GILTSTEADER - Tower Defense

Leaving a "positive" review for the algorithm, because this was obviously a labor of love from a small solo developer. But as long as I have you here, let me lay out what's going on here: Towers that you build are randomized. You say "build a level 1 tower HERE" and choose a spot, and you'll build a random level 1 tower. If you have two of the same level 1 tower anywhere on the map, you can combine them into a level 2 tower. The problem is that exactly WHICH level 2 tower you receive is also randomized. If you have two of the same level 2 towers, you can combine them into a level 3 tower, which is also randomized, and so on, until you finally get a level 6 tower. I should also note that if you have multiple towers which can be combined, the game randomly chooses which one gets destroyed (the tower you choose to upgrade stays in the same spot, but the game randomly chooses which other combinable tower gets destroyed in the process). Do you see the issue already? Since each tower has specific strengths and weaknesses, and most importantly they all have different ranges, you never know which spot is good for a tower. Lets say you have a tower that has great AoE, so you put that in a roundabout, but then you upgrade it and now its a tower which does single target damage from afar. Even worse is the flip of that, where you have a long-range tower in a great spot where it can reach the whole board, and then it upgrades to a short-range AoE tower. And you had absolutely no way of preventing that. This is how, at the final wave of the level, I ended up with a whole ton of towers that slowed the enemy, but nothing that would do any damage. :/ The economy is also... weird. There's this "fishing" mechanic for bonuses between rounds, and also this economy for farming. I like the idea here, but it's implemented in this way that you're always just fiddling with everything, and since you can't pause the game in the middle of a wave, you're just always kinda feeling harried, but not in the good "what a rush!" kind of way, more of like you just always feel like you're just blindly turning knobs and watching numbers slowly go up. Finally, the upgrade system feel totally uninspired. You can upgrade different types of towers, but again, since towers are randomized, you'd be foolish to boost a single type of tower, not knowing if you're ever going to get a tower of that type. Otherwise, you can flatly upgrade some of the economy. Honestly, this could have used a few more eyes on everything, so the developer could have gotten some feedback on what was fun and what wasn't. If this was an early access title, I'd be all for hanging around and watching these issues get addressed. But since this is the full release, I dunno man, I feel like I've seen everything this game has to offer in the first 100 minutes.

Incredibly unique and creative tower defense with farming and fishing and a snappy, colorful presentation. Combine and upgrade matching towers to level up your arsenal to satisfying strength and wipe out lines of enemies. The enemies and setting all bleed with this really cool kind of retrofuture psychedelia of cosmic proportions. The gains from farming your seeds is always satisfying, and combining your towers to the highest level is addictive. This is a tower defense I recommend trying. For more unique, abstract, arcadey and retro indie game recommendations check out [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6857352-Cue-Review/]Cue Indie Review[/url], the indie game [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/6857352-Cue-Review/]Cue-rator[/url]

It's fun. The random aspect of the towers is what gives it a lot of replayability. You still have to have strategy, but a fair amount of luck is involved. I was lucky to be able to test it out and give some feedback, and watched it go through several variations. If you have a Steam Deck, this is a great handheld game and the developer put the time in to make sure it feels good on a controller. Definitely recommend.

You remember DOTA 2 Autochess? Remember how it was a fad for a couple of months, had dozens of clones made, and then just kinda faded into the ether once everyone realized there was no real strategy and it was just a slot machine? Giltsteader is that for tower defense games. Everything in Giltsteader is a slot machine. You put money into the slot machine to get a random tower, and can combine two towers of the same type to get a different but slightly better random tower. There's no strategy here: you can only move towers that are max rank, and doing so is prohibitively expensive, so it's better to simply continue dumping your quarters into the slot machine and hope you hit that big payoff. The game also has a side thing where you put down seeds that sell for random prices so that you can get more quarters to dump in the tower slot machine, which I think primarily exists to give you something to do while you watch your randomly gambled towers do random damage to random enemies. And just like my idiot cousin, who dumps $20 at a time on sixteen-leg NFL parlays and has never, ever won, this game is unwinnable but for sheer luck. The last two waves are a massive difficulty spike, and while there is an option to "invest" for those waves, you won't have enough time to gamble all that money away before the wave is over. Avoid.

I like playing tower defense game sub-genre for the most part... one problem for said genre is that it gets a little stale when you get the right option and timing for it every time you play it. Enter this game... the only options are to buy and place down either a small random turret or a bigger random turret where both are upgradable as long as you have the same type and tier turret somewhere else for your defense and for the most part, the main way to get more money to get more defenses are growing plants and fishing and even that is mostly randomized based on their prices changing every wave. It's chaotic and I love that about it. For the most part, it's fairly 'easy' until you fight the boss and based on what the last turrets are, either it's an a win or a loss. Most time for me it's a loss, but hey, what can I do? Most of the stuff I can do is randomized, further driving me up the wall and making me more determined just to beat it. Now as a minor Crowd Control streamer, the ability for the viewers to mess with me with said integration this game provides is nice, although I think it's probably a little lacking... Now there's always a lag from when a streamer actually does their inputs, so it's very likely that by the time the viewers notice that the wave ends, the streamer has already placed down a turret, planted their seeds, used their upgrade point, fished and sold their collected items for more turrets, that the only thing they can do is just watch and probably be bored while waiting. Yes, the viewers can probably mess with me by destroying my planted crops during a wave or get rid of my stored crops, preventing me from gathering enough money to win, but since I always get enough for at least one turret and I'm probably fast enough to plant/sell the crops, about half of the CC options are useless to them other than taking my life points away, so I think it's a little anti-climatic and dull for everyone to just spam that only little negative option. Yes, you allowed them to be able to summon the Test Drones, but odds are I've already summoned them where I think I'm confident in killing them so they are on a timed cooldown or unavailable because I haven't reached that point for them to be unlocked., which is basically half the game of them doing nothing. So, in terms of Crowd Control, I would like to propose an option to change a random turret into a different (but still same tier) one, upgrade or downgrade a random turret or even outright selling a random turret. Another option would be to be able to spawn non-test drones at any time that don't give money when killed, but can somewhat hamper the defense turrets from attacking the real ones. Somewhat outside of Crowd Control, I'd like to ask for a endless mode or at least something with more waves to give anyone who wants an even bigger challenge or even a no fishing/planting challenge, but no biggie if you can't.

Lessermore's Giltsteader released a week and a bit ago. Wasn't sure what to make of it going in but it's awesome. Each wave you gain seeds - farming is simplistic but it's attached to a variable market so timing is crucial to make money between waves. There's no downtime. Giltsteader's a TD \with a stack of quirky features that set it apart from the others. Towers are random and must merge to upgrade, and there's farming. Very interactive, there's never a dull moment. For more niche curation, follow me at: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27440015-CSH-Picone/

Quite Enjoyable

Fun and chill, but still challenging due to some of the luck involved/strategy required. Risk of Rain-esque graphical elements with a Bloons like gameplay feel.

A pretty unique tower defense with some "roguelike" elements but it's more like gambling. The strategy is how you time things such as selling your "vegals" and which towers you choose to upgrade since what they upgrade into is random. The base gameplay is tower defense like Bloons, but the overall experience is more like Balatro or maybe Dorfromantik where randomness is a key part of the fun. Like I said, it's more of a gambling game but how you gamble is the strategy.

A somewhat hectic Tower defense title, you (at least me!) always seem to be under some type of time pressure, whether it is upgrades, planting, fishing, building towers. selling produce, keeping an eye on produce markets - if your brain isn't clear, leave it til later. If I am honest I would much prefer to manually call in each wave, or at least have that option. Notwithstanding, I think there is a very good game trying to get out - I will watch with interest!