Defender's Quest

Defender’s Quest is a game created by Level Up Labs and released on January 20^th 2012 and recently re-released on October 30^th 2012 on Steam. Defender’s Quest is advertised as a cross between an RPG and a Tower Defense game, which happen to be two of my favorite video game genres. I bought the game when it first came out, and then they recently sent me a Steam Key to unlock the game via Steam, and I’ve been playing ever since. So, is Defender’s Quest good? How does it compare to other games in the genre?

Cut all those slug... monster... uh...
things to bits!

The graphics for the game are decent. I like the cartoony look of the game, and the character design is nice and simple. The graphics will not blow you away and are not cutting edge, but this is a cheap indie game, so they don’t really need to be. This allows the game to be played on a large variety of systems. Also, there is sometimes going to be an insane amount of enemies, attacks, and numbers flying around the screen, and if the game was too system intensive, a lot of us with crappy computers wouldn’t be able to properly enjoy the game. The game ran well on an HP Pavilion g7z-2100, with minor slow down occurring on busier levels, but that may have been because I was running Chrome with Youtube up playing other music while I played the game.

Not to say that the music is Defender’s Quest is by any means bad, because it’s actually quite good. The sound effects are nice too, and I never found myself being annoyed by either. It was more of a circumstance thing, since I was writing before I started playing Defender’s Quest, so I wanted to continue listening to my music playlist.

One of the many colorful characters
you'll meet on your journey. Slak is
particularly insane.

Defender’s Quest actually had a great plot. The characters each have their own personalities, and there’s actually a reason you’re progressing through the game. Though some of the lines are a bit on the groany side, it’s very refreshing to play a game like this with an engaging plot. If anyone remembers the tower defense game Immortal Defense, they were in a similar position. I feel like this is setting a standard for tower defense games to have great plots, but this is really something that should be a part of all games in general.

The game play of Defender’s Quest is really, really good. You have a party of characters who each serve as a certain type of tower. You have a main character in each class, and then you can hire additional characters so that you have access to more towers of each class. The classes include: Librarian, Berserker, Ranger, Healer, Ice Mage, Knight, and Dragon. The classes are pretty self explanatory, with the exception of Librarian. She serves as the thing you must defend on each map. If too many monsters reach your librarian, it’s game over.

You get to name all of your units. This
is why my party is full of ASSCHECKs,
DICKBACKs, and BUTTSLUTs.

As you play through the game each of your characters level up and gain skill points as they advance. Each character has a skill tree with two different paths (The exception being the Librarian, who only has spells you can put points into), and you can split your points up however you’d like between the two. As an example, you can have a Ranger who has several different attacks, or you can have a Ranger who fires arrows with multiple effects such as poison, bleed, and pierce. Eventually as you gain levels you’ll figure out which characters set ups work and which don’t, and since you can have six of each type of characters, there’s room to experiment. You can also find weapons and armor that you can outfit your characters with as you progress through the game.

If you're a tower defense nerd, you
probably have a video game boner
right now.

Defender’s Quest also has a high amount of replay value. Each map has four different difficulties (Casual, Normal, Hard, and Extreme) and once you complete the game there’s a New Game + mode. In additional there’s a small number of challenges and endless modes that you can play through as you collect gold stars, which you receive by beating a map and by not taking any damage on each respective difficulty mode. There are also rewards for beating the higher difficulties, such as bonus money, experience, or unique items. Once you're in the New Game + mode you'll be able to upgrade the unique items, but I'm unaware at this time what the options for doing so are, because I haven't quite had time to play through the New Game + mode.

Defender’s Quest is an awesome game. I would argue that it’s actually one of the best traditional tower defense games you can find out there right now. Being able to level up your characters adds a lot of depth, and because all the maps progress quickly, playing each map multiple times isn’t a chore. If you like tower defense games, you will love this game. If you pick up the game right now you can get it on Steam for 9.99 while it’s still on sale. If you’ve got the game post your questions about it here, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

If you'd like to try before you buy, check out the demo on Kongregate.

FTL

How ominous.

FTL (Short for Faster Than Light) is a game created by Subset Games and released on September 14^th 2012. FTL is a game where you command a ship called “The Kestrel” by default, flying through the galaxy and trying to avoid a group of Rebels who’re hell bent on taking you out due to some crucial information you’re carrying. It is a space travel rogue-like, and has been compared to the old game Star Command. Is FTL a fun and engaging rouge-like?

Hey guys, how're you coming with that fire? Wait, you're just spreading it? I... I don't think that's what I asked you to do...

The graphics of FTL serve their purpose well. The ships are normally brightly colored, and the back rounds accurately reflect the dark recess of space. Ship to ship combat is displayed simply, with your ship on the left side of the screen and the enemy’s on the right. Sometimes you’ll warp into an area with a special condition, which you’ll easily be able to identify by the location’s background. Examples include warping into a purple space storm area, which temporarily knocks out your sensory equipment, or warping too close to a star and being subjected to solar flares, which will lower your shields or damage your ship if the shields aren’t up.

The music in the game serves its purpose. It is not obnoxious, but it’s also not particularly memorable. The sound effects in the game also serve their purpose well, but I would like it if the ship made more annoying emergency noises to indicate that you’re in danger. I think it would add a little cheesy sci-fi trope that many fans of the genre would appreciate.

Can't we just nuke them from space, just to be sure?

The game play is centered around choosing from locations to travel to that are in your immediate vicinity. When you arrive in the new area, various events occur. You could find a fleeing ship who needs assistance, an abandoned space freighter full of supplies, or a passing pirate who wants you to hand over one of your crew members. When you get in combat, which is frequent, you’ll need to prioritize which sections of the enemy’s ship you want to take out. Attack their weapons system so they can’t fight back, or take out their shield so they go down faster? Destroy their life support so all the people inside the ship run out of oxygen, or take out their drone control system so that annoying drone stops shooting at you?

Take that, space pirates! OH GOD WE'RE ON FIRE AGAIN!

But the same rules apply to yourself, and enemies will frequently use the same tactics against you. This is where your crew members come in handy. You can assign each individual person to a certain room, which will slowly raise their experience levels with that system type, providing certain bonuses as they become more experienced at that station. Enemies will sometimes board your ship and start attacking your crew members, which you will eventually have the ability to do yourself. The rooms can also be repaired as they take damage and their systems go down. The hull of the ship cannot be repaired by crew members, but you can find shops and stations throughout the game that will offer this service.

Yay, upgrades! It's like candy for nerds.

You can also upgrade different aspects of your ship, like increasing the ships power reserve, or increasing its available shields or weapons systems, using the materials you pick up from downed ships and special events. You can also buy new ship systems at the shops located around the galaxy, like a drone command station or stealth capabilities. You can also find new crew members, which can be from one of the seven different races contained within the game. Some weapons will require the use of missiles, of which you only have a limited amount of. Missiles will usually be able to pass through enemy shields, making them useful when you need to quickly take out a certain part of a ship. Run out of missiles and you’ll find yourself relying entirely on your energy weapons, which must take down a shield before being able to score direct hits.

Overall FTL is a really fun space rogue-like. It has the same frustrating tropes normally found in this genre, but the game has an easy mode if you want to take the edge of the intense frustration that is often found when finding your hands at the mercy of an unfortunate random event. As you play the game you can unlock different ship designs, and Subset games advertise that you can download user created ship schematics, allowing you to fly through the galaxy as a ship from Star Trek or other popular science fiction shows. The game currently retails for 9.99 and be purchased through Steam or their website. I recommend this game to anyone who enjoys rogue-likes and is comfortable with games that have a steep initial learning curve.

The Binding of Isaac

I would probably curl up and cry in the situation too. Not gonna lie.

Yes! Laser beams! They make everything better!

Binding of Isaac is a game made by Edmund McMillen (Of Team Meat) and Florian Himsl and released on Steam on September 28th 2011. The way you would describe this game is a Zelda dungeon rogue-like with loose biblical themes. They have since released an expansion for the game entitled Wrath of the Lamb. With such a weird sounding description, is this game any good?


Let’s get the plot out of the way. The plot of the game is  based around the biblical tale of the same name, the Binding of Isaac. A parent is asked by God to sacrifice their son in His name. This is translated into the game through Isaac’s mother, who sits around watching evangelical programming and believes she is one day commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac. Isaac finds a trap door in his room, jumps in, and so the game begins. There’s really no other plot beyond that. Get to the end of the level and beat the boss who waits for you there.

The graphics for this game are very good and cartoon like. One of my favorite features of the game is that Isaac’s image will change as you collect the different items. He’ll start out as his normal, teary eyed self, but eventually transform into something twisted and deranged looking. The enemy design is also disturbing. You have segmented jumping worms, vagina monsters who shoot deadly streams of blood, and sad children with heads bloated with flies to name a few.

The gameplay is a cross between old Nintendo Zelda style dungeons, procedural generated rogue-like dungeons, and bullet hell SHMUPS. Isaac starts out with the ability to shoot out tears which can be upgraded and altered by collecting items found throughout the dungeon.You can also find rechargeable items, trinkets, health upgrades, pills, stat upgrades, tarot cards, bombs, keys, and coins. All of which is randomly generated. This means that sometimes you’ll have a game where you’ll struggle through it, some games where you’ll find yourself challenged, and other games where you’re extremely over powered and everything is a breeze. This gives the game a LOT of replay-ability.

This is a simple shop, yet there's so much bizarre stuff going on here. The shop keeper hung himself, and is that... is that a ghost baby with you?!

OH GOD WHAT ARE THOSE?!

The music for this game is also great. It’s haunting and scary and sets the mood of the game perfectly. I would even say it’s memorable. When I think about it, I have trouble coming up with a game recently that I loved the music for, something that was a pretty frequent occurrence when I was younger. So either my tastes have changed, or we just don’t get games with music this good like we used to.

Overall I do not hesitate suggesting this to people. Right now you can get it on Steam for 4.99 and the Wrath of the Lamb expansion for 2.99. That’s awfully cheap compared to full releases that come out now a days. The content of the game is mature, so keep that in mind. If you can look past that, or just love things that are really messed up and weird (I do!) then go out and get this game! Support the developers so we can either get another one, another game from them, or even an Binding of Isaac 2!

Still unsure? Try out demo on Newgrounds!