Recent reviews by Holy Hand Grenade

Update: The creators have been very responsive to all of the concerns I and others have mentioned and have released several updates to improve and rebalance the game. While i have not played enough recently to change my review yet, I believe that a lot of what I did not like has been addressed, so keep that in mind when reading below and when considering purchasing this game.

I really wanted to like this game. As someone who enjoys both the deckbuilder/roguelike and tower defense genres, I was looking forward to a game that combined the two of them. However there are certain aspects of this game that didn't work well for me.

For starters, the normal game is fairly well balanced in terms of difficulty progression from zone to zone. If you don't have a relatively solid build by a few zones in then you will probably not survive, and that pressure stays that way throughout. However, when it comes to the variety of successful builds, I can't say that there are a lot of them. There are a bunch of towers/garrisons in the game that are just terrible at lower levels, meaning if you start with them, you better hope you get some great items or better towers/garrisons quickly. Otherwise, sit back and watch as your units or towers miss like half of the enemies that show up, or don't deal enough consistent damage to prevent them from getting through. And this this the first wave! Why are there any towers in the game, aside from niche ones, that can't even consistently stop the first wave of enemies? Whats worse is, the more towers you unlock, the more common this becomes. All in all, despite the decent variety in towers and garrisons, it just feels like I always have to take the same ones at the beginning or I'm starting the run already behind.

Next is the unlockables. I was excited to see what new and interesting synergies and towers/garrisons I would discover, but honestly I was pretty disappointed by the results. It felt like most of the cards that I unlocked didn't really add much to the game, and instead inserted junk that would prevent me from getting the cards that I actually needed. Some of them were interesting and enabled some cool synergies, but they showed up so infrequently that I could not realistically go for those builds unless I got quite lucky. All they would really do was show up when I did not want them, thus making actual necessary cards a lot rarer than they used to be, and making successful builds a lot less based on skill and more based on: "gosh I hope I actually get some cards that benefit my towers/garrisons this run". This ruined a lot of the fun of unlocking new cards, and while it wasn't too bad in the base game, this would become a real problem in endless.

Endless: I'm honestly not sure who thought the level of difficulty in endless was a good idea. The progression in the base game was fair and while it did require you to have a relatively solid build, it gave you time and wiggle room to achieve such a setup. Not the case in endless. If you're run isn't absolutely cracked out the gate, you're gonna die really quick to hordes of enemies that increase in HP really quickly. For some reason they did away with the slow ramp up in difficulty that worked in the base game and I really don't know why they would do such a thing. To make it more challenging? The way it is now, It ceases to be challenging and just becomes a lottery, where you need to get lucky enough to keep up with the enemies scaling. The problem is, the more cards you have unlocked, the more often you are going to get cards that do not help your build at all, and you cannot afford to lose even a turn of advantage. I have played some very optimal runs that would have done very well in the base game that died at like 20,000 points in endless and honestly it just feels very unfair and a pain to even attempt. Its no wonder basically nobody has gotten the 200,000 score achievement. I'd rather waste my money on powerball.

All in all, I wish i could recommend this game, but there are some balancing issues that need to be addressed before I can genuinely say its worth your time and money, especially if you are going for 100% achievements like I was.