I can't wait to sink 100 hours into this without realising it.

fun concept and gameplay 10/10

Definitely the best tower defense game currently on the market. If I had to give some feedback I'd say some towers need a bit of rebalancing. The heroes also don't feel balanced. The Builder is way easier than others. Same about the flames. Most don't feel useful at all.

Except for these tiny issues the game is perfect in its current state already. Huge respect to the devs.

Might turn out to be the best TD game of all time!

I normally don't review Early Access titles, but i'm super confident in saying this game is 100% worth your time. I got incredibly addicted to it! At first it may seem like a shorter experience (4 regions, 3 difficulty modes) but with the amount of characters, towers, and map variety within' those regions i'm confident in saying that you'll get a lot of fun for the price point being asked. Mazing is incredibly satisfying with the little tetris-like pieces and I feel like it's an aspect most other tower defense games (that i've played) sadly phased out, but Emberward shows it can be such a pivotal part of the strategy experience. Give this game a try!

Wow, a game that perfectly blends the tower defence, deck building and roguelike genres together. Each map is randomly generated and you pick and choose towers and Tetris blocks after each encounter. All of the starting characters are unique and all feel overpowered in very different ways. They affect different things such as type of Tetris block, tower buffs, economy, relics, really great variety and uniqueness of each character. Very well done. I finished the game on the hardest difficulty but I can see myself playing this into the future when modifiers and more difficulties get released with the full launch. 8.75/10

amazing fun game

Really fun and charming tower defense game. The variety of towers and builders is great, as is the interaction between towers and relics. There is so much variety and so many strategies to try that I can't see myself ever not revisiting this game every few days for "just another map".

Rougelike tower defense? Count me in.

A bit of a hesitant recommend.

On paper, this is a good evolution of TDs. Wall tetris and tower buffs on placed terrain are excellent ideas and definitely add more consideration for placement/mazing. The levels themselves are generally good and have many neat things to play around, particularly having to connect power lines using walls.

However:
• The gameplay often just boils down to getting a good 2x2 or 3x3 tower and spamming it.
• The elemental effects are kinda half-cooked; feels like chill is necessary and the rest are meh.
• The meta elements don't feel good; both the roguelite ones and ones that extend outside of basic gameplay. The talents feel unnecessary and tossed-in and some effects just don't feel like they should be in the game, like getting gold based on how much prep time you have remaining or amber based on how much gold you have at the end of a level; both of these just ask the player to cheese them (pause, sell all towers at end of level, etc.) for advantages. I think the tower upgrades (if rebalanced) would serve as far more interesting roguelike specializations for towers.
• The enemies are pretty light on how they alter gameplay; AoE stun ones are neat, but enemies like fliers that fly over walls or bombers that blow up unoccupied walls would make the player think a bit more about how they build their maze and towers.

It is a pretty solid TD though.