This game blends RTS, with your character running around the levels to set up your traps in this unique tower defense. The main map to navigate levels [13] has access to the Shop for selling and buying items, your Skills level up page, and your Trap level up page. You get a stash with you at all times too, and a gigantic inventory. You complete levels one at a time, roaming around, setting up your towers/traps/defenses. Many, if not most levels have special towers built-in. It will take you approximately 3 levels to get comfortable, using 1, 2, 3, 4, as your abilities. Your mana is called Focus that you generate to cast your chosen abilities.

There are 3 classes to start the game on: Mercenary, Sorceress, Marksman.

How it plays; you choose your level, and difficulty in the main map. Once super-fast load into levels. You get inkpads that you middle mouse click to activate, and left click on the HUD-map that appears to get around the level in an Instant-transmission speed. Literally. You say go there, you're there. No animations teleporting slowly. You set up your traps, with the Essence that you start with, as well as gain during levels from killing the monsters. It feels like Van Helsing. You're running around the map watching the mini-map where the next waves are coming in, preparing for the next waves, upgrading your existing towers. There are usually 5 waves in the levels when you play the game the first time, then you play it a few more times, i believe, to unlock endless. If you don't play beyond normal difficulty, you cannot 3-star any levels. The game involves a fair bit of reading to understand the basics, but once you've got that, OR if you understand tower defense, and RPG's character-inventory management , it will work easily in your favour to play at double speed [when you feel like rushing past a level]

If you finish the campaign once, in normal mode [70% capped HP and 70% damage vs Hard on 100% to start the game. You assist all your towers with your chosen weapons, upgrades, equipment.

You get loot at the end of each level. There are items that boost the loot rarity and quantity, and gold amounts, there are loots that give you massive resistances to frost, poison, fire, Your equipment is generally all for armour, but there are many ways to skin the cat. The character's equipment slots total 5 + 1 Weapon. A hat, amulet, armour/suit, one ring, and a belt, which usually is your HP Booster. oh and your weapon !

The game is barely taxing on the system, which is kudos for running in the background/pausing to idle/ go do something, - play for tonnes of long hours and never even see a spike in your system, as this is just 5w/h more than idle of win11; :) super, for all that it offers.

It's deep, it's fast, and intuitive if you are a regular tower defense player, and most importantly, it's fun building up your character, and eventually changing to hard to get better loot is of course what makes it fun. The survival is actually perfect, no matter what build you want to play, as long as you update your equipment, spells, skills, and traps, after each level, you'll never fail a level, if you watch the mini-map and support all your lanes. Because you're always running around to maintain your lanes, / teleporting / you cannot fall asleep. You're active more than you generally are for a tower defense, but your efficiency can be rewarded too, as in, long term, your upgrades make survival far easier than the beginning. The game also doesn't slaughter you in the introduction to it all.
Learning all the levels and caveats with what special towers vs. your standard builds is something that adapting a new style in the re-play helps. It gives new challenges as side-quests to complete when you play the levels the next time, such as don't use summons, don't use a mystic tower.

The towers, are plenty [25] and they all synergize well, Each one has 3 different types of upgrades, and each upgrade has 3 levels of that said upgrade. So, for example, one is 30% damage increase, one is 15% slow when shooting the enemies, and one applies 50% area of effect damage, if shooting more than 2m away, - you can upgrade each of these 3x to get great towers, which just need you to be there, when the waves are coming in, and help save the day.
The tower/trap types are split across traps in the floor, traps that summon creatures/archers/beasts, mystic traps that use the elements, like a fireball launcher, a death ray laser, an ice-beam frost attack classed under 'mystic' weapons. You then get Mechanical weapons like a gun sentry, a razer blade launcher, or the flame thrower. The floor traps include acid geysers, javelin/spear pits, lava grills,
All of the traps in the levels are activated on specific interfaces for the said traps. You can't place all traps where you would like.

The enemy types, are beastly, and ranging in the types of damage, such as frost, poison, and fire. When you're shooting, angles can look a bit crooked, as in you're aiming into the distance, or shooting through your towers. You cannot, and the enemy cannot destroy your towers in this game.

You get many different abilities, and I'm only looking at the marksman screen/partially. There are global abilities, of many kinds to upgrade with skill points each level. [Max 10 per skill item - and the tree is extensive and broken up into starters, level 10, level 20. By the first time you finish the game, you should be near/ or at level 20 at the end/after the last level] You can unlock global skills for your classes like: Increase loot quantity/quality , make every attack on enemies have poison vulnerability /starting at 1%, reduce trap cooldowns, increase trap stuns/effects on enemies, it's vast, and unlocked gradually, in the first 5-10 hours, you can be level 20;

If you love tower defense, and have been itching to try something new in regard to this genre, pick this beauty up!! It's a brilliant find, and very unique.

If you get killed during a level, your death impacts enemies passing past you to exit the gate, and affect it's volatility; hence your score /stars out of 3 when you complete a level. Your deaths counts as damage to the gate/portal you're protecting

The main gripes I think we all may have with this game, is the camera is not rotatable. It may sometimes upset you, or require you to move to specific locations just to see something you want to. This isometric approach is one of the most annoying drawbacks of this amazing game.
Another was, when first launching this game, because i have a controller plugged in, the game defaulted to controller, and i had to use the controller to turn it off in the game's settings. Then the game also needed a restart for this change. So, controllers are definitely supported 100% if you want to sit back and play a TDF in ultra-comfort mode; :)