This game is a lot like Rogue Tower, if rogue tower didn't suck. The balance needs some work but if they can work that out this is a helluva cool game. If you've played Rogue Tower you'll like this better.
Gameplay
Standard Tower defence with a twist, you pick a tower and a gem. The tower determines what the tower does, the gem determines all of the important characteristics. Any gem can go into any tower, but not all gems work well in all towers. The Rain tower for example doesn't work well with gems that only deal damage as it applies the full DOT but only does a tiny amount of damage. Once you've got towers set up you'll have to equip your towers or you won't make it far. What you get to equip them with is entirely up to RNG.
Towers
There are six towers and six gems.
There is also a Bomb, all you need to know about the bomb is that there is not, at time of writing, a pause button.
The Towers - All stats vary wildly based on the gem in the tower, important information will be listed
Boulder - Lowest fire rate, highest damage, small AOE on impact, Low DPS, great tower for things that do things every X seconds.
Firethrower - Moderate fire rate, moderate damage, Directed AOE hits all units in path, DPS suffers from the fact that this tower tracks enemies rather than firing in a set direction.
Projectile - Highest Fire rate, moderate damage, good single target DPS.
Lightning - Low fire rate, short range, less damage than the projectile tower, hits several targets within range for moderate damage
Rain - low damage, low fire rate, low range, creates a persistent AOE that deals damage to all units in an area
Spike Tower - Low fire rate, moderate damage, mid size AOE on impact,
Bomb - There is no pause button
At level 10 each tower gets an upgrade, each tower levels up individually.
Gems
Arcane - Highest Fire rate, second lowest damage. Fire rate scales 20% better than normal, damage scales 10% worse.
Upgrades: Fire rate, crit damage, healing per wave, gold per wave, item generation, AOE per kill and a temporary fire rate buff per kill.
Fire - Lowest damage, second highest fire rate, burn DOT. DOTs are 20% more effective, 10% less damage to slowed enemies.
Upgrades: DOT, dealing extra damage on the final burn tick, damage, enemy healing debuff, permanent burn increase per kill, increased burn on crits, gold generation per burn tick, and instant burn application once burn hits 1000.
Earth - Lowest fire rate, highest damage. 20% extra damage to armoured enemies, fire rate scales 20% worse than normal
Upgrades: Range, stunning crits damage to armoured enemies, stacking damage buff per wave, reduced crystal cost, stacking damage during combat buff, AOE bleed on kill, AOE on kill.
Poison - Moderate fire rate, moderate damage, Poison DOT. 5% increased damage per second in combat (up to 50) 15% reduced damage to burning enemies.
Upgrades: Damage to poisoned enemies, poison damage, tower exp on kill, poison spread on enemy death, inc poison on armoured enemies, AOE on kill.
Electric - High crit chance. 40% increased critical damage scaling, 10% reduced damage to armoured enemies.
Upgrades: Chance to double damage, chance to ignore armour, stacking crit damage boost per kill, crit damage, boost to damage fire rate and DOT (as a single upgrade), chance for gold/crit, AOE on kill, Chance for additional chain
Cold - Moderate damage, moderate fire rate, slow. Increased damage to slowed enemies, 50% reduced DOT.
Upgrades: Increased slow, increased damage to slowed enemies, crit chance, AOE on kill, freeze chance, Tower EXP per wave, chance for additional hits gold per kill.
Issues
Balance
Ostensibly you need to use a variety of towers to achieve a win. In practice you max out the ice progression tree, spam projectile towers with ice gems and then just keep playing the next wave. Why? Because projectile towers offer the best DPS and ice gems gain experience every round which gets them to level 20 very quickly. Why does that matter? Two reasons, one levelling up makes your towers better, and two at level 20 your towers give all other towers of the same type an additional equipment slot (up to 20 slots total) and this lets you put in as many items as you'd like. On top of all of that it slows enemies.
Other
You can't remove towers once you've placed them.
Conclusion
Overall I like this game and reccomend it if you like tower defence games.
