Hydraulic Empire

[h1] Competent but Underpolished[/h1] Hydraulic Empire is a good tower defense game, and it's also a big mess. It's hard to get beyond the first bad impression. The presentation is terrible. Lack of Menus, Lack of tutorials, Royalty free Elevator Music, Poor Graphics, everything has "Mobile port" written all over. And that said, if you manage to get beyond your initial reaction and start playing, you will notice it's actually a very competent hex tile based tower defense game. The gameplay is spot on. There is no major innovation in the system and the stages and enemies are just varied enough, but the mechanics are solid and the challenge level is just about right. Be warned that there is a serious difficulty spike for the last few missions, but it's not impossible. To be frank I found the balance perfect. You will not succeed if you try the same things over and over again and just sit back and grind, like a lot of other tower defense game out there. Hydraulic Empire encourages trying different tactics out after you fail. But you must get past your first impression. Boy this game is shoddy! The controls can get fiddly when the map is cluttered, and so can finding your hero be. There are even some upgrade menus that are never explained, you just find them by clicking around random stuff and wonder what in the hell you've just opened and what it does. If you can live with these issues, and know your way around TD games, you won't be dissapointed. Oh, by the way, I cannot quit the game, only way is to shut it via target manager every time...

Game is very unbalanced, Easiest mode is extremely difficult (either that or the mode settings are not working). Been playing TD's for many years and this is the toughest easiest mode i have encountered overall. Works find in full screen..saw one reviewer beatching that it did not. Can't close dialogue boxes untill you do EXACTLY what they want. Annoying music has no seperate volume control. Can;t say about bugs or crashes as i am still only 8 campaigns into it I would wait to buy it till they give it some more polish

just another old tower defense.

Eu achei o jogo ao contrário do que diz na descrição, pra mim é um rpg com elementos de tower defense, tem um pouco de ação tbm porque vc controla um herói que atira e lança abilidades, sendo assim um jogo complexo para o gênero. Vou colocar os Prós e contra do jogo: Prós: -Tower defense com rpg,estratégia e ação; -10 torres diferentes para poder usar; -Inimigos fazem fusão dentro da fase; -Vc controla um herói que atira; -Arvores de upgrades das torres; -Arvores de upgrade do Herói; -7 modos de dificuldade; -Não tem um padrão certo para passar qualquer fase, só depende mesmo de cada um. Contra: -Poucas fases; -Pouca variedade de inimigos; -Não tem atalhos para construir as torres, vc tem que clicar e as vezes erra o clique,dai a opção some ou vai para outro espaço; Fiz até um video, quem puder ajudar da uma olhada la, vlw!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnX7bVXPJsk

Здравствуйте, друзья, сегодня посмотрим на игрушку под названием Hydraulic Empire. Она вышла в Steam 15 июля 2015 года, разработчик - Batholith Entertainment. Жанр - Tower Defense с элементами RPG. Сюжета, как обычно, нет, просто защищаемся от орд противника с помощью башенок =) Графика на первый взгляд неплоха, но по прошествии пары уровней, когда много башен и противников совершенно перестаешь понимать, что вообще происходит, все сливается в одну кашу. Глаза напрягаются и становится неприятно играть. Звук... еще один минус, звуки игры плохи, неприятны, музыка начинает зависать через пару уровней, превращаясь в ту же самую кашу, только уже звуковую. Геймплей на самом деле интересен, не надоедает сразу, но все другие минусы перевешивают этот положительный момент. У игры интересный сеттинг, хорошая задумка, но очень плохая реализация. При записи игра вылетела пару раз, русский язык не поддерживается. Мой итог 5\10, не советую. https://youtu.be/cKjJHcBhFmM

I think you should get it but only if it is on sale. I completed it in about 4 hours or so, although I already played it before at my friends house so I knew what I was doing. It is a short game and a bit clunky, lacking in many ways, but overall it is a decent tower defense game and actually has some unique ideas. Mainly that not only can you shape the path of the enemies, but there are multiple waypoints that they have go through so you can make some very twisty paths for them to travel through.

Fun and addicting, definitely worth the price. The difficulty (even set at easy) can sneak up on you real quick, really makes you think and strategize. My only gripe is the limited space for upgrades in the city and factory, I've already maxed out, but I imagine there's strategy in that too. Overall, a good game.

Bad graphics, poor options, punishingly difficult in the sense that many levels can only be solved a single way. There's plenty of better TD offerings out there.

Hydraulic Empire is a tower defense game with enough new wrinkles to it to make it worthwhile to play, especially at its low price. There are a dozen towers in the game, including a mud slinger (to slow down enemies), a bomber, a tesla tower, a gattling gun, a netter (to knock down flying enemies), and more. However, you can only take five of these towers with you into a level. The enemies are fun. They're robots, and while most just simply try to make their way to the exit, others spawn more robots, or repair destroyed robots (so they get back up and start heading for the exit again), or carry smaller robots on their back, or disable your towers, or more. There are 21 levels. Each level is made up of a hex grid, with start and end points, and possibly some rally points that the enemies also have to visit. Enemies travel on and you build on the hexes, and since enemies can't travel through most of your towers, you can create a circuitous path for them to follow. If you've played Defense Grid (which I'd recommend over this), then it's the same sort of idea. Each time you complete a level (even if you lose), you earn cogs, which you can use to upgrade your towers. You can grind cogs if you want, or try out extra difficulty settings for extra cogs, but it's not really necessary. I completed the campaign only repeating a few levels. You can upgrade your towers, both inside and outside the levels. The outside upgrading is sort of confusing, and it isn't explained well in the tutorial. On the "factory" screen (where you upgrade individual towers), you get 14 hexes. On one hex you have to place a tower, but then around it you can place upgrades. That means you can't upgrade all of the towers. You can only pick out like four and give them 2-3 upgrades each. You build towers using your Keeper. You have to move your Keeper to the hex where you want to build a tower, which can get tricky because your Keeper can also damage enemies and improve the capabilities of nearby towers, so there are usually 2-3 places where you'd like him to be at once. Along with cogs, after each level your Keeper also earns some experience, which leads to levels and upgrade points. So you can improve your Keeper as well as the towers. The only problem I had with the game is that it stopped recording my progress. It unlocked new levels properly, so I was able to complete the campaign, but it stopped saving my scores, which means it currently doesn't think I've completed most of the levels (and the levels where it did record a score, it recorded the wrong score). So it's not giving me credit for completing the campaign, which is annoying. But overall, Hydraulic Empire is fun enough. I got it for $2, and it was more than worthwhile at that price.

Has some good ideas but the game is very unpolished and surprisingly quite hard in the later levels. It is not something I can recommend. A mostly standard tower defenese game but played on a hex grid that tends to be more open then typical. The biggest differences are the skill trees and city building (probably not the right term) where you can upgrade your towers. A nice idea but poorly executed. There are two ways to upgrade your towers, bonuses that benefit all your towers or bonuses that upgrade only the tower type it is adjacent to it. Unfortunately other that a block say +3% (or whatever) there is no other indication of how things are upgraded. They really need to add a chart / display that shows exactly how much each tower is being benefited by. The skill tree is just for your avatar and it is very simple. This does show a summary at least but I had no idea how one skill worked (skill to pick up scrap). Another problem here is that all the bonuses feel very small (tower and avatar). The towers felt the same after the upgrades. I'm sure they are there but the small amount and poor feedback made it very hard to tell. Other good things are nice tower variety and nice monster variety... but the poor UI / feedback means not really knowing what all the creatures are doing exactly, not too bad here though. Some other examples of the poor polish. Game often doesn't shutdown properly, game forgets your scores and tells you you haven't beaten a level even though you had (but you can still advance past it if you complete it). Difficulty is not explained at all and no feedback given on rewards. Also seems like you are expected to grind to raise your levels near the end which isn't fun (but I may just suck). Unless you are really hard up for a new tower defense game, just go play one of the multitude of other ones available. With work this one might be pretty good but it is laking in many basic ways, honestly feels like someones first attempt at making a game.