From designers who made custom tower defense games in Warcraft 3 comes a science fiction tower defense game that's not fundamentally different from the alternatives out there, but far more polished.

As someone who has played tower defense games since Warcraft 3, I have seen my fair share of games trying to get the formula just right, and it's rarely accomplished. Axon TD hits a nice balance between the intuitive themes of its towers and its wide variety of towers. It also strikes a great balance between your ability to create mazes and your ability to power up your defenses. There's interesting and complicated choices hitting you each wave that create a satisfying and addictive experience.

How Axon TD accomplishes this is by clustering towers into groups unified by corporate logos and branding. How dystopian. Each company offers a wide array of tools that you can mix and match to deal with the escalation in mechanics from the creeps that come rampaging through your maze. Some towers deal with armor, others with shields, and others with a variety of abilities. It's usually this mounting complexity that ends a run rather than just the escalation in stats on the creeps, which makes failure feel less like a punishment and more like a failure to make good decisions and adapt.

That being said, the balance isn't perfect. Some towers are more essential than others. Some creeps are so threatening that when they appear they can end a run that had previously seemed to be going extremely well. It's not unusual to go from perfect waves to complete failure in a second when a new mechanic pops up. Hopefully, in time, tower balance and a more gentle difficulty curve smooth out the experience for a wider audience of players.

As far as early access games are concerned, this one is very high quality. I encourage any fans of the tower defense genre to give it a try. The devs have a long record in this genre and their previous game, Elemental TD 2, has been receiving constant updates for years. I expect Axon TD will also continue to grow and refine itself over the years.