PolyCore Defense

Its honestly not that great, no idea why I clocked 20h.

<3

Classic 2D (2.5D) TD. Love the sights and sounds. Differentiated turrets are fun. Fair progression system. Overall, a very relaxing and positive experience. Demo progression is carried over. https://steamcommunity.com/groups/towerdefensegamesrated

PolyCore Defense is a relatively simple and traditional tower defense game. The game is similar to the Kingdom Rush series, which is my gold standard. What this one does not have are trainable heros, graphics of the KR caliber, hidden objects to serve for, a story-line, dialogue and bosses. I hope I didn't miss anything. Yet, the game manages to be entertaining, exciting and playable for hours on end. The graphics are pretty good too. Some of the problems are that the different types of enemies are just randomly mixed and not announced ahead of time, so it is hard to prepare adequately. There is uneveness so that some stages are too hard, while others are too easy, but I have found this to be case in all tower defense games. There is an average amount of grinding. All in all, I recommend it highly.

For a simple tower defense it's a good entry to the genre. It doesn't push any boundaries, and some of the difficulties are impossible (clearly not tested by the dev), but it also has meta-progression unlocked by simply playing and doesn't require getting achievements. The usefulness of these unlocks varies from the universal like cheaper towers to the virtually useless like a 7% chance of an enemy not causing damage to the tower (but they will sit there with their hitbox generating a hit each game tick so the same enemy can still destroy your core). Some of the towers do interesting things, but you will likely gravitate to ones that slow or apply poison damage as that ignores enemy defenses and is useful in all difficulties. All in all a good purchase on sale, and can give you a good 10+ hours of gameplay, but you won't finish because not all difficulties are beatable. Once you stop enjoying, you just move on to the next game.

Definitely a mixed bag which is a shame because there is a lot to like but also a lot of disappointment. Visuals - It's a really pretty game BUT the levels are quite bare and most importantly the enemies are extremely boring. I know its all about polygons but that just means 0 personality, your enemies are all literally different shaped blobs. Gameplay - Very run of the mill TD, nothing is new here but it scratches a TD itch. My problem came with 2 issues, 1 is the difficulty, it doesn't really change. It's the same 40 waves in every map it feels like and they are very easy to deal with. Additionally there is no bosses or anything of the sort, just maybe 12 different shapes to make up the enemy waves. Sound - A great catchy little jingle plays, but it is the only jingle. Combined with fairly abrasive sounds on many of the Towers with long lasting waves/high HP enemies means it gets a bit grating after a while. visuals. For the price it isn't terrible, but it feels like you hit a content wall after 2-3 levels since they are all basically the same but with different layouts.