Thunderstruck

Tower defense games may have been around for a long time, but they became more popular once games like StarCraft and Warcraft came along. Because they allowed players to create mods and maps with different gameplay mechanics, entire game franchises were born in those editors. Nowadays it’s a lot simpler to just use one of the many game engines designed for indie developers.

Thunderstruck is a tower defense/platformer mashup in which you have to make sure that your castle survives a huge invasion of monsters, by using towers to defend it. However, unlike in most other games in the genre, the towers are already there. You cannot build others, but your task is even more important: gather energy to power on the towers.

As such, you start with six already available towers, and it is your duty to recharge them. To do so, your character has to harness the power of lightning, which is quite dangerous, as you might expect. Hence, you have to stand underneath a storm cloud and time your charge ability just right, otherwise you are thrown away by the blast without any energy to show for it.

Since you can only hold three charges at a time, and the clouds gather in three different locations, it’s a real hassle to keep everything under control. Good timing is everything, on the other hand, because it’s all about moving quickly and catching the clouds. It’s still very difficult to do so, especially since you also have to climb ladders and watch your step. Although you don’t take damage from falling, you do lose precious time in the process.

The controls are responsive and pretty accurate, which is definitely a relief, because the stress of having to run around between the towers is too much as it is. As far as the graphics are concerned, they are not very flashy, but the game has no need for state-of-the-art visuals anyway. Even so, the background and the objects are pretty detailed, and the light shows are quite nice as well.

Although Thunderstruck can be too frustrating for some people, the challenge is quite fun at the same time, especially because you quickly learn the quickest paths and the best tactics. You only have to make it for five minutes, which is not that long when you think about it.