Overview
Sons of Ra is a strategy/tower defense game where you play as a pharaoh to seize control over the lands of the Nile. The title plays a hybrid tower defense game where you can both defend your pyramid by constructing towers and attack the enemy by deploying troops on the map. But this wouldn’t be Egypt without some help from the gods themselves: at the start of each match, you can choose the god to worship, which in return will lend you his powers. Each god has a set of vastly different abilities, which defined different playstyles: pick your favourite one and conquer Egypt!

Easy to Learn, Hard to Destroy Your Enemies
There isn’t too much to talk about when in comes to the core of Sons of Ra as, on paper, it is a very simple game: you spawn units on two or three different lanes, build towers to defend said lanes and use your powers to support your offensive or defensive strategy. That’s it. Obviously, it’s a little deeper than that: passively you gain points which you can either spend to unlock new units (1 point) or to expand your temple and get powerful boons that last until the end of the match (3 points, but you can only do it twice). Plus, sometimes maps feature some special traits, like mines that can be taken control of, resulting in a faster earning of gold.

But these are additional details, which don’t really change the nature of the game. Sons of Ra is extremely easy to pick up and somewhat hard to master: the few rules of the game make it so that everyone can start playing after a 30 seconds explanation. This is made easier by the fact that also the various gods, while changing your playstyle, don’t change the way the game is played. Easy to learn doesn’t though mean easy to win: matches are, most of the time, very balanced and defeating the opponent always requires some thought on the moves you are going to make.

Playtime
The game right now offers five playable gods, each one with its own abilities, plus 4 ground units and 4 defensive turrets that are in common. The basic unit is the spearman, the backbone of the army that excels in nothing but is cheap and available from the start of the game. Then we have the shieldbearer, a strong defensive unit with lots of health, the bowman that has a useful ranged attack and the ballista which is the only unit that can attack turrets. Just after a few games it gets clear how this title heavily lacks content: units and turrets are always the same, while the different maps become rather uninteresting after a while.

The only aspect of the game that tries to push away repetitiveness is the different abilities offered by the gods which, honestly, is too little. This, added to the fact the matches are fairly quick to play (they cannot last more than 7 minutes) make it so the sense of deja vu kicks in really fast. The game also offers two game modes: skirmish and arcade. The first is a simple match online or against the AI, while the second is basically a series of skirmishes that you have to complete before losing three matches, uniquely against AI. Not really what I was hoping for, since it adds very little to the final product.

Verdict
There’s not too much to say about Sons of Ra: it is a simple title with an underwhelming amount of content. Considering the game and the duration of the matches, it probably should’ve been developed as a mobile game instead of PC one. My suggestion is to buy this title only at a heavy discount, or wait for free content updates.

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A very fast paced, competitive tower defense tug of war type game, Sons of Ra is actually really fun. While there's no extensive campaign, the game does have an arcade mode where you do a series of battles against ever-changing foes and a skirmish mode where you can customize the rulesets you play by. The single player is fun and fast-paced with a decently well-developed AI that will really teach you many of the ins and outs of the game.

Where the game really shines though is the multiplayer. Battling your friends is so fast paced and satisfying with a constant game of tug of war that eternally feels like it's on the tipping point of the battle. The matches each are 7 minutes long (unless you change the ruleset) with a very limited amount of base health, which when combined with the fast income rate and unique powers for each god, really creates a chaotic feel.

If you like tower defense games and enjoy dueling your friends, pick the game up and give it a shot!

Full disclosure: I got a free copy of the game by winning a community event hosted during the beta.

Alright quick review under 2 hours played. It's a FAST paced tower defense with all controls done through the mouse. That brings me to what I dislike so far. Tower defense is cool and all but when I have to hold a mouse button down then select a defense/offense/power by sliding the mouse then placement after that. It's just not intuitive. It should be abilities and units are selected with the keyboard and placement is through the mouse. That would allow the player to place units and abilities WAY faster.

Bugs: Through my time with multiplayer I've seen a few bugs. Other Opponents units don't show up at all. Not tower no nothing. So It's not just on my end but the other user too.

Its day one but they've got some controls and bugs to work out.

Looks good enough though but i'm not going to recommend this game to others at this time due to the couple of bugs I've seen and the atrocious controls.


Edit: Coming back in for a quick review change. I appreciate Otter Outta Water reaching out to me! Holding shift instead of right click was a literal game changer for me! Great game and bug free since the last few updates! Great game! Keep up the good work.

I played a lot of tower defense games, but this "jumping" radial wheel for building towers and units is just terrible, sorry.

It's really good. Negative comments are from players with few hours played. There is a lot of depth in this game and it can't be explored within 1-2 hours. Parting with our money can be difficult. This one is worth it.

Sons of Ra is a mix between Tower Defense and Real Time Strategy game. Although there's no mirco management of the units during combat, since they go down a lane in standard tower defense fashion, there is still quite a lot of things to manage and respond to during matches. Watching lanes and answering to enemy attacks is constant and dynamic enough so that the matches are rarely boring.

Overall, the game is quite fun and engaging to play. It really does just have a special kind of charm.
Oh, and I have to say that, while not some Dark Souls level orchestral boss music, the soundtrack is quite good.

first off i did have some fun but not enough to were i would recommend it to a friend, currently only two game modes arcade and multiplayer if you decide to play arcade the first half of its fun but then the ai decides to roll up its sleeves and just decimate you and it just starts being not fun anymore not to mention its kinda unfair that the player has to unlock unites and towers and the ai from what i saw doesn't have to.
like i said it was fun then it just got frustrating and stopped being fun and i mean you'd think for a tower defense game there would be a survival mode, as dumb as it sounds i like the art style and kinda want to see where this game can go.

This is one of the most frantic Tower Defense Versus games I have ever played. It is a relatively simple game but there is a lot of depth to what you can do strategy wise which makes it really good. I just really wish the developers would update it more. There is a lot of potential here and everything is pulled off really well but it seems they don't work on it anymore.

Besides all of that, I would absolutely recommend this game. It's a blast playing against your friends!

This is a fast and simple game. And as such, it can be fun. However, in single player it didn't really hold my interest. (Full disclosure: I am a scholar of ancient Egyptian history, and I was looking forward to this game for lighthearted breaks from study.) But I do have to wonder whether it's actually worth fifteen bucks. I think for that I would have expected something more. Perhaps for multiplayer (which admittedly I haven't tried)?

Fun quick RTS game, certainly easy to learn, and balanced. Wish more people played it though.