I purchased the original version of Immortal Defense quite a long time ago, and I'm glad that it has finally made its way to Steam. ID is one of the best Tower Defense style games I have ever played.

On a mechanical level, the towers are not the formulaic set you find in most other games. You know, the "weak but fast" tower, the "long range and slow" tower, the "splash damage" tower, etc. You won't find that here. Each of the towers has vastly different behaviors, making you think more carefully about placement. Behavior can change as you upgrade them, and they can also interact with your cursor as well (which is a weapon in its own right).

The game is also very challenging - experienced Tower Defense players will be tested here. But, the difficulty can be adjusted along the way, so if it's just too hard, you can dial the difficulty down a bit - for the one level you're having trouble with - and come back to it later if you want.

Visually, Immortal Defense is fun. This is an older game but it still looks great. It's somewhere between a dream, a laser light show, and an LSD experience all rolled up into one. The visuals can also be dialed up and down as needed, though, so if it is too much for you, you can get back to a more "sane" experience. I recommend keeping on the higher side.

The music is great too - it has a delicate, mystical quality that fits very well with the art style.

Generally, tower defense games have at most a token storyline, something that is easy to throw away and ignore. But Immortal Defense delivers here, too - taken as a whole, the story of Immortal Defense gets into some interesting philisophical questions about immortality, good and evil, what is really important, etc. The towers (called Points in the game) come out of the story, and their names and functionality are drawn out of it as well.

It might be a bit too cerebral for a lot of people, but it won't interfere with the gameplay.

For the Steam version of the game, there are new challenges that you can complete for additional bonuses during gameplay. There is also a leaderboard.

Overall, I rate this as a very strong buy for anyone who enjoys the Tower Defense genre and is looking for something a little different. Visuals aside, I put ID on the same level as other TD greats.

Disclosure: Studio Eres provided me with an advance copy of the Steam version for the purposes of play testing and review.

"Wa-a-a-it a minute, is this another one of those tower defense games? How many of them do we really need?" - you're probably asking yourself at the moment. Why yes, indeed, it IS a tower defense for PC - a platform already chock-full of various games of the kind. You might have already played Defense Grid, spent some evenings grinding Defender's Quest, maybe partied in the co-op mode of Dungeon Defenders with a couple of friends... So, why waste time on yet another game of an exhausted genre?

To put it shortly - yes, we do need Immortal Defense. Right off the bat - when playing ID, you're not just an omnipresent authority figure (c), you ARE the guy who actually shoots stuff in top-down perspective. That little mouse cursor on screen that lets you build your towers? That's you right there, or rather your soul, personification of your willpower - whichever you prefer. It's the embodiment of a player in the game, and one of the signs of its unorthodox approach - combining the control mechanics with the actual gameplay, making the player a major part of the action while removing any unnecessary medium. Very few games do this ("Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons" comes to mind, check it out when you can), and to see this from a "mere" tower defense? Not bad, not bad at all.

But then we move beyond the interface and controls and look at the game itself, and... Geez, is that a plot segment I see in-between the missions? Some kind of a mystic space opera? Why do I even need a plot in a tower defense game? It boils down to shooting unremarkable enemies throughout a hundred of levels anyway, right? Right?... Well, not in this case, it doesn't. From the very beginning the game makes you feel responsible - you are not just a figure behind a computer desk, consolidating some defense force around your planet. You have been chosen to leave everything you knew behind and transcend into a new form of being - the form no one really knows much about. It's the sacrifice you made for your loved ones - and each message from them, received after successful battles, reassures you in the righteousness of your task. To become a god of space between worlds, to be the last hope of your home planet - what's not to like?

And yet, the Universe operates on a different level, and not every action has clear consequences. Concentrating your will to create needle-sharp "points" - your line of defense against the invading armies - you fail to notice how decades after decades run by. The Universe is engulfed by war, and there's little time for you to think of what the future holds for you when you finally turn homewards. But when you do... will there really be home to return to?

There are many other beings like you, created with the same mission in mind - to protect, to defend, to repel. And yet, as you soon realize, not everyone can bear the centuries of loneliness. For that matter, can you?..

But the transcended existence has its own benefits - with each passing day, your memories shatter, but your will gets stronger. Learning more and more advanced techniques, assembling more and more powerful points, you manage to overcome the limitations of spirit once imposed upon you. What lies beyond? Will it be paradise for those who rely on you... or will you only descend deeper into hell?

To put it shortly, Immortal Defense is not an easy game to review. The controls and mechanis are closely intertwined with gameplay, and the gameplay itself depends heavily on the story. There are no decisions per se, no roads to take, but the final result still doesn't disappoint - in the very end it feels like you walked your own path, made your own choices. Complicated relationships with your family's descendants and the ones who you once thought your enemies only make it harder to progress, and the game itself becomes more and more complex with each mission, never forgetting to introduce yet another enemy pattern or some dimensional trick to keep you off guard. Overcoming those and using every available ability to your advantage - that is the measure of a true Ghost of the Path. And trust me, with the Steam release, the game has obtained a LOT of new shiny toys for you to experiment with, as well as a real sense of an almost RPG-like progression - just take a look at all the bonuses that achievements and medals provide!

I first played ID when it was released years ago, and I still play it to this very day. With each playthrough, I feel as if I learnt something new - not just about the game, but about myself, too. Is there anything else to wish for? Well, maybe some cool graphics effects and nifty tower designs - in which case you'll find those here aplenty. ;) Happy hunting, Great Ghost! And never forget where you came from.

Immortal Defense has become my new all-time favorite tower defense game. Why? It's totally original, got a great story (which never happens in this genre), and has a great indie game feel. I will also add that the music is fantastic, and there is a ton of replay value here. At five hours in, I think I'm probably through 15% of the content. I'm not even considering the level editor.

Essentially, the core mechanic is the tried-and-true tower defense system, but there is a layer of abstraction that ties into the story line. Trust me that it plays *much* better than it looks in the trailer. Also beware that there is a learning curve to figure out how things work. After reading the detailed notes, you will find there is a bunch of stuff going on under the hood that you wouldn't expect (almost has that 'knowledge is power' thing going like in roguelikes).

Pros:
+Totally original take on the tower defense genre - and it's all done remarkably well
+Mouse is the only thing you need
+So much content that it's kind of mind boggling, plus a level editor
+Story is fresh and engaging
+Music is outstanding
+Runs on a toaster
+Part 2 is in the works!!

Cons:
-There is a learning curve; for the first hour I was pretty confused (and am totally still learning stuff) so I'd recommend clicking that 'confused' button in the main menu if you are scratching your head

Any fan of tower defense needs this in their library.

It’s time for a new review on a title which breaks its subgenres’ conventions. A story-driven tower defense/shoot ‘em up. You don’t get to play something like that very often and this particular project has been experiencing constant improvement since its release in 2007. An eleven year old video game that was initially developed and published by “Radical Poesis Games & Creations”, a gaming aggregate which took several names and forms over the years. Most recently known as “Studio Eres”, Immortal Defense is their Steam debut. I admit that I haven’t played this title in the past, so nostalgia shall not be involved at all in my assessment of its present-day contents.

I actually took my sweet time about going through the story and I’m glad that the developer offers a lot of written material in its regard. Lore-wise, Immortal Defense isn’t your typical strategic game. It delves almost deep enough for RPG territory, yet the gameplay quickly points players on the right tracks. I will allow you to discover the storyline on your own and just discuss the main parts which form the narrative backbone in our case. The “Evil Empire” trope is represented well by the invading Bavakh Empire which shall act as the relentless agressors you shall face and eventually defeat. For the sake of avoiding any confusion to this otherwise convoluted story, simply imagine that you are the last line of defense for the Planet Dukis. In truth, you’re fighting for a side that is organized as a confederation of planets which refuse to bend their knee to Bavakh might.

The actual battles take place in the stratosphere of the defending planets. I can only presume that it’s far better to shoot down incoming landing pods, than to face an army that’s already established a foothold into enemy territory. Of course there’s a story about sacrifice and the legacy you leave to your children. A nice touch which really hits home and can be considered the only viable alternative to “See those targets? Shoot at anything that moves, they’re the enemy!” which is a far too prevalent motif in strategic subgenres, sadly. Most, if not all video games deserve a story which can set them apart from one another. Immortal Defense just happens to throw a little abstract essence, into the mix. I’m sure that you’ll notice the visuals and try to imagine how they might correspond to the game’s surprisingly complex lore. It is a pleasant, albeit unexpected experience indeed.

Since the title is being powered by an early version of GameMaker Studio, I had to find out the hard way that taking any Steam eligible screenshots of Immortal Defense, would be an impossible task. Ironically enough, the Steam Overlay frame rate would show up as expected. So the issue was explained to me by the developer when I contacted him in the game’s Steam Discussions tab. A potential update or transition to GameMaker 2, might solve the screenshot issue. You bet I’ll consider the absence of this feature a weak point for now. One good look at my Steam profile and you’ll understand that I not only expect Steam screenshots from nearly all the games I play, but also rely on them for my reviews and future reference. Fortunately, there are no other problems to report. The frame rate was smooth and no glitches or bugs would hinder my in-game progress.

For a story which depends on so much written material, you might desire some sounds beyond the generic effects of this particular gaming subgenre. Immortal Defense has opted to remain silent. You’ll just have to read all that Pul Wat Aa has to teach you, as narrator and veteran in the fight against the Bavakh oppressors. The soundtrack became repetitive faster that I would like to admit, so I ended up muting most sound assets and just listening to a playlist of my choice. You can’t go wrong with techno, given the game’s themes.

Yeah, I know the level sections resemble medical charts or pretty much any type of complex graphs used in the boring meetings you might have been forced to attend. Immortal Defense may be many things, yet “boring “ is not among the words I’d choose to describe it. Simply put, it’s different from the run-of-the-mill tower defense or “clicker shooters” I played so far. I guess that by mixing several gameplay mechanics and going for a faux-psychedelic look, the title manages to separate itself from far too many competitors. While not called towers per se, the Fear Points are static allies that efficiently thin the ranks of Bavakh ships and creatures which follow a linear path towards Dukis’ less defended areas. Indeed, your task is to prevent the enemy from getting past the diagram-like path. Strategic placing of Fear Points is only part of mission however. Direct intervention through the mouse cursor, will ultimately ensure either victory or failure.

I never found the challenge as an obstacle by itself, yet don’t expect advanced levels to be a breeze. The more foes you terminate, the more cache points you’re going to receive. Consider this, the experience meter which can be invested immediately in more “towers” which will be able to ease the pressure off and offering respite from the task of monitoring several level segments at the same time. There’s no “fire and forget” button and having a distributed attention span will help a lot. Speaking of literal towers though, some stages reminded me of a few Air Traffic Control applications I tried in the past, out of sheer curiosity. I can safely say that they really put the human mind to the test. Endurance, quick thinking and maintaining your calm at all times, are crucial skills which any of us can benefit from. Immortal Defense is also about pilots and overseers having to deal with multiple targets coming from several sides at once. Prioritizing is also important, since not all foes take the same amount of damage and may possess on-board defenses as well.

Even if you may not have a medical history involving risks of epileptic seizures, I still advise you play Immortal Defense in “short bursts” only. It can still be straining on the eyes and mind, since the gameplay is fast-paced by default. Use the pause function whenever you need to plan ahead. I’ll give you hint: that’s quite frequently. Don’t mistake this game for a mindless arcade about blasting abstract figures. A deep strategic layer is exactly what convinced me to be quite forgiving, in spite of only being able to take a handful of screenshots by the dreary method of hitting Print Screen and copy/pasting the image afterwards. If you don’t care about screenshots at all, by all means you will be thoroughly enjoying the game’s quirky nature. It aged well and offers all the auxiliaries you may desire as a Steam collector.

+ Intriguing storyline.
+ Gameplay diversity.
+ Adequate challenge.
+ Steam Trading Cards & Achievements.

- Limited Steam Overlay support.
- Repetitive sounds.

Rating 70/100

This review was submitted for ReviewExperts, through the generous contribution of Daniel - REX Network and the Steam Curator Connect program.

Immortal Defense is one heck of a tower defense game. It has a fairly well-written story, interesting towers, and psychedelic visuals. It seems to have some trouble with balancing difficulty for the 6th chapter. It also suffers from becoming a visual mess at times when enemies and bullets are all over the screen. Still, it’s far from a traditional tower defense game which makes it worth a look if you enjoy the genre.

Let’s start with the story. It’s delivered with character portraits and text at the beginning of a level. It covers a wide range of different themes including loneliness and finding purpose in life. The villains are as interesting as the protagonist’s own character development and oh boy, do you develop. You see, you were a person once, but a gargantuan invading force became stranded and started to wreak havoc in your space. You sacrificed your humanity to become an immortal “Path Defender” in order to protect your family and planet from all threats by placing towers to interfere with enemy space travel.

Only after becoming a path defender do we see the kind of toll it takes on an individual and it’s an interesting and long journey to behold. The characters that you meet along the way grow with you and the events that unfold take place on a grand scale. It’s not a Disney movie and aims to be a more thoughtful, sobering experience. It’s like a very long fable. All unlocked story bits are filed under History, just in case some of the longer levels cause you to forget what’s happening. I just wish the writing didn’t keep on driving the point home towards the end after becoming fairly obvious. It felt like the writer was saying, “Do you get it yet? Do you? Well!?” Other than that, it’s probably the best story I’ve experienced for a tower defense game.

I enjoyed the different towers (Points) this game had to offer. Some of them were strange and took some learning to use. Each tower has seven levels and the last one tends to act as an ultimate form which can drastically change its behavior. For example, the Circuit Point draws a line to another Circuit Point which damages enemies that pass over it. They can also connect to your mouse cursor if it’s in range. At level 7, they have virtually infinite range and can attach to each other across entire levels. In addition to that, the medals (Achievements) that you unlock can enhance specific towers or make other changes like a faster charge-up time for the mouse cursor abilities which include bursts of bullets or gathering the bullets of your various Points into a specific enemy cluster. In the Circuit Point’s case, it’ll connect to Love Points for half-damage which can result in deadly laser grids for enemy spaceships.

As another example, the Limited Point targets the highest HP target available with a rapid fire barrage. The medal you can earn by completing a side-quest causes the projectiles of other Points to home in on targets within the Limited Point’s range. The Courage Point fires a piercing projectile with each level adding another projectile except for the seventh which causes it fire rapidly instead. Its projectiles can also wrap around the screen. These towers make you think about placement differently than other games in the genre which usually results in a fun time and one eye-melting light show.

The bullets fired from all Points, the mouse cursor, the enemy ships and projectiles, the Path lighting up, and the level being near the end all contribute their visual effects which can make upgrading towers or just seeing what’s going on difficult at times. The pause button takes you to a pause screen instead of letting you look at the map which I didn’t like. Even if you tone down the visual effects, it can still be a mess, but more manageable. Keep that in mind if you’re having trouble seeing what’s going on when there are hundreds of things on the screen.

Since we’re on the topic of settings, did you know the game has an easily adjustable difficulty slider? You can make changes between levels and the game is set to 50% by default which provides a pretty smooth experience for the campaign. I had to make some severe adjustments when I started nearing the end. The last 6-7 levels of the final chapter were very difficult, even with the slider all the way to the left at 0%. Some of the side-quests were also brutally difficult. I had more trouble with those than anything else. On the bright side, there are dozens upon dozens of levels for you to conquer which resulted in around 18-19 hours to beat the game.

Finally, I’d recommend hitting up the Confused? section to read the backstory. There are plenty of helpful tips in there about the game’s mechanics too which is great since some of them aren’t very obvious. I’d definitely give it a look periodically while going through the first chapter. I’d also like to revisit medals and say that I definitely enjoyed the impact they had on gameplay. You can only activate a limited amount of them at a time though which made me sad since I love obtaining obscene amounts of power, but the developer seems to favor “balance.” Psh, whatever. I should also note that the developer has been making careful updates to the game to make it more balanced and better over time which I appreciate. I was going to mention that the Endless levels were taking so long to resolve that I had to sabotage myself, but then a recent update was pushed out that solved that problem. Very nice.

If you’re looking for a non-traditional tower defense experience, Immortal Defense is a strong pick. It’s not a perfect game and the visuals might be an acquired taste, but I enjoyed the wildly different towers and the game’s plot. I hope Saturated Dreamers turns out just as well.

If there's one strong positive that Immortal Defense nails in the tower defense genre, it's tower placement attack pattern/uniqueness. By that, I mean that most tower defense games have the fast-attacking tower, the slow-firing AoE tower, the speed-decreasing tower, etc., and the towers are very one-note and samey to all other tower defense games' towers.. In Immortal Defense, however, the towers attack in different literal patterns, sometimes apply different status effects, and all seem to have some use, depending on the map layout.

In my original review, I mentioned that there were a limited number of each type of tower you can place per level, and that you sometimes get more of the same tower, but there was no way to know if you would get them at all. The developer has been attentive and responded, informing me that most of the towers, upon getting a bunch of kills, will spawn new towers of the same type(s) getting bunches of kills, which you can then place. Also, this information is technically available in and in-game tutorial/information section, but that section was something like 15-19 pages long, somewhat buried and not pointed out as well as it should be.

I think it should have at least been mentioned in one of the early levels quite clearly, since this can be a crucial strategy for certain players, depending on play-style. I turned many losses and poor victories into very big successes.

Tower defense games often give the player something to do since the towers do much of the work. In Sanctum 2, your towers do their thing while you run about in first person, shooting at enemies inside and outside your maze. In Deathtrap, you're killing enemies Diablo-style (action RPG) while your towers do their thing. Unless you build the perfect maze and/or tower placement, or have incredibly good skills, you won't succeed with only towers or only attacking yourself, but each technique is very good and useful from the beginning of each level to the end.

To continue that line of thought into less "hybridized" tower defense games, you're kept busy in those by upgrading your towers and placing others, keeping the strategy element going strong, often with "waves" of enemies with a few seconds in between to give you a breather. There is no breather on each level of Immortal Defense, upgrades are so costly that earning enough cash to buy them was rare for me, and the player interaction after hitting start, for me, solely consists of moving my mouse around pointing at enemies, and firing charged shots on occasion.

This would be alright, except that enemies' health increases the longer you go in the level, which in my opinion, is a no-no in tower defense games. Why? Imagine you're playing a tower defense where there are very specific enemy types which, at the beginning, you know how much time/how many hits it takes to kill them. If one leaks through, you can quickly go "Oh, I need one archer tower," and place it, or whatever would kill it in time. In Immortal Defense, I'm pulling a number out of the air, but an enemy might have 100HP at the start of the level, but by the last minute, it has thousands of health. You lose the ability to easily gauge how easy/hard each enemy is to kill, which is the kiss of death for dealing with leaks, and this game encourages you to get as close to leaking as possible.

What do I mean by that? Well, in each level, you keep the best cash you had from the previous level, with a modifier based on how many enemies got through. That means that if you build a really good defense, you are losing out on your money for the next level, decreasing your odds of winning and getting better money. So the idea to play the game the "best" way is to build the bare minimum you need to succeed, and hope it's enough.

By the time an enemy leaks through, chances are it's too late to stop it, because it's late-game and you have no quick way of finding out how many hits of the shots from your cursor will kill it, or if you have time to place a new tower near the end and upgrade it, and then there's that hesitation of wondering how much money it's going to cost you to upgrade it enough to kill the baddie, and then wonder if you spent too much money doing that and if it will make this attempt at the level completely wasted because you spent more money than you did the time before.

This adds a level of hesitation for me that a game of this pacing simply does not accomodate, and removes that euphoric feeling of knowing you hit the sweet spot on the towers you need, watching for a little while as your towers lay waste to incoming baddies. Instead, I found myself sitting there initially nervous, wondering if my defense was enough, giving me less enjoyment.

However, I eventually stopped worrying and just felt bored, shift+tabbing to watch YouTube and talking with a family member in another room while the game played itself. I'd come back, see if I had success or failure, and if the latter, I would just do the same tower setup, pay for one more upgrade, hit start, and walk off again to come back in a few minutes and see how things went, because the cursor shots (player interaction) were so meaningless in my experience after the first couple of levels, even when charged.

Although I ended up with a more positive outlook on the game than I did when I initially reviewed it, and I played through to completion of the first of six campaigns this time around, my experience was not a fun one, because I was barely playing the game, with my level of player involvement genuinely being less than a clicker game upon hitting the start button each time.

I just can't continuing play this game.

The graphics and UI design remind me games from 80-x. It hurts my eyes. Music is annoying. Sounds effetts are terrible. The sound of attack of the main unit which repeats every ~0.4s made my ears bleed.

Probably there is a really good story. Probably, there are challenging levels and a nice level design. I just can't play this game anymore because this game makes me suffer.

I don't recommend Immortal Defense.

UPD. I gave it a second try. Anyway, It's not my type of the game because of visuals. But i appreciate involvement of the developer to players' feedback. He seems responsible developer. That's an important trait.
So thumbs up!

I played this game ten years ago, when it was originally released and I thought, this game is unique. I bought again, played and enjoyed it again as a brand new game.

Is so original and the difficulty can be set from too easy to OMFG this is impossible.

I don't understand why this game is not considered a classic.

As another user said this is an art game. Just buy it.

Extremely niche game with weird visual and gameplay style. Tower defense is an underused gameplay idea and most iterations of it are either one-to-one copies of centuries old custom rts maps or boring and uninspired.

Does a lot of interesting things with gameplay, levels feel meaningfully distinct besides just having different murderlane shapes, and has a Proper Story (tm) connecting the different elements of play. It's hard to try to say what it *is* as a game when tower defense is such a wasteland of lame ♥♥♥♥, but it's something that the developer cared a lot about and is very interesting to play through.

I don't regret not finding anywhere to pirate the full game and giving the developer 5 dollars on his old site for the game, and the steam re-release seems to add enough content that it's worth paying full price for. Art games like this deserve more success.

At this point, I'm likely to ignore something that's described as "a tower defense game." There are a lot of them out there, and many don't ultimately have much to offer. But Immortal Defense is an exception, and I'll likely use this new version as an excuse to play through the game again.

Immortal Defense has a unique style, engaging mechanics, and an evocative story. You might not expect the writing to be a strength in a game of this type, but that's one of the elements that set Immortal Defense apart.

I'm also looking forward to Studio Eres's other upcoming release Saturated Dreamers.