Fortification Frenzy

The promise of epic loot is the only reason people strive to survive for hours in repetitive dungeons, or to grind for months in an MMORPG until they are able to snatch a legendary sword. However, the experience must be pretty fun, otherwise no amount of rare items would be enough to keep the players engaged over long periods of time.

Fortification Frenzy is a simple survival game with platformer and roguelike elements, although the combination is not nearly as complex as you might imagine. In essence, you just have to keep climbing higher and higher while collecting gold, killing enemies and avoiding death. The character has no special abilities or stats to customize, so it can get boring pretty quickly.

Probably the most engaging gameplay mechanic is the fact that the levels are random, which makes it easier to start over when you die. On the other hand, these levels are not automatically generated, they are just randomly picked from a pretty limited selection. Hence, it actually takes you a few minutes to see the majority of them, especially if you keep dying very often.

In case you are feeling particularly creative, you can somewhat fix this issue by including your own levels in the rotation. Hence, thanks to the included editor, you are able to create stages and extend the fun. Unfortunately, the selection of tiles and decorative objects is pretty low, so the only thing that matters is the level layout.

In the same regard, the graphics are as basic as they can get as well, although they rarely matter in games such as this one. As long as you are distracted by the engaging gameplay, it doesn’t make a difference whether the textures come in high resolution or not. The soundtrack is nothing special either, and it gets excruciatingly repetitive after a while.

Fortification Frenzy is not a bad game, but it’s pretty empty at the moment. Even if the level editor theoretically allows you to add your own content, it should come with enough levels out of the box, especially since they are so simple to create anyway.