A cute tower defense game released last week that requires you to use tetromino blocks to build a tower defense maze. Emberward, the debut title from indie studio Refic Games, is a creative little game that requires you to use your head to come up with ideal layouts for your maze before using a series of towers you’ve chosen yourself to defend the campfire in the center. There’s a demo available now that lets you play through the first area with somewhat limited abilities.
It’s a pretty neat setup. Each run gives you a starting set of towers and a deck of blocks, but from there you’ll get new towers and blocks for your deck as you win a few waves of attacks per level. You’ll also get experience to build up your chosen character’s talent tree, and you’ll find relics along the way that will upgrade your powers a bit. It’s a pretty standard setup, but the way you build it gives you satisfying customization options without being overwhelming or having to get too involved in meta-strategy.
It’s a pretty clever concept. The combination of customizing your own towers and choosing block placement means you’ve set an ideal strategy in advance – like lots of switchbacks or long straights – which you then have to adapt to the tactical situation when you see the layout of the level you’re fighting on.
Things get more complicated when you find larger towers that require more space to place, and when you reinforce your block walls with runes that increase their effectiveness. I was even surprised to find “drone” towers that send out attackers against enemies rather than lying in wait for them. After a few playthroughs of the demo, this game landed on my list of games to check out in the future, simply because there’s so much room for neat game design – I’m excited to see what new characters and towers will bring.
You can find Emberward on Steam for $15, with a 10% introductory discount over the next few days.
Emberward’s early access launch includes two regions, each with their own enemies, a forest and a desert. There are 25 towers and 42 relics, as well as tower upgrades and a talent tree for each of the three playable characters. The roadmap calls for an update that will add a frozen ruins region with new towers, relics, and characters, and a final region with higher difficulty and even more towers/relics/characters. Beyond these two updates, Refic hopes to add custom game modes, an in-game compendium, controller support, additional maps and various boss battles, and Steam achievements in the future.
