Hydraulic Empire

I picked the game up with a heavy discount, so it was at the price of a bag of crisps. I'd rather have the bag of crisps than this game.

This game deserves to have an overall "Very Positive" review. I have played many games over the last 30 years and this is one that I actually played all the way through. It's not a perfect game, just a little rough around the edges, but definitely worthy of any strategy and/or tower defense fan. $10 is a fair price, but you might as well wait for a sale.

This could have been a cool tower defense game, but as others have already mentioned, the balancing is way off. Some maps are literally impossible to solve unless you select the exact tower placement (and thus force the enemies on the specific path) that is required. No matter if you have ultra-upgraded towers or not, you simply will not win unless you get the path correct. While some may find this challenging, I found it tedious in the extreme - playing a level over and over. Note also that this is based on the "medium" difficulty setting. There are two settings higher than this. I doubt I will explore them. The other issue with this game is the glitches. After playing 3 or 4 rounds, the sound begins to skip and distort. This gets worse the longer you play, until after about 45 minutes the sound is painful to listen to. At this point your only choice is to close the game and then reload it. The same thing happens with the video - especially if you have lots of enemies on the screen at once. The frame rate will suddenly pause, and then when it resumes everything runs really fast to "catch up". Frustrating doesn't begin to describe the experience. (Note that this is with a 4-gig GTX 960 graphics card, which should be more than enough for a sprite-based tower defense game!) A final nit-pick I'd like to share is with the system used to upgrade the tower abilities, your starting money, etc: It is PAINFULLY slow. You get between 40 and 60 "coins" from each completed level, and those can be used to build little machines that will provide upgrades. But these upgrades are almost non-existent. 1.2% increased damage... 0.8% reduced purchase cost... That sort of thing. And the upgrades get expensive - fast! A level 2 upgrade is 60 coins. Level 3 is 80 coins. And so on... Each time you're getting a tiny, almost imperceptible improvement. To say that it's a grind to upgrade the towers has got to be the understatment of the year. Plus you have a limited number of squares available to build these upgrade machines, so you have no hope of upgrading everything. TL;DR: Unbalanced game play, glitchy sound and graphics, and a frustrating grind to obtain needed upgrades all add up to a lousy experience. I'd rather play Defence Grid: The Awakening, or DG2: Defence Grid 2, or even Tower Wars. Anything but this game. Don't waste your money. PS: I wrote this review quite a while ago and then waited to post it to be sure I wasn't just having a bad day. I've checked back several times and each time I looked over the text I agreed that yes, this is accurate. So today I decided to finally post my review.

There really needs to be a 'meh' option for games like this. Look, this game is good. It's not great, but it's good. It handles everything you want in a tower defense well. I played for about an hour so far and I just came across with a great feeling of 'it's all right' at the end of it. All the classic tower tropes you'd expect are there. Starting chain gun tower (arrow tower) that can hit land or air and fires fast but weak attacks. The next upgrade is your bomb tower which has land only but does splash damage. Then you get the flak cannon, which fires fast, but can only attack air.... Gee I wonder what is coming next, maybe a slow firing single target tower? YEUP, called that one before I saw it. Ok, so the towers are uninspired, but they work. How about the special abilities your commander can use? Lets see... acid rain in a hex for DoT damage, a bomb for AE damage, a slow, a sniper shot.... *YAWN* Again, they work for the game, but... just... meh. Well maybe this fancy upgrade system.... Pretty underwhelming, what you'd expect, increase damage, range, or speed of towers. Upgrade your commander abilities. I feel like I've done this before. Now the graphics... well... they aren't bad, but they just feel... very... dated. They would have been mind blowing ten years ago, and they look fine for 2016, but that's it, just fine. Now the one thing I did have a problem with was the sound. The sound REALLY begins to grate on your nerves very quickly. The sound of my minigun towers seemed to drill into my very brain and cause my spine to itch. I couldn't turn the sound down quickly enough after only a few minutes of playing. The music is also pretty lack luster. Look, overall, if you want a tower defense game to play, and this is on sale, go ahead and grab it. It's not BAD.... it's just not really that good either. It's a standard TD, executed well, that unfortunately feels like it's about 7-10 years too late to the party.

This game is a joke. And not funy one at all. Here are some "awesome peerks" 1.Ubgrades. Sounds fun at first but is a 1% of damage even worth mentioning? Sure global ubgrades affect all towers but 1%? Seriously? If you go into details you will see "uber skills" wich gives you below 1% improvement. Great. After such ovepowered ubgrade i feel like ive done some progress. Althou the only one visible progress is to loose the currency for ubgrades. 2. Range. Range is a cool factor in Tower defence games. You can plan according to range to cover proper area. So do you want to know the range of your towe BEFORE you place it? Or the effect of ubgrade? Nah. Who cares. Why bother with showing the covering field of fire before placing it? You need to place it blindly nad hope you did the right thing. Besides, if you mess up you still can restart and place the tower on different place. Same goes for the rest of ubgrades. You see the result only AFTER you bought the ubgrade. Really great. Awesome stuff. 3. Level completions. If you want to play game and see your progress on different difficulties, this game is not for you. Why? Example: i've started the very first map (it was on normal). Ok. My progres wass displayes. I repeated it in easy, just to have it completed. And guess what. After completed on easy game says not completed. Nah. Who cares about progress record right? But wait there is even better. There is a map i did not even started. And i already got some points earned in it. After fiev minutes of play i must say that this game is garbage. Dont bother at all unless you dont mind such factor as: *pasive ubgrades that do almost nothing *no info about ubgrades effect/ tower range BEFORE you actually build it. *messed up game progress record *probably much more *unique perks* that are as great as previous ones. If you want spend 2,5 euro (the promotional price), better toss it from the window. The gain will be the same, but you will save yourself the disapointment.

50/100 EDIT: Refunded!! 1. time I had to do it.. thx Steam^^ Even in Sale - comes like a scam -Gfx that hurts the eye - even in 1080p (feels like a really bad Mobile Port) -3D doesn´t improve anything (you can identify layers easily - no immersion at all) -everything feels quite fixed (Monster path, spots to build your towers, even the strategy for a map..) -gameplay is worse than some mediocre TD games for browser -any serious TD fan wouldn´t give a Thumbs up for such an unpolished Alpha build -Where is the "Refund button" ? -> Don´t buy!! EDIT: After playing level 2.. it´s still no fun. No Kingdom Rush or Bloons feeling at all... DELETED^^

I have to keep this relevant, constructive, and polite... Umm... Relevant! Do not buy this game! Constructive... I'll save you money, and time, by telling you not to buy this game! Polite... I won't... say... what I REALLY think about this game! Please don't buy it!

Nice game 5/10

A good strategy tower defense game. With variety of weapon/tower to choose PROS -decent graphic -simple UI -short instruction but helpful CONS -text font too small if playing in windowed at 1080p desktop -lacking level of upgrades. Up to level 3 per upgrade Buy it on steam sale to save your money. Recommended game but might not worth your money at full price

This is a decent tower defense game. It's a bit unpolished and the UI isn't great, but there is a good variety of towers and enemies, your character gains levels and can attack, and you can boost yourself or your towers through a city upgrade system. If you like TD games, I'd say it's worth checking out, especially if it's on sale.