Age of Defense

Kingdom Rush: Unga-bunga Edition

Jokes aside, I think this game is different enough to deserve it's own place, Battlecruiser Games did a really good job here.

You can read in other comments that "ui is bad" but I don't agree. Yes, it's almost "text free", full of unga-bunga pictograms but I think one can wrap their head around it pretty quickly and it makes it more immersive since this is a cave-men themed TD.

This is a tower-only game so you don't have heroes, on the other hand you have tons of upgrades you can buy with skill points after each level more or less customizing your playstyle to your own taste. You like blocking roads and focusing damage? You can upgrade your road blocking spikes.

You want to focus attack speed? There are tons of upgrades for those too, just like damage, unlockable levels for different types of towers, even ultimate abilities.

The enemies, towers and levels fit together nicely but instead of writing a short story here, let's see a pro / cons:

PRO:
- Great thematical and humourous art.
- Cutscenes drawn in style for the game.
- Just enough variety of towers so you have to think how to place them yet it doesn't get too hard.
- Lots of different types of enemies
- Lots of upgrades
- Enough level to keep you occupied for about 9-10 hours even if you do only 1 playthrough.
- You can place towers anywhere where it doesn't collide with obstacles, roads...
- It's more or less a balanced experience on normal difficulty - assuming the "second difficulty" is considered the normal one
- Great music

CONS:
- ...but sometimes it's really hard to tell how much space left, can you place another one?
- Map readability is ofthen not that great. Exactly what paths enemies will follow? Sometimes it seems ambigious until you start the level and see it in action.
- The skill points are a bit sparse, at least on the first playthrough and you cannot reset skill upgrades one-by-one, if you reset, you have to pick all of them again. It would have been great if you could right-click bought upgrades to reverse them.
- Difficulty spikes. In most cases it's pretty smooth but each level is LONG. This can be good or bad...but I think some levels could have been shorter and this way more levels could have been included with lower wave counts.

BOTH:
- You cannot destroy / replace towers. This makes you think more about tower placement but at the same time there are cases where I think you can make the end of the level MUCH HARDER by not placing the towers at the best place and I had those "I wish I could replace some of these" moments.
- Felt like there are too much "tower blocking / stunning" effects at the last levels. This made it more challenging but also it was annoying, especially the part where you had to click like crazy - this specific thing only applies to one level.

BUGS:
- Main menu felt like it's lagging when going to the level selection screen
- Sometimes when I got enough food to buy another keeper tower, the UI slot for that tower stuck in a ui animation loop for a short while
- On the level where you have to quickly click near the towers sometimes the clickable part was active but the graphics remained as it is not
- One time the SFX muted itself. I played with a different pair of earbuds. Later I checked the menu and it was set like I muted it manually. Strange... I just set the volume back to normal and it solved it, didn't occur after that - tho I didn't played with those earbuds again.

beautiful

Fun like thier first game once you understand what's going on. it's a great looking and mechanically decent tower defense that's well put together. I especially like how they go with map challenges for coins instead of difficulty modifiers. You don't have to beat it again with everything just buffed, to get the extra coin you beat it with X or fewer of this unit, or have X unit use Y ability 12 times, or keep 2 walls alive or something. and then in the bottom right there's a second challenge path, where they REALLY change things up. using different entrances, or placing most units for you already, etc. and thankfully no noticable penalties for not going for high difficulties, it can get legitimately difficult at times.

HOWEVER, it's the "once you understand what's going on" that should be emphasized. They try to go with as little text as possible to stick with theme, just using tutorial animations. But that leaves you lacking, with mechanics and modes they just don't explain. Like a few levels in, without indication, they introduce a mechanic where your unit cap is determined by how many units you have of a certain support type. Which is just introduced as them being a range-increasing support units. You can figure it out since upgrades and such have descriptions if you hover over it. Past that, lacking some basic things like the ability to sell towers.

Still, if you got that itch after Warstone TD, this will fill it.

Funny tower defense with great design like crayons

boring imitation

Pretty unique-looking tower defense game in vein of Kingdom Rush (but no heroes). The "(almost) no text" schtick is implemented quite well.
It's a lot more difficult that KR (on higher difficulties), which is quite nice.

It's unique, it's funny, graphics and sound are nice. A really well made classic tower defense game, love it!

loved Warstone TD and love this game as well.

This game was fun at first. It's a challenge for sure.

great tower defense game

Very unclear

Cute and fun little prehistoric tower defense game. I do hope they'll add an in-game bestiary in the future so I can see what all the enemies are called!

Game in UNBALANCED!! You have to grind through the easy mode first to unlock tower upgrades. You can't just go immediately to the hardest difficulty without maxing out tower upgrades.

Nice work.

Basic tower defense, bad ui, few video option, nothing to see apart the cavemen theme...

Was starting to be fun until towards the end with several really annoying missions. Getting caught off guard by new monsters that would make me lose the mission within several minutes into the start on NORMAL was not fun. Got sick of trying to make the game function and let me place towers on the map because of the UI being in the way and making me place towers down in bad positions without being able to refund them. Didn't feel like doing the weird timed challenges for extra skill points because they quickly became too unfun.

A good tower defence!

I bought this game 5 years ago (Yes, in 2019) when it first was in early access. I bought it because Warstone, Battlecruisers first game, is one of my favorite games. I installed it a few times over the past years but the game did not seem to make any real indepth progress. So I was surprised to see that it came out of early access. So I installed it for the fifth time.
Conclusion: Age of Defence does not even come close to Warstone.
It seems to have been programmed by a completely different team of developers. The game comes with almost no explanation, has a very bad interface with useless tooltips. There is no monster encyclopedia or detailed information on the towers and development paths. No tutorial. The menus block the playing field. The help button points to a website with zero help for new players. And completely outdated videos.
Sure, there is a really good game somewhere underneath this mess, but there is still an awful lot of work to be done.
Should never have left early access in this state...

Fun Tower Defense game with a cool setting with Cavemen.

There are some cool traps to set, some fun attacks to send out to, the levels are interesting, it has a nice art design and its fun to play.

The UI needs some work, I do like the idea of having the writing as caveman style stuff but you should have an option for normal writing/non caveman style writing. Most of the elements I can understand but there is the odd one for me that I don't understand what it is trying to tell me. Make a switch so people can change it off or on imo.

Other than that I don't have many gripes with the game, it does what a Tower Defense game should do, its fun, relaxing and challenging all at the same time. With a cool setting and art design to go with the fun gameplay and well done audio that the game has.

One more thing I would like is Steam Deck Support, many Tower Defense game have controller and Steam Deck support, this game has neither, I would love to see SD support and controller support.

Overall the good outdos the bad in this Tower Defense game, Give it a try if you want a new Tower Defense game and are looking for a fun time.

Dubious interface, dull gameplay, lack of proper balance.
Nothing to see here, move along.

Too many bugs, really bad balancing, poor explanations, bad UI, game doesn't give enough info on enemies...

Bosses sometimes spawn where you don't have any turret built making you loose an already won game bc you don't have dmg where it's spawning and game gets increasingly more difficult as time progress until you kill the boss without you earning that much money so the game will outscale you if you have bad luck.

Not interesting meta-progression where you seem to only get +DMG, +Range...

The game looked cool from the trailers but playing it is a whole other story. Won't refund but it feels rushed and released in an unfinished state. Also needs tons of QoL additions it currently lacks a way to pause the game and build (although not every TD has this feature) or to sell towers to give a few examples.

There are much better Tower Defense games for the asking price, though it could be a great game if some of the complains are adressed.

A very well put together Tower Defense game from the author of Warstone TD.

Art style and animations are great! Music is good, some tracks are real bangers.
The most important part, however, is the gameplay.
What I particularly like about Age of Defense is that it doesn't have any "stars" for completing levels without taking damage. Therefore the game is much more interesting and well-thought out in terms of difficulty. Instead of restarting every time one mob leaks through like in MANY other TDs, in Age of Defense player's main concern is simply survival, and adjusting their defences accordingly during the level.
There are tons of different and unique bosses almost in every stage. Sometimes they are massive, screen-wide monsters, sometimes small and nimble, but every time they have some special mechanics that players have to adjust to in order to beat them.

There's not much negative to say about this game. I think the one criticism I have is the skill tree. While I appreciate that it is done in the style of cave paintings, it is very confusing and imposing, and takes some time to figure out. Mainly because skills and perks are put all over the place on the screen, and one thing that leads to another goes in all directions and zig-zags.
And also, for the sake of clarity, it would probably be wise to point out to the players that difficulty selection and skill tree are unlocked after the first few levels. Because the buttons are small and at the bottom of the screen and are easy to miss.

I'm 11 hours in, and still have few more levels in the campaign left to go. And after that I will be trying out "chieftain mode".

All in all, if you're a fan of Tower Defense games - this one is an easy recommend.

Fun little tower defence. A little restricting in tower placement sometimes. Can be a bit confusing at first with where enemies spawn from and where they go. Staples from other tower defences, such as target priority and selling towers are not there (as far as I could tell) and the tech tree is rather confusing to figure out. But overall not a bad game. A bit different and a bit confusing, but not bad.

Age of Defense is a curious tower defense game. It has many of the ingredients of the classic TD genre, but a number of innovations, which work sometimes, but not always. I have yet to find a way to sell towers, and the upgrade path is cumbersome, to put it mildly. They use mostly symbols to communicate the gameplay, but that is so confusing that they have also added language based instructions and guidance. There are no difficulty levels, or training to achieve increasing strength with progress. It was on "Early Access", but doesn't seem to have become one of the better TD games. I would say it is on the borderline of my recommendation (5.5/10).

The Game is fun, but too buggy. It feels like it's supposed to be a mobile game. If you ignore that it's a fun tower defense, but there are many better options. (Banger music for that caveman though)

Too many bugs, it was released from early access too early.
The sound disappears, the game lags or slows down to the degree 3 for speed is insignificant.
The levels are getting too long and boring the story is pretty bad.
The explanations are poorly made and sometimes interfere with the placement of towers. Some explanations are inaccurate, I beat the game so I didn't understand most things. There is no almanac for monsters, and there are many of them, and most of them I don't even know what they do.
The pause is pretty bad, you go to the menu. Not just to pause the game and browse in peace.
The towers don't fit well and the terrain covers them and you can't sell them.
The levels are few, and if you pass them, you simply go to a higher level. Different challenges but still the same levels.
Most terrain is unusable and you do nothing in most levels.
The upgrade system is interesting but inaccurate.
The game cannot cope with many enemies on the map and is made in such a style.
I would not recommend it in this condition, the game is not ready.
And there is nothing better than their previous game, this one is even empty and boring.

This is the best tower defense I tried because is funny, you can choose the location of the towers and there are obstacles you can put in the middle of the path to slow the enemies, just perfect. Please give a try with the Prologue Demo and if you like it buy it to support the developers, they had a great early access journey and the accomplished everything they promised.

You'd think there's nothing new in tower defense games, but this one has a cool twist. The setting is unique, and the neat part is that there's almost no text. Everything is shown through prehistoric cave paintings, or at least how the developers imagine them. It's pretty awesome. But honestly, I think it's a bit expensive.

Refunding because of lack of windowed mode that's been asked about for at least 5 years, I don't see any way to choose resolution options or anything. It's all buggy display on my extra wide screen. The lack of text UI really throws me off too. It's too bad, I quite enjoy a good tower defense.

It's pretty boring at first, but then the excitement builds. Boss battles add to the excitement. And, of course, the excellent cartoon graphics are the game's strong point.

It was better in the old days. You went out and killed a mammoth and moved on. And you didn't notice anything. That's cool.

That's good, but I felt that the monsters were destroying log barricades too quickly, so their role in defence is pretty small. I think they could be slowed down by 20-30%.