still just utterly baffled that they didn’t include any sort of point value limit for custom fleets in PF, that could have been a really great game.

I like the look of Creeper World 4 - I think it will help me remember that it is actually a 3 dimensional game (which I sometimes forget in CW3.

I love the Knucklercracker It’s games, but they do have their downsides.

  1. the developer is so chronically bad at naming things.

    “I have a slug like creature, with no legs, that floats and surfs across waves of creeper then explodes in the players base… I know, I’ll call it a STRIDER”.

    Every single unit in every single game is a horrible malapropism.

  2. The scrolly text weeaboo fanfic written by a teenager is awful as well. And he often mixes gameplay advice in there so I’m forced to reason that colossal nonsense.

* puts on punchable face mask*

Creeper World is a tower defense game? it feels more like draining water from a boat with a bucket.

I actually thought the story in CW3 was some pretty solid “big idea sci-fi” but, to each their own.

I probably didn’t give it a chance and just rapidly skipped through it. I don’t play TD games for the story :)

I’d say a bucket is being generous. Whereas I slog through the first few maps, inching my way to victory, I go onto youtube and see guys who are all about speed running and getting the map done quick. I envy them because they put more time into understanding all the mechanics. Me, I need a guide or something b/c I don’t understand how anything really works. For example, there is some sort of teleporter (not sure what it’s called, but it’s the 2nd distribution node you get) but damn if I understand how it works. I place them and never seem to see anything.

I have all the creeper games and someone posts an enthusiastic response about CW 3, I install it, play it for 30 minutes and give up. It reminds me of Darwinia and Multiwinia which I could never really grok either.