Defender's Quest

I don't play tower-defense games but Defender's Quest is laughting super-positive tad with addicting gameplay. And developer's opinions about many things, including DRM, is the icing on the cake.

I don't understand any praise this game receives. I've played every major TD on the market, and as a big genre fan I have to say that Defender's Quest is one of the most tedious and outright annoying that exists anywhere, on any platform. The story is outright terrible, cliched in every sense of the word and told in the most uninspired and lazy "Penny Arcade talking heads" method imaginable. Horrible, horrible writing and dialogue for all characters and sequences. Any random talented child could write a better story AND dialogue in 3 hours. Even Disney movies have more originality. I winced repeatedly just trying to follow the storyline itself, and actually gave up after the 4th or 5th sequence involving irrelevant nonsense and bad jokes unrelated to the game or the plot. The story in tower defense games is mostly irrelevant anyway, but a truly bad story that actively annoys you (even if it can be skipped) detracts from any type of game. The actual gameplay in Defender's Quest is tediously mathematical. You appear to have choices in units, items, upgrades, and the like, but a few glances at the actual stats/levels reveal that the game uses a linear scaling of raw numbers (and not even complex raw numbers at that) to up the "difficulty" as you advance in the story, and through the individual level "challenges". Any combination of proper numbers (equipment + characters + abilities) will defeat any level. Strategy of placement is only occasionally required, and when it is it's obvious. If you can't find any reasonable combination of raw numbers from your current party you can always go back to the story (or back to challenges, if you were stopped on the story). This makes the entire game a simple wash-and-repeat repetition of "drop towers and hit x4 to finish faster, then endure the next story sequence". This isn't tower defense, this is bad game design. Overall Defender's Quest is just a bad game. The ending isn't any good, and neither is the journey. Deleted.

I'm not usually a fan of tower defense titles, but I really enjoyed this game. The addition of the RPG elements and good storyline make it enjoyable to play, the music is also good. Sure it's not super deep, but I don't really think that was the goal. For me, this game fits into a similar play-time category as FTL. They are completely different games, but they are both titles that I can play when I have a few minutes here and there to play a game and not require a massive commitment. My only complaint is that it requires AIR. I'd like to see an AIR-less build as proposed by Lars.

Have played it for 18 hours and still addicted...

Mega Fan