Diving back to 2015, tower defence games were cementing their design patterns and choices. We’d seen waves of enemies, several tower types, upgrades, and the idea of champions becoming mainstream for the genre. We began to see the cookie-cutter formula that mobile TD games would stick to for years to come. Enter Defend Your Life: TD – a fantastically themed game that would take a lot of Kingdom Rush’s ideas and turn them into a Cells At Work themed defence game. It’s a game I’ve returned to recently, with fond memories of its 2015 launch on PC. It still has a lot of charm, but I can also see its mobile roots dragging down the overall experience.
The best part of Defend Your Life is its theme. Each level is a part of the body being invaded by bacteria and viruses. Tower locations are available for you to spend medical points to buy towers and place them down as defence. All the staples of a TD game are here. We have an army of platelet soldiers for melee attacks, factories for ranged attacks, missile area of effect attacks, and a few status effects like poison or electrical attacks. These towers can be levelled up three times in each battle as you earn currency by killing enemies. You’ll also gain abilities to trigger (with long cool downs) that can help you out in battle too, such a temporary buffs to each tower’s power, or a localised special attack. Lastly, there is a selection of heroes, which take a long time to unlock, that you can command on the battlefield to slow down the enemies and cause carnage. All of this is straight out of the Kingdom Rush playbook, but the theming makes everything feel fresher and more enjoyable than it should.
It is only once you are a few hours in that Defend Your Life: TD starts to show its mobile roots. Each level is only available on easy mode to start with, which gives you some upgrade currency to spend on meta progression. This involves upgrading your tower’s power, speed, or range. It could also mean upgrading your champions or special abilities, as their cooldowns are incredibly drawn out. The problem is that you’ll start hitting levelling up walls after a few fights, which means you’ll be back to level 1, trying out medium difficulty, hoping to scrape a bronze clear to get one tiny upgrade to make the difference on a level 5 easy map. The grind for upgrades shows how unbalanced the game is and that it is designed for microtransactions on mobile. This hasn’t been corrected for the PC release. It makes what should be a great 8-hour game a laborious slog of a 16-hour game instead. I don’t mind a difficulty curve or a challenge, but Defend Your Life: TD revels in cliff edges that require grinds to overcome. That’s not difficulty curves in action, that’s intentional microtransaction design.
It is a shame because the traditional early years trappings of what makes a tower defence game good are here. Maps have alternate routes, and sometimes change mid-battle. Mini bosses can completely wipe out a level if you haven’t prepared for them. The level designs range from intricate to wide open spaces you can’t cover. The game has a cheeky cartoon vibe that I enjoy. Champions, or Heroes as they are called here, are well designed and give you some immediate control in a hands-off experience. Sadly, these great ideas are undermined by the intense grind and some late-game slowdown that tanks the performance. Also – players beware: there is no Steam Cloud Save. Back those saves up!
Did I enjoy playing Defend Your Life: TD? Yes. Is it also a bit of a relic of its time? Also, yes. The game’s mobile roots let down what should have been a tighter, more enjoyable experience. I’d say tower defence games have moved beyond these simplistic trappings, too. They offer more variety and less obvious cliff edges to force a player to grind or pay-to-play. It’s still one of the best themed tower defence games out there, just know it comes with some old design practices.
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