Zotrix - Solar Division

[b]Solar Division is a space themed tower defence game with solid gameplay, an assortment of towers and enemies and various different game modes and maps[/b] In Solar Division you must use the various towers at your disposal to defend different space stations against the Zortix alien invasion. Like most tower defence games you'll progress through various different maps (3 per space station) facing wave after wave of enemies which you must destroy without losing your lives. There are a few different types of missions all involving wiping out a set number of waves of enemies but some missions have additional objectives such as defending one or more moving or stationary objectives or destroying all the waves within a specific time limit adding a nice little bit of variety and challenge. You start straight off with a tutorial which explains to you the basics of gameplay, what the various options in game do and essentially how to play before you get straight into the action. You will begin only with a few towers but as you progress you'll unlock new ones along with new maps. The game starts relatively easy but the difficulty curve is very nice and I haven't found myself too over or underwhelmed yet. The default mode for each map is Classic which is the 'story mode' and will allow you to unlock the next level when completed but each map also has 5 other game modes including Endless (where you play until you die), Max Credits (where you start with 40,000 credits), Limited Towers (where you can only place ten towers in total) and a few others that I haven't really tried yet. The multitude of maps you'll unlock greatly increases the playability of Solar Division because you'll need to play each level different from the last. Some levels will have many enemy routes forcing you to find choke points so your towers can have maximum efficiency while others will have moving objectives you have to defend so you'll have to spread your towers out to protect yourself from all angles. If you take too much damage or lose too many lives you can take advantage of the games handy checkpoint feature which is a great little addition to the game. At various points in the level you'll hit 'checkpoints' which by pressing backspace at any time will allow you to revert to that previous point. This comes in handy when you make a mistake that could cost you the game and don't want to lose money by simply selling the tower; though you'll lose a few waves of progress you won't have to start the entire level over again. There are plenty of towers in game, all with their own damage, range and special effects and each tower can be upgraded a maximum of three times. You can also choose how towers interact with enemies by choosing to attack mobs based on their strength, position in line or distance from the tower. Aside from the basic attack towers there are also 'upgrade towers' which, if placed within range of other towers, can do things like increase money earned from them, increase their attack range or boost the amount of damage you can do. My favourite tower is a rather awesome drone station which if you place two down you can set a drone patrolling the map instead of having only stationary towers. This can be great for catching any little sneakies that might slip past towards the end. You'll also find a multitude of enemy mobs also but these only seem to differ in speed or strength with no special abilities that I've encountered yet. You can view the stats of each different type of enemy by clicking on their icon where you'll find a small amount of information, their shield type (if any) and what they are vulnerable and resistant to. I only had a few issues with the games, none of them gamebreaking but some were very noticeable. The first being you're not really told how to change maps. I assumed once completing the first level it would automatically select the next one for you but it doesn't. This is made even more confusing by the fact that the levels aren't named, they simply have a different picture which you must click. I have read a few people commenting saying the game on has one map because of this. The second is only a small issue but there are various spelling mistakes in game such as 'highlighted' being spelt 'hilighted' . I think this is likely due to the developer not having English as his first language and as I said before it's not a huge issue, it's just something I noticed whilst playing. [b]Solar Division is definitely a great addition to the tower defence genre and with it's addictive and replayable gameplay style you'll find yourself playing for a substantial amount of time. I recommend Solar Division to any tower defence fan looking for some challenging gameplay. 100% worth picking up on sale.[/b]

Solar Division is a tower defense game in space. Your goal is to build a variety of towers to combat an alien menace. Does this sound generic? Well yeah, it kind of is, but if you're a sucker for addictive and strategic tower defense games, Solar Division may be right up your alley! [h1]The Breakdown[/h1] So, clearly this game isn't trying to be anything incredibly special, though nor does it need to be in my opinion. The tower defense genre is inherently a simple one (place a bunch of towers, wait, place more towers, wait, rinse & repeat), so innovation is a bit tough to accomplish. Usually, I like when games try something new, and even though Solar Division doesn't really do this, I think it still is a well-made game that may or may not deserve playing if you're into tower defense games or not. If you are, Solar Division is not a bad option by any means. The gameplay is what you'd expect: place towers to shoot down wave after wave of aliens, collect money, and then upgrade old towers or buy new ones to stop the bigger and badder enemies. This continues until the waves are all complete. From there, you can play the next level, or repeat the same level with a variety of options - 3 difficulties and a few different types of modes. The game consists of 30 levels, some of which have some interesting objectives in them. Most levels are typical for the tower defense genre (if enemies reach the end of the map you lose a life, which you have a set amount of), but some involve the player defending a ship or surviving for a set time limit. I like these conceptually, but the time limit one was a bit silly because the timer started before I had even hit the key to launch an enemy wave, so all I had to do was sit there and wait for a few minutes. It's not a huge deal, but just a small noticeable gripe. In terms of the towers themselves, there's 15 in total, most of which are fairly unique. Some are quick lasers, some shoot powerful lasers that need to reload, others fire rockets, one tower slows down enemies, and a few of them provide bonuses to other towers like increased money from killing enemies or added damage. There's even a drone tower that launches drones from a line that moves across the map. So in terms of tower variety, I think this game does pretty well. The enemies aren't super varied, but they certainly differ in size, armor, speed, and appearance. Something unique that this game does is that it has a checkpoint system. Every few levels, a checkpoint will be saved so that if you happen to mess up horribly, you can simply just press backspace and go back a a bit instead of having to retry the entire level. It's honestly a great feature that I think should be mandatory in any tower defense game by now. The maps sort of confused me initially - both in the menu and in the levels themselves. See, after beating a level you have to click on the next level and then hit the play button, which sort of just makes level selection needlessly confusing. Again, it's a minor complaint, but still a noteworthy one. In the levels themselves though, the map is just sort of a cluster of floating debris that you place towers on. It confused me at first, but after a while I got used to it. Graphically, Solar Division looks....well, not great. However, it also doesn't look too bad, just certainly not incredible. The maps, enemies, and towers all just sort of look bland to me. Perhaps that's a personal complaint though, and regardless, the game is still pretty fun so it's not too big of a deal really. I will say though that the sound design is a bit annoying. The music is fine, nothing special though, but the sound effects got a bit annoying to listen to after placing dozens of towers and hearing the same announcer guy say what tower I place each time. Most of the towers make annoying noises too, but luckily there's an option in the menu to turn off tower SFX, so that's nice I suppose. This game's difficulty progression seems to be just about right, which was perfect for me since I sometimes suck at tower defense games if I don't have time to get down a good strategy for clearing levels. One thing that was noticeable was that it was pretty much a breeze if I just spammed one of the towers (the "Shocker" - the one that slows+damages aliens), but the devs actually balanced some of the towers today so this strategy is no longer viable. Still though, I felt as if I were playing normally I would both find the game challenging and yet also not too hard, if that makes sense. [h1]Pros[/h1] [list] [*]Fun and fairly challenging space-themed tower defense game [*]15 different towers, 30 levels, and a decent variety of enemy aliens to kill [*]Loads of variety map-wise - multiple difficulties, modes (endless, limited towers, etc.), and objectives (don't lose all your lives, protect a ship, survive for a few minutes, etc.) [*]The checkpoint system is great for preventing any losing of too much progress - woo! [*]The developers frequently (at least for now) update the game to fix bugs and balance towers [*]Steam achievements, trading cards, cloud support, and leaderboards [/list] [h1]Cons[/h1] [list] [*]The game is not graphically beautiful - everything looks a little bland [*]Map selection is confusing [*]The level select screen is a bit cluttered [*]Some of the sound effects can get a bit annoying (though they can be turned off and there are volume sliders) [/list] All in all, Solar Division is a fun game that's probably worth your time. Is it fantastic? Eh, I'm not sure on that one. I'd definitely say though that it's a great game for fans of the tower defense genre or for anyone who enjoys a little bit of strategy in their games. It's simple, fun, and contains a decent amount of content for its price. Plus, my complaints are mostly personal gripes, really. Overall, it's not a game that does anything incredible, but for a tower defense game it's a great inclusion to the genre. [b][h1]Final Verdict: 7/10[/h1][/b]

[b]Solar Division[/b] is a tower defense game set in space, where you have to defend several space stations from the invading Zotrix aliens. First of all I must say that the UI itself is somewhat hard to understand at first, especially the level selection menu. The levels of the game are divided into several space stations, each one having 3 different missions, and while I must say that it becomes clear once you play the first three levels, I guess the game could do a better job in showing the different levels and sections. The game does offer you 3 different difficulty settings for each mission, as well as 6 different modes to choose from such as the Classic, Endless and Max Credits. That said, even though I tend to get stuck on a tower defense game when I start to play one, I usually don’t delve into other modes besides the classic one, I do try however to achieve the best star rating on each level though, which in this game might take a while. [b][u]Level design:[/u][/b] Each of the levels gives you a small introductory text that provides some background as to why the Zotrix are invading that station and what is their purpose but that is pretty much as far as the storyline goes. Each of the level is however very different from each other, some just have you keeping the enemy from reaching a certain place while others require you to protect certain structures. The levels also vary a lot in terms of layout, some levels have a single route that the enemies will follow, while others will have several routes or even one route that splits into different routes. Not only that, but you’ll be facing some pretty dramatic changes in terms of where you can place your turrets from one level to the other, which requires you to think through and adapt to different enemy types. [b][u]Tower design:[/u][/b] While the tower design isn’t particularly pleasing to the eye, it is however easy to differentiate one tower type from another. Towers come in various different shapes, formats and colors that help distinguish laser towers from missile towers for example. The game offers 15 different towers and while upon reading the description of some of them you might feel like they’re pretty much the same, on the playing field they differ a lot. You’ve got towers that stun and slow enemies, single and dual laser turrets, beam turrets, missile turrets and so on. They might not sound interesting in paper, but in action some of them are pretty cool like the missile towers. There’s this one that fires 4 missiles each second and then there is another that fires one missile every few seconds but it deals a ton of damage. There is plenty of different ways that you can build up your defenses on any given level since you have so many towers to choose from and, you can also upgrade each of these up to 3 times, increasing their range and strength. You can also change the way turrets behave, like targeting certain targets such as, the closest, the first, the strongest or the weakest enemy within their range. One thing that I believe is unique to Solar Division, when compared to other Tower Defense games, is the fact that you can build drone towers and set routes for them to patrol. If an enemy gets within the range of these drones they will be shot. While they can’t be upgraded, this was by far my favourite defensive mechanism to use, especially when several enemy routes meet in a line on a level and you can just have drones flying through and attacking them at all times. [b][u]Final thoughts:[/u][/b] While there are plenty of other great tower defense games on Steam, I’d say that Solar Division is worth checking out, especially if you’re a fan of TD games. The game might not look or sound particularly amazing but it has some nice little features such as the drones, which I’ve mentioned above, and offers a [b]good variety of modes and levels[/b] that force you to change your defensive tactics. Overall it is a pretty [b]rock solid game[/b] that could perhaps use some UI polishing and some more interesting plot.

A generic tower defense offering generic maps where you defend your base from unidentifiable critters while a generic voice repeats the same sentences at every mouse click. This game furiosly needs a graphic designer, a level designer and an English translator. There are flash TD games that offer a better experience for free. On the positive side, the developer seems very active. This is my first refund ever.

This game reminds me of a flash game I used to play back in 2008-9. Seems like the same developer built more on top of the really simple concept including stages, different modes and new tower types. Love it. Thanks! Dangerously addicting for such a simple concept! Definitely worth the money.

A solid Entry in a long forgotten Genre I don´t get why noone plays this game. I scored in the top 5 on every single level i played and judging by the number of reviews, either the genre itself has been forgotten, or this game is burried deep within steam so noone can find it... Sure, it doesn´t look amazing, the soundeffects are absolutly horrible (my opinion) and it lacks a bit of clarity in some cases (be it the enemy lines overlaping in circles so you can´t exactly see where they will go or the lack of explenations on which unit belongs to what type). But still, the mechanics work great, the levels are challenging and there are a lot of modes to play. There´s also a checkpoint function similar to the one in Defense Grid where this game took a lot of its inspiration. There is enough content here to make me easily recommend it to you. After all, there aren´t that many TDs on Steam that have a great mechanic so if you´re interested in that genre, check out this game. it easily makes my top 10 list of TDs on Steam...

[h1] Simple tower defense game set in space. It's not bad, you can change resolution to make graphics clearer. 15 areas divided into 3 missions. Plenty of towers to choose from. There's nothing to unlock except that, each mission have its own set of towers available to build. Upgrading and choosing specific target like closest, lowest health, strongest is possible. Balance is ok I guess. Definitely not bad but just feels a bit generic and uninspired. [/h1]

Полностью сломанный баланс делающий её непроходимой (а, могла бы выйти средне-унылая TD, которую достижений ради можно было и поиграть...) [spoiler][url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/6857971]А, еще можно на меня подписаться в качестве steam куратора（＾ω＾) [/url] [/spoiler]

Quite a solid tower defense title. Solar Division offers some fine tuned, thoughtful gameplay. It is actually a bit challenging after the first 2 levels. I usually lose at least half my lives. I like that the speed of enemies is affected by their pathing (ie. they go slower around bends) The UI is really nice, clean, easy to find what you need to know. The game doesn't hold your hand too much, you have to use your brain and learn the mechanics a bit. Very impressed.

One of those games that you think about hourrs later. Still seems to be a few bugs, but makes you think about alternate strategies every time you fail. Did not think I would like the idea of leaderboards, but it certainly keeps you focused with the thought - what could I have done better!!