Defense Grid: The Awakening Demo

Although tower defense games may have their roots somewhere in the early 1990s, it would not be too much of a stretch to say that Warcraft III and Starcraft custom maps really popularized the idea and inspired so many stand-alone spinoffs along the years. While most of these were usually simple and unimpressive flash mini-games to kill some time with, bigger studios took a stab at the idea soon enough, which in turn lead to very complicated and good-looking titles to kill some time with.

Defense Grid: The Awakening is the type of game that makes people realize how easy it can be to just walk with an idea and transform it into a highly sought-after product, using basic mechanics and some other elements that were just waiting to be monetized. It's not all about money, however, since Defense Grid is by far one of the most fun and addictive games out there, thanks to the impressive amount of work that went into the development process and the fact that the developers listened to their audience, for a change.

Basically, the story is all about a strange alien world and an AI that needs your help protecting its precious cores from the nasty creatures that want to steal them. Over the course of the campaign, you learn how to use gun turrets and various types of defensive structures in order to protect the cores, while the melancholic but always encouraging AI keeps you company and gives you pointers regarding the tactics you can employ against the invading forces.

The towers themselves are definitely the most important components of the gameplay, since they are basically the only things you can interact with. They need to be placed in certain ways to assure success, in order to maximize the damage they are liable to do and prevent the aliens from escaping with the cores. Deviating their path using tower placement is also a viable strategy, which certainly extends the replayability factor by quite a lot and provides you with a copious amount of options at the start of each mission.

Each one of the aliens you destroy is harvested for resources, which can then be used to purchase more towers. A limited number of buildings can be placed on the maps, which makes their composition and placement incredibly important. Thus, some fare better than others against certain enemies, but they are all required in order to make sure that nothing gets through. There is never a single correct answer, which makes it incredibly difficult not to try the same level multiple times and employ different approaches.

In the end, Defense Grid: The Awakening is the type of game that keeps you coming back on a regular basis, especially since you can never truly try everything or run out of things to do. Hence, if you are a fan of the genre and you want to try something that takes tower defense mechanics to the next level, this is definitely the game you are looking for.