Immortal Defense - unparalleled TD finally makes it to Steam

Games
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So this classic from 2007 finally got its long deserved release on Steam. Hurrah!

Unfortunately, and understandably, I don’t think it’s had much attention amid the ongoing deluge so I figured I’d make a post about it. Yeah, it’s tower defence, and yeah, the trailer and screenshots are all kinds of ‘I have no idea what’s happening here’ [edit: actually the new trailer seems a lot clearer], but trust me on this: if you like TD, this is a no brainer. If you don’t like TD it’s still worth a look. It’s not only my favourite tower defence game, but it’s one of my favourite games, full stop. I loved it back in 2009 when I first played it and the new version on Steam comes with a raft of improvements too over the original, hence why I’m playing it again. It still holds up beautifully, I’ve got to say.

In Immortal Defense you have given up your world and physical body to become an immortal defender in ‘pathspace’, a dimension above hyperspace. There, you are but a ghost to the Bavakh, one of the most tyrannical races in the galaxy, who are using hyperspace to attack your home planet Dukis. As a path defender you focus aspects of your will – fear, love, courage, pride, precision and others – to form ‘points’ (the towers of ID) to stop the Bavakh. This is how the game begins, but it’s far, far away from where it ends.

So what makes it special? It’s many things. It’s the haunting story, the turns it takes and the themes it deals with. It’s the hugely inventive and unusual towers. It’s the way the mouse pointer is used as its own tower; shooting, charging shots and synergising with other towers in powerful and unexpected ways. It’s the kaleidoscopic visuals, the warbling, droning sounds and the crystalline shattering of enemies as they bleed and streak light across the screen. It’s the strange enemy designs and their unusual abilities. It’s the rousing and understated soundtrack. It’s the many challenging levels (and the new challenge stages which restrict what towers you can place encouraging you to use them more effectively). It’s the little things like kill counts per tower so you can gauge how effective your layouts are, the recycle value of a tower degrading over time so a quick placement mistake won’t punish you (and mass end-of-level-selling won’t help). It’s your cache rolling over from one level to the next to encourage efficiency. It’s the endless simulated assaults bookending each chapter, testing what you’ve learnt and ultimately determining how much cache you start the next chapter with. It’s the level editor and the bundled fan levels, the detailed in-game manual, the leaderboards (if you’re into that kind of thing)… and more, I’m sure.

It’s £6.99 or $10(ish).

I know Tom’s not a fan of tower defence but he had this to say about ID back in 2009, which I always liked:

“This is a damn fine tower defense game, and probably the most pleasant surprise among them all. In fact, it’s pretty much the reason I’m writing this column on tower defense games. Until I stumbled across this gem, I was ready to just dink around with Plants vs. Zombies for a while. And really, stuff like Immortal Defense is what makes videogaming such a great hobby. You’re tooling along, bored with the usual stuff, underwhelmed by the big-budget epic stuff, ready to dismiss an entire genre with a weary jaded wave, and out of the blue – BANG! – you find something that thrills and delights you when you least expect it.”

Here’s a few more comments I dug out from the forums:

Jonathan Blow and Vic Davis weighed in on it too:

And there’s plenty more praise across the 'net, and on the Steam page of course.

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I’ve had this game on Impulse since way back, and the story in particular really stands out. Real gonzo psychophilosophical stuff. Always wanted to know where it goes, but I couldn’t quite push myself through the levels to find out. I actually like tower defense, especially back then, but I guess I like easy tower defense games because when things get so challenging I have to play a level over and over I often feel outmatched and just stop. I can’t remember for sure if that’s what happened with Immortal Defense, but it probably is. I also don’t personally like the “you take an active role” variant on TD, though I can see why those who are tired of the usual formula would. Anyway, lots to recommend here, for sure.

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Note that if you purchased it way back when (though not if you got a full copy through Game Giveaway of the Day, since the author doesn’t have those records) and still have some proof of purchase, you can email rinkuhero at gmail.com and he’ll send you a Steam key. Manually, so be patient (although he sent me mine inside like, five minutes).

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Good to know. Thanks, malkav.

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Thanks for the heads up on this. Bought. I live for Tower Defense games. Just got through with Gemcraft Chasing Shadows & starting another one called “Alien Robot Monsters” which so far is underwhelming, but I"m only 30 min into it.

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Great game!
The only flaw maybe was the later levels where all the lights and special effects on screen diminished visibility in a way that affected the gameplay.

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I had forgotten this game existed. I think I’ll buy it again.

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Thinking about it, most of my favourite TD games have you play a more active role – Revenge of the Titans, Sang-Froid, Comet Crash, Dungeon Defenders, this.

I’ve no idea how much easier you can make ID using the difficulty slider though because I kept it as high as possible throughout :-P I know that the new version has been tweaked and rebalanced, and you can even slow down the game if things get a bit too manic (or speed it up if you find your defences are holding). Not sure whether that feature was in the original actually…

Let us know how you get on!

There was a slider for this so you could practically turn them off if you wanted. If I remember rightly, I think I lowered them down to 40-50%. Either way, the new version seems a lot more reserved on the effects front during play, even cranked up to 100%. In fact, that’s what I’m now playing at!

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I’m not sure I’m digging it unfortunately. 30 min it, and I’ve done the first 8-10 levels, which are all introductory. I get 25 kills and I WIN.

Not sure about the active part, I don’t have a lot of control over the pointer as it’s like a compass and likes to spin around to targets I’m not trying to target. There must be some mechanic on it to control it better, but haven’t figured it out.

The light show is a bit excessive, reading that others don’t like it near the end and I don’t really care for it now…

The biggest headache is that once a game starts, there is no way to escape out (in fact escape key starts the level) or adjust options or anything. My only choice is to shut down and re-start and I’m not seeing any real adjustments I can do anyway.

I’ll give it another hour, but the fact that I can only play a few levels before I want to leave is not a good sign…

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thanks for the comments all, just logged in to ask tman this question: what do you mean by not being able to escape out? once a level is being played, you can press esc or p and then click ‘quit’ to go back to the stage select. it’s true that esc starts the level during the starting phase, but once the level is started, you can press esc again to pause it, and then select the option to quit the level. maybe i should make this clearer somehow though… or perhaps not allow esc to start the level at all? is there some other problem that i don’t get with not being able to escape the level? if there is then that’s a pretty serious bug that i’d want to fix, for me i’m able to leave levels at any time just with esc

(also, as an aside, you can adjust the visual settings to reduce the light show)

regarding the pointer, you can click on an enemy to lock onto it, and the cursor won’t target anything else once that one is clicked. otherwise, the cursor targets the enemy nearest to it

but yeah, the first 16 levels are all largely introductory; perhaps the introduction is a bit long, but the game is 8 years old and it’s a bit too late to change something like that now without re-writing the story and stuff; the best i could do perhaps is to make those earlier levels quicker, so that you get through them faster, by reducing the time requirement, will consider doing that

in any case thinks for playing it!

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When you select a level, but before you hit start, it is impossible to escape out. As you noted, escape starts the game & you have to start the game and quit, or if you are windowed, shut down the window. I was running windowed, so I got into the habit of just killing the process which isn’t the best way, I admit.

Yes I realize the pointer lock by clicking on an enemy - what I meant was that when charging up to hit a spread of them, that doesn’t always work because what you have marked can get destroyed & I’m not really aiming at a single enemy.

At the end of a level, each defense unit has a % next to it. What does that mean?

One thing that wasn’t readily apparent was that you don’t have to click the mouse to get the pointer to fire. It took me a good 8-10 levels before I realized that I just need the pointer to be near an enemy to have it fire. Before that I was getting finger fatigue. Maybe I missed that in the tutorial?

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As far as I know, nearly all the levels are based around a timer and not kill count. The figures on the towers at the end of a level (and percentages across the central pane on the HUD) relate to the number of enemies killed by each tower-- very handy information for streamlining your defences and working out how best to use each tower.

To reflect what I said to TurinTur: there’s a slider you can use to turn down the visual effects if you so wish. I used to operate at 40-50% but these days I crank it up. It’s possible I might turn it down again, we’ll see.

In the first campaign your initial charged attack is pretty weak and something I mostly used for clusters of (weak) enemies and redirecting cut point mines back at enemies (charge and release your attack near the mines to attract them). As you complete each campaign you’ll gain additional charge attacks so the longer you keep charging, the more powerful the attack. I usually mark high priority enemies for my towers to focus on, then concentrate my pointer attacks on others to thin them out (this works well with the strategist and circuit points too).

It’s definitely worth having a look through the in-game manual though, there’s a lot of useful information in there!

Oh wow, 8-10 levels? I’m not surprised your fingers were fatigued! I don’t remember the game being explicit about not having to click to shoot because the pointer’s pretty enthusiastic about shooting enemies on its own. I’m guessing you just started clicking and didn’t stop! :)

I think hitting ESC during level preparation should bring up the ‘Resume, Retry, Quit’ screen rather than start the level. That seems more intuitive to me.

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This has had a big patch.

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The overwhelming positivity toward this game has me intrigued, but I only seem to enjoy TD games with a very active player role like Deathtrap or Orcs Must Die. That said, would I enjoy this?

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I asked him for a Steam key, I bought his game on his site on 2009, if I’m not mistaken.

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I can say that part of the magic of this game is the narrative (which isn’t something you would expect in a TD game!), and how the weird, quirky setting bleeds off to the rest of the game, like the graphics, the name and effects of the turrets, etc.

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You aren’t just passively watching and occasionally building in this version of TD, if that helps. Your cursor shoots at enemies when it’s close to them and has special attacks and stuff.

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OOhh! Nice comparison to me. I only enjoy TD games where the active player role isn’t too heavy. So Orcs Must Die is one of the few games in the genre where I just can’t make any progress because it’s too hard for me, it just involves too much of an active role from me. I wonder if I’ll enjoy Immortal Defense?

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Nobody seems to like Unstoppable Gorg as much as I do. I really liked the rotating orbital rings. Adjusting them efficiently had a big effect on the outcome. It’s in my top 2 tower defense games for sure.

For some reason the look of this game just didn’t give me the impression that I’d like it.

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[I]Sleep Attack[/I] has a similar mechanic. Not sure if you’ve tried it.