Mixing up Tron aesthetics and tower defence gameplay, Defentron is exactly what it sounds like. Whilst it is largely a very standard tower defence game on the surface, it adds in one tricky game mechanic and builds its levels around it so that you have to think about sacrifice whilst playing.
If you haven’t played a tower defence game before, you essentially will be placing towers along a path that enemies are taking to get to a destination. The goal is to kill the enemies and stop them getting there. With Defentron you do not get free reign of placement – only a few blocks here and there and each of the towers you place can be upgraded in speed, damage and range. As levels often double back on themselves, range becomes surprisingly effective late in the game. Whilst the towers themselves are nothing new, nor are the computerised virus enemies (fast, shielded, tanks etc), your towers have the ability to trigger an overdrive function. This makes them have a few seconds of extreme power and speed before exploding. You then get back some of the energy (the games currency) it took to build it but obviously the tower is now gone.
It is such a seemingly tiny switch up to the standard gameplay but Defentron builds its entire waves of enemies around having the spam and use this feature constantly as it progresses. Often a wave of enemies will have several shielded enemies that also recover health and your tower placement will be spread out so that you can’t quite kill them off quickly enough. A carefully timed overdrive can get rid of one of those enemies and give you energy for the kill as well as tower. You’ll quickly rebuild it for the next enemy and re do the same thing again. This then means that you’ll often have towers that you simply won’t upgrade as you’ll be blowing them up so often. It doesn’t make sense in investing in them to lose the energy. That then makes you place your towers differently to say a standard tower defence game too so that the most upgraded ones have the widest range.
Defentron has about 30 levels across five worlds and the second half the game heavily relies on the overdrive tactics, slowly making you sacrifice upgraded towers later on. Whilst the enemies and towers themselves rarely do anything new, the game feels much more active because of the overdrive feature. Timing and strategy are key. Add to that beautiful neon Tron graphics and excelleny synthwave soundtrack and you have hours of hair pulling trying to get yourself to just survive some of the levels, nevermind getting a perfect three stars.
I am a sucker for tower defence games so I was onboard from the start but due to clever and aggressive enemy waves that make you try new layouts and loadsouts – you’ll be enjoying Defentron for a good while.
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Review copy provided by developer.
