Toaster Defense

I really enjoyed this game! It's got a fun, innovative aesthetic to it and is really well made. A lot of love went into this.

The following is an abridged transcript of a review I originally wrote for a YouTube video: Toaster Defense is a hybrid tower defense-platformer with some 2D shooter elements mixed in. It's a good thing I'm good at... one of those genres. Anyway, the game has a Story and Endless mode, so I start in the story campaign, whereupon I take the role of Evan the Toaster Oven. One T. Pott – and I can tell by these names alone that I will love this game – informs Evan that Tina the Toaster is under assault by strange robots from the next room over, likely under command of Tomputer. Evan, being the strongest or at least the bravest, of the appliances gets to work shielding the otherwise defenseless toaster from the onslaught. As an aside, Mr. Pott also observes that this strange fixation on Tina comes from the fact that she is, and I'm quoting here, “a very lush toaster”. I do not know what this means but I had to read that and now so do you. To start, the game looks great. It's very colorful and zany and the fact that I get to customize Evan is a very nice touch. The appliances all look nice and endearing with large, cartoon character eyes. Enemies are angry-looking robot enemies, each color-coded and shaped to represent their attack method and overall rank. The first are these little green mushroom-shaped enemies you can easily defeat, but they have larger, blue variations that are much more dangerous and you need to prioritize more. There are also these drill-bit enemies which you need defeat in other ways, since jumping on them is... literally jumping on a drill-bit, I mean, that much should be obvious. But the enemies that really panic me are large, spherical red enemies that can damage the towers you set up – more on that in a second – and these weird, blue spider-tanks. I really freaked out the first time I saw them and recognized their uncanny movement patterns down the walls and floors where no other enemies can go. It's just unsettling enough to command the player's attention to where it needs to be at all times. It shows a lot of thought went into the art style and it helps the player adapt to the gameplay as a result. Sound-wise is similar. I really dig the music. From the mellow menu music to the pulse-pounding frenetic action tracks of the main game, there's always something happening and I love each and every one of them. As soon as I started into the tutorials, I found myself bobbing along with the music. It's a good sign for sure when you hit the floor running like that. And the sound effects are really good, with satisfying 'booms' when you smash an enemy underfoot. Or what passes for Evan's feet here. Also, one bit of sound design that actually made me laugh out loud – like for real not just the acronym here – was when Evan reloads his projectile-toast all the way, his oven actually dings. It's adorable and the fact that that kind of thing was incorporated in makes me insanely happy. Love the audio design. And now for the mechanics. As soon as I started story mode, the tutorial is brisk and lightweight. It doesn't overstay its welcome and it conveys to me the information I need most. Once I get underway, Evan has a few options available to him. On his own, he can jump, dash, and shoot his toast. You can also manually reload whenever you're short on ammo. Jumping and dashing deal one, large hit, while shooting does less damage per individual hit but fires very rapidly. The robots will spawn from either side of the area across the game's three maps and do various amounts of damage to Tina if left unchecked. Luckily, to make this less of a chore, you can fully restore all damage Tina has taken up to this point by giving her one of your hearts in exchange. You can have up to 6 hearts total, so unless you've taken quite a beating, being able to fully restore Tina's (not-inconsiderable) health for just one is a pretty huge frustration-relief. But thankfully, Tina does help, as every 5 rounds she'll generate an item for you – be it an extra hit of health or a small stock of coins. That said, you CAN get help by way of summoning one of three towers – I guess you can call them that – by spending the currencies you pick up by defeating enemies. These include a desk fan, which slows enemies passing by it, a meat tenderizer – which is technically not an appliance but, hey, get your friends where you can – which slams down at timed intervals, meaning that, luck withstanding, you might do a great deal of damage to groups of enemies at a time, and the lamp, which targets one enemy at a time and fires periodically upon its target so long as they're in range. You can also upgrade each of them to a super, golden-orange-ish form for 100 coins as well, upping damage for the tenderizers, increasing range and efficacy for fans, and speeding up fire rate for lamps. When the enemies become progressively stronger in Endless Mode, for example, having full power fans near their spawn points makes the tower-breaking red ball robots much more manageable as it buys you more time to intervene, and hammers continue to bash enemies into oblivion even as they're being attacked, making them very reliable countermeasures to those annoyances. Of note, meanwhile, is the story campaign has 3 major boss battles where Tomputer himself shows up to have a go at Evan and Tina with a “if I can't have her, no one will” mindset. It's worth noting that the towers do not impact Tomputer during these battles, so while the lesser enemies will still be slowed and take damage, the boss will only be defeated directly by the player taking action. And, uh, I am terrible at these boss fights. Admittedly, when I first started playing I was very much in the habit and jumping and dashing into my enemies very much tending to problems myself, so I actually forgot I had projectiles. Needless to say, I eagerly await the day challenge speedrunners try a “no toast” self-imposed challenge run of this game, because that one mechanic really changes bosses from “nearly impossible” to “a worthy battle”. Overall, the game is solid. It might require a patch or two to achieve perfection, but the gameplay loop is tight. The gameplay is satisfying and rewarding. The story is charming and silly. The game looks and sounds fantastic. It's proof positive that an amazing game can be achieved if the creator puts in the time and effort into making it reality