Hexguardian is an interesting premise when it comes to Tower Defence games. I've played a lot of these both growing up and on steam, and I haven't encountered one where you literally build the map you're placing your defenses on - and that concept was what brought me into the game to begin with, and got me curious to see what the game has in store.
Rather than immediately list out the negatives I have, I think it's a good opportunity to draw some comparisons to give some ground work to the kind of pros and cons this game has. In a lot of ways, this game reminds me of Fieldrunners - though instead of using towers to make a maze on a pre-existing map, you're instead building that map using a secondary resource gained occasionally through killing foes. Tiles are numerous and varied - though the game does seem to try to offer pieces that will fit holes in your existing grid. For example - if I had a space with two land connections and two water connections, I'd have good odds of finding a tile that can fit in that exact space, which helps remove the harshness of poor RNG. Building out bigger maps is essential to find resources, close and extend enemy portals, and even win maps using the only true victory condition there is - closing all portals that enemies can spawn from.
Now we can move onto the negatives. Since Hexguardian is not designed around the idea that you can conventionally win (beyond having a victory failsafe in case the player does close all portals), all maps and runs are essentially an endless mode - where the only goal is to get as far as you can. This is great in theory, but falls apart with two simple problems - enemy scaling, and lag. Enemy scaling is very, very aggressive even on the lowest difficulty, and poorly optimised or poorly upgraded defenses will struggle to make it even into the double digits of waves. Unlocks are essential, and the only way to acquire the currency needed to buy these upgrades is by surviving longer and longer, giving the game a slow start. As soon as you start to hit around wave 25, enemy scaling starts to really get out of control, and by wave 30 enemies will have tens of thousands of health. My best run survived until day 54 - at which point enemies had, what I believe was 540,000 HP each - not counting armor, which is far, far, far beyond what even an armada of powerful turrets can deal with. It is still possible to win, but this is where you run into the second problem - lag. Enemy durability, combined with enemy density and a plethora of particle effects caused by your hyper upgraded towers (which you need to be using if you want to get that far, since the less intensive towers cannot stack the statuses you need to exploit to reach that point), can slow the game pace down to a crawl. I've got a pretty solid PC, and Hexguardian *really* started to struggle around wave 35, and by wave 45 it wasn't uncommon for frames to hit the single digits. I don't want to imagine what a weaker PC might experience. The only other problem that I have, though, is the achievements themselves - namely, just how grindy and slow they are. 200 boss kills, my final achievement, is essentially 200 runs on hard or above that reach day 10, and then you have to kill the tanky enemy that spawns. One of those runs takes about 5 mins. spending 1000 minutes on a single achievement (though you'll get a lot more during the process if you hadn't already) was tiresome, especially since it's far easier to farm up the 5 million gold, 50,000 stones and other such tedious amounts on the lowest difficulty... where bosses don't spawn. Also, bosses *only* spawn on wave 10, and only once. I'm not sure why it wasn't every 10 waves, that seems like a poor choice.
The rest, though, was very enjoyable. Aside from poor optimisation and excessive particle density, the graphics are charming, simple and clean - a very easy on the eyes aesthetic. Sound design is solid, and music loops well and avoids being repetative. Sound effects even mute if you zoom out enough, which is a nice touch. The towers are nicely varied (though I don't feel there needed to be a tower and troop variant of everything, and I think Dark damage is a bit of a nothingburger) - and there are lots of solid strategies and compositions that allow you to reach those later levels. The Talent tree is solid, though I really don't like the 20% loss for respeccing or the limited amount of locks, and contains a very respectable amount of power.
Hexguardian is a tower defence that stands out for me, for it's unique approach to the map, which is something I haven't seen innovated much in the TD's i've played. While it has it's flaws and shortcomings, Hexguardian's novel approach, short runs and easygoing art make dipping your toes in for a few hours an easy and welcoming prospect, while the high difficulty curve, vicious enemy scaling and challenging difficulty modes prove to be engaging and interesting for those that have come to master the base systems. It cuts a nice balance - and while I feel it did outstay it's welcome and was too grindy for how short and sweet this game ultimately is - the base product itself is strong enough to stand on it's own as a desirable and interesting title.
