Hold The Fort

Nice game with potential, but I found some points to fix and improve:

- when the mouse is on the menu, the keys for moving around the map stop working
- towers priority cannot be set (last, first, armor, weak....)
- you can't see the full health of enemies (for example 43/250 and I see only 43)
- mines should be without time out (because you paid them for gold, without magic)
- on some maps, when the towers are near the edge, you can't upgrade the tower (you can't see the button - out of screen)

Pretty shallow game. Worth buying on sale. Some bad controls, difficult to see which towers are upgraded, only a few techniques really work, and the graphics and music are meh.

But, some interesting strategy. The mix of magic and towers is different. There is an attempt at a story.

Tepid recommendation.

It's hard to believe at first: But this is actually a great TD game!!

The obvious two main issues when you play it for just a little bit are: 1) the screen which would move awkwardly when you use the mouse to move the edges, and 2) the slow pace of this game.

Well, here are two big 'hacks' to fix those simple problems: 1) Use the ‘WASD’ keys to control the camera and 2) hit the fast-forward button to speed-up the game. Tada!!

If you move past these early annoyances, you’ll discover a really well-made and well-balanced game. I particularly like the combination of towers with also lots of ‘arcane’ (i.e. magic) options. Almost giving it a feel of a good D&G game on top of it all. As such, managing your upgrades and ‘mana’ is a huge part of the strategy as well, as you won’t do it with just the towers alone! How many TD games offer you that much?!

Now, ready for more? The setting options also allow you to let the enemies damage your towers (or not), depending on how much of a challenge you like. If you set it ‘on’ then forget about Tower ‘Defense’ . . .This becomes an all-out war, especially later in the game!

Sure the camera movement problems do get in the way further down the missions too, as some tower placement spots are hardly noticeable on bigger maps ( near your fortress ). But here again is another big-little tip: Use the ‘Q’ and ‘E’ keys to rotate as well, and just like that you’ll get a better view of the entire map.

I wish the devs would come back and fix these little annoyances. But considering there hasn’t been any updates in a while, I only have little hope of that.

This being said, if you keep your left hand on the WASD (and Q – E) keys for the camera, and your right hand on the mouse to choose your strategies and blow out some damages, this game actually becomes a true hidden gem in the genre, even in its current state!

At least, IMO, every true TD fans should give it a try . . .And enjoy the Hell they will bring upon with these ice-bolts and fire tornadoes!!

you have to manage your spells!! ive played about all of the TD games and this feels miles above most of them.
check out their dungeons of edera game too. this is amazingly fun and challenging. just buy it.

I love tower defense games, been playing them since the first starcraft mods, lately Warstone TD, Gemcraft Series and of course Kingdom Rush + Frontiers. I couldn't resist buying this TD game with 50% discount.
Good:

• There is a wide variety of towers (including flame, ice, laser) and clearly, some are much better for certain levels or placement spots than others, e.g. obviously placing the AoE towers in front and the hard-hitting single damage towers towards your base to pick of runners or the heavily armored foes that get through the slaughter, also it's very satisfying to place a few flame towers on a very long path and watch the enemies just slowly burn to a crisp as they try to get through a mile of burning hell.
  
• There is an even bigger variety of mostly flashy and very effective spells that cost mostly mana and sometimes gold, including fire tornadoes, blizzards, flash freeze, traps, mass repair.
  
• You get exp for every enemy slain and are totally free to distribute skill points balanced on new towers and tower upgrades as well as into the opposite skill path of better and crazier spells and mana upgrades, or you could go down just the path you like more, everything seems to work.
  
• Extremely customizable with lots of shortcuts you can allocate, different difficulties and even the option to switch tower damage on or off. Some enemies can damage your towers and you have to repair them, which is imho how this game should be played and is balanced around, but some won't like the added fuss, so just switch it off and at least play on the hardest difficulty then to offset this, otherwise you'll just swim in gold and have no way to spend it. Also lots of graphics options.
  
• The graphics overall are very detailed and the levels, towers, enemies and especially the spell effects are obviously lovingly crafted. With a Ryzen 5 2600 and a 1070 I can maintain 144 fps at 1440p on maxed out settings only when no enemies are on the screen, for fluid gameplay during large waves I had to scale back.
  
• You can quickly switch between three different game speeds so you can micromanage in difficult situations and accelerate the boring parts.

• The graphics to me look a bit sterile, in the way that Age of Empires looks sterile when compared to Warcraft. The game is aiming for a more realistic look, the main problem with this imho is that the enemies are really hard to tell apart as they have no big exaggerated features.
  
• There's no world map. It's not a big deal for me and the mission list does its job, but some immersion is missing because of this.
  
• The story is very basic. I don't expect a twisting, complicated, intruiging storyline for a TD game obviously, so it's no biggie.

• The area you can scroll around in is severely restricted, and worse, when you zoom in, you can't scroll farther to the edges, you're still stuck at the same x,y-coordinates that are the boundaries when zoomed out, meaning you'll always have to play on maxed zoomed out setting, otherwise you can't see a large part of the inbound enemies until they're standing right at your first towers.
  
• When frame rates drop, scrolling gets choppy and slower, so getting around the big maps (and you have to when surveying all the enemy paths) feels like a chore. At least include a scroll speed setting please.
  
• Tying into this, sounds get much louder when you're zoomed in and very low when zoomed out. This is realistic but bad design in this case, as you're almost always zoomed out and the combat sounds are almost inaudible while the UI sounds and music stay at full volume, so you're almost shocked every time you get an error sound because the spell you want to use is still on cooldown. Also, you feel very detached from the fighting on the ground when you can barely hear it, which adds to the sterile overall feel.
  
• There are still some typos in the descriptions and unit names (e.g. a quick look in the bestiary yields "beserker", "presense", "in it's path" instead of "in its path", ...)

This is a fine one to scratch the TD itch. My only very minor complaint if any at all: very small performance issues meaning an FPS drop from 60 down to 30 happening exclusively when zooming in with lots of enemies on-screen.
No-brainer if on sale!

Horrible limited maps with only pre determined spots to place your towers. Very little stradegy, accomplishment, satisfaction or fun in playing. The skill tree gives it some playability and sense of accomplishment. Ar L16 now and I have no motivation to play anymore as it seems there is no reason to other then to build the skill tree. Every damn map has been pretty much the same boring thing so i know what the rest of the maps will be like. I should have read the reviews more before i wasted my time and money.

this is a good game for the price simple and addictive, good tower defence game

Its sorta fun but feels like a chore after a while. not worth the sale price imo. not a bad game, just not much fun either. you constantly have to repair your towers throughout each wave. It gets tedious fast! Id give it another chance at the $4 price range.

This is a pretty standard TD game, but is solid and enjoyable to play. There are lots of upgrade options for your towers in addition to having various spells that you can use as well. The maps get progressively more difficult as you go along. So, it's definitely a challenge, but satisfying to get that right blend of towers doing AOE damage as well as more direct/single focus damage. Genuinely fun.

Really enjoying Hold the Fort! For a tower defense game it keeps me really engaged; usually its a set it and forget it kind of game but it was a really nice change to be constantly engaged! You have to repair your towers during the rounds or they disappear! I really also enjoy the zoom feature so I can get really close to the action and see a ton of details on all of the incoming bad guys. It takes a little bit to level up so the first few rounds seem like they take awhile to get through using the same few towers, but it made me really aware of what each upgrade and power did.

Love love love the mana and extra powers for random extra attacks, especially the two guards one. Its like having a free safe guard to throw an extra few guards on! My favorite is the fire tornado!!!!

Would like to see the number of kills for each tower so I can know the deadlier tower combinations, but aside from that I am really enjoying Hold the Fort and can't wait to keep playing! I definitely recommend!

This is a very specific type of tower defense - almost more of a puzzle game than an OG free-form TD.

Each level requires a bit of thought into how you're going to spend your talent points and combine leveling tower abilities with leveling player abilities. The difficulty increases at higher levels, so you'll want to play around with spells and towers early on to get a feel for how you want to solve those later murder fests.

It's light on story but has that gimmicky classic TD writing style to it that made me pretty nostalgic for Warcraft 3 days.

It's the perfect summer evening puzzler, and if you love tower defense you'll love Hold the Fort.



Disclaimer: The dev once bought me a boilermaker. This in no way or shape influences my review, but now means I owe him a few beers soon!

While Hold the Fort is not trying to reinvent the TD genre, it introduces enough tiny novel elements to be pretty catchy and pleasant to play.
The mix of deployable soldiers and towers taking damage from the enemies spices up the gameplay enough compared to a too classic TD style, while a pretty big talent tree, and a good variety of enemies and towers prevents it from getting too repetitive.
It's solid, clean and I see the developer is working on it pretty actively with updates and fixes already. Good game, glad I got it, it was a while I didn't play a Tower Defense, and I had forgot how fun is the gameplay loop of such games.

For the first hour or so I was totally involved. Learning the game, interesting talent tree and some nice spells.

However, it has fairly quickly become very repetitive and I am wishing the levels finished before time. The game does not seem to have enough variation and the pathing is very nondescript.

Perhaps a good game trying to get out!! Overpriced at this stage of development,

Would be happy to amend review depending on further updates,

A mediocre game. When I use the mouse to scroll down-right I move up-left. Use of asdw is a must. Repairing the towers was just boring. Just getting less money would have worked as well with less hassle. Using the spells was actually more fun than anything else in this game. For the effects.

Classic style, and keeps you engaged. I like that it forces tower placement, so you have to really plan how to best proceed.

Beautiful, well rounded tower defense game.

The persistent skill tree makes for some difficult choices as you level up and progress through the stages. With two separate talent paths, Tower or Spells, the different maps make for a well balanced solidly difficult tower defense.I think the difficulty starts off comfortably hard and holds strong throughout.

With the rotational camera and hotkey settings the game was comfortable to get into and easy to get around the maps.

The mobs attacking back and splitting or spawning separately will keep you actively participating and tweaking your build throughout the waves, regardless of your build path.

Clickfest.

I could tell right away that I wasn't going to enjoy this tower defense game. The enemies damage your towers, so you have to constantly scroll around looking for towers to heal. This requirement of constant active attention feels like busywork and defeats my purpose in playing tower defense games. I like to leisurely think about my strategy while I watch TV or otherwise multitask.

I gotta say, I really dig this game.

The persistent skill tree is awesome. I found the levels fast-paced and pretty difficult. Finding a balance between managing the health of the towers (and sometimes upgrading them mid-fight) and using spells/abilities makes this TD game stand out. Since you don't get gold during the wave of enemies, you also need to budget for repair costs.

I watched a couple streamers play early builds before purchasing. I was surprised at some of the extra QOL features that have been put in since then (at least as far as I could tell). Not having to click towers before using hotkeys is amazing. Edge scrolling is there, but I found it easiest to just keyboard scroll.

It's obvious a lot of love was put into this game. If you're into indie or tower-defense games, it's definitely worth a shot.

I'm only a couple hours into this game so far but I am really impressed with it! Controls and visuals are excellent - also the music is epic! Haven't experienced any bugs or glitches with it. The game is actually quite challenging which makes the gameplay even more fun and rewarding. I can see myself playing this for many, many hours!