"Yes!" I yell in my sleeping dog's face and throw my phone across the room after finally completing a Kingdom Rush stage that had been stumping me for the better part of an hour. "Yes!" I scream, my voice now reaching a higher, more primal screech. My wife is running from the bedroom, desperately trying to quiet down my furor before I wake my children. I won't let her rain on my parade. "YESSSSSSSSSS! YESSSSSSSS! YESSSSSSS!" I'm now on all fours, the intense feeling of euphoria from beating that difficult level has washed away any remaining sense of Jeremy in my mind. I've become something of a beast, still screaming. My wife and children (now awake) watch in horror as their father gallops down the road and into the forest enclosing our quiet street, my screams waking the rest of the neighborhood. I was never seen again.
Kingdom Rush is like my Dark Souls. It can be extremely difficult in some instances, but the satisfaction of finally clearing a troublesome stage gave me that sense of success that I've heard people speak about when they finally defeat a hard Dark Souls boss. Tower defense isn't based around reaction timing like a Souls game though, you're not doing dodge rolls, trying to glitch the pixels of your character through an enemy's attack; rather it's about resource management, planning, and careful, strategic placement of your troops and towers to create efficient, effective murder hallways to inflict as much damage as possible on enemy units. It's almost like a puzzle, though there are multiple ways that you can beat a stage.
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| Image Credit: Video Chums |
Kingdom Rush began as a browser game on the website Kongregate and was developed by the Uruguayan team Ironhide Game Studio. It proved to be a success and was ported to iOS where it was a massive triumph. Since then, it was ported to Android, PC, Xbox and Nintendo Switch. Following the game's initial release, there have been several expansions and a few sequels released. Kingdom Rush does have some microtransactions, but nothing necessary to beat the game, and the prices feel extremely fair, especially with the game being free on mobile, where I played it. The microtransactions come in the form of hero units that can potentially make your time working through the campaign much easier, but I used the first hero unit that you receive in the game for free and it was completely doable with him. In fact, it seems like from what I've seen in researching, the first hero unit that the game gives to you might be the best of the entire selection, including the paid heroes. The expansions themselves were all free updates that added new challenges, bosses and maps to the base game. By the time the last expansion was added, Kingdom Rush had grown into a massive, feature-rich tower defense experience that you could potentially get quite a few hours out of.
If you're unfamiliar with tower defense games, it is a sub-typing of the strategy genre. The game flows automatically, where waves of enemies proceed down predetermined paths and corridors, and you build towers that shoot the enemies as they pass by, with the ultimate goal being that you prevent allowing any enemies past your defenses. Kingdom Rush has its own unique visual style and mechanics that add an even further charm. The art style looks like a medieval fantasy-themed cartoony Flash game, hearkening back to its origins as a browser-based game. The mechanics though are really where the game shines. Each stage has a set number of positions where you can set up your towers. There are several different types of towers, and each tower can be upgraded several times and eventually converted into entirely new towers that have different abilities. For instance, the main type of tower is the Archer Tower. After it is upgraded a few times, it can evolve into two wholly new towers: the Rangers Hideout, which has poison arrows and an ability that traps enemies in thorny roots, and the Musketeer Garrison, which can fire sniper rounds that can instantly kill a target, and can also fire splash damage, to hit multiple enemies at once. The other types of Towers are the Militia Barracks, the Mages Guild and the Dwarven Bombard, all of which also have loads of possible upgrades. This deep customization allows for so much variety in the way that you approach each stage. When I said that it felt like solving a puzzle when you finally crack how to beat a troublesome stage, it's all the more satisfying with all of these variations of towers, and it feels like you really have to explore the breadth of tower options to get a full understanding of what option is best for each problem that you encounter.
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| Image Credit: MobyGames |
The enemies keep you on your toes too. The game eases you into the different types of enemies that you encounter, but it quickly becomes challenging to keep up with the types of creatures the game throws at you. Goblins, Orcs, Wulfs, Bandits and Brigands are easy enough to just throw whatever you need at them, but eventually the game throws an enemy with an immense health pool at you, or heavily armored enemies that you have to figure out what to use against them. Shamans were one of the most frustrating enemies in the game the whole way through. They didn't have a huge amount of health, but they could heal themselves and other units, and if you just couldn't do enough damage, you could find yourself fighting the same Shaman for a few minutes, which gets stressful when you have potentially dozens of other enemies pushing down the lane behind him. Necromancers were another horrifying enemy every time I dealt with them. They would summon hordes of skeletons that would distract your troops and towers, so the necromancer himself, who had a shockingly high amount of health, could be a problem for several minutes; God be with you if there was more than one necromancer.
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| Image Credit: MobyGames |
I highly recommend checking out Kingdom Rush, if you like tower defense games. The careful balancing act of rationing your gold, choosing your Towers, their locations, their upgrades and where to locate your troops to maximize your effectiveness, and then flawlessly navigating your way through a nail-bitingly tough level is insanely satisfying. I couldn't put it down until I got through the whole game and I'm literally thinking about booting the game up again right now.
VERDICT: Recommended
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