Good arcade game with poor TD and strategy elements.

X -Morph Defense is the first nice looking game (if doesn't count Warstone) in the TD genre since KR Frontiers release. So, there were no question with buying it. I passed this game on Hard in about 12 hours. So, there are my thoughts.

If you waited for a good TD game, you waited in vain, because it's not a TD game. Do you want to place towers? Yeah, ok, but destroy a hundred of tanks and avoid a thousand of projectiles before. Yeah, the game contains TD elements, but they are bare to bones. There are 7 towers. Yeah, you heard right. Could we add TD tag to the game if there are only 7 towers? I don't know, really...

There is everywhere on the store page is told "Tower Defense". So as a TD fan i was pretty disappointed, because first of all i waited for a TD game. ..... but i got an arcade game, a good one, with nice visuals and other cool stuff. I should admit, I don't like arcade games, but I liked this one.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127427079

90% of the time you will move and shoot using X-Defender. You have 4 weapons for shooting, Plasma (weak and fast), Missile (Anti-air), Bombs (Splash ground) and Laser. Every weapon has charged ability: you can cast EMP strike or drop Dark Matter Bomb.
So, you will use these things 90% of time until finished the game (12-14 hours). That's the thing i don't like in arcades, you should do the same things again and again. IT's getting bored soon.

But, devs did good job, arcade part of the game is on the top. Everything looks nice. Killing enemies are pleasant, especially at the first battles. Visual effects are nice. I highly like the shoot effects. My favorite is Dark Matter bomb

New types of units comes each new mission. You will force armored vehicles at the start, when tanks, artillery, bombers, heavy helicopters come. Each is weak for exact weapon or tower, so it makes the gameplay wider.

You meet the first boss at the first map. Yeah, it was cool.

There are 14 missions. Five of them are side missions. I am sure, it's enough. To the end of the game, the game couldn't offer you new experience, so it's good when it finished so soon. In addition, i think 12-14 hours is enough to satisfy your wishes.

So what's about TD elements? As i said, there is 7 towers: basic, artillery, laser, flame and 3 anti air towers. Strategy part of the building is the simplest. If infantry comes - place flame tower, if tanks come place artillery towers, if heavy tanks come - place laser towers, if air forces come - place anti air. As I said, it's boring for TD fan.

What I liked. Each level is a maze level. You can increase the path by placing towers and !!! destroying environment. Yeah, it's cool idea. You place Dark matter Bomb and a collapsed scrapper blocks the path. This is the only one strategic part of the game. You should build the longest maze possible. There are no more strategic, everything else is pure arcade.

There are no armor types/damage. Enemies even don't have health bars (by default settings. you can turn them on. I didn't know that). So you can't undestand how many shoots/towers you need to deal with different enemies.

Enemies almost don't have special abilities. Yeah, there a re healers and jumpers. I wanted to see more special units with interesting features as Resurrection, invisibility, stun, damage decrease and other stuff...

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127427011

Pros
- Saturated arcade gameplay
- Stunning visuals
- Nice sound effects, voice acting and atmosphere
- No bugs were found

Neutral
- Enemies paths is changing every wave. Devs supposed it adds more interest to the game, but in real life it's just getting bored to check waves every time and replace towers. We want to place and upgrade towers, we don't want to replace them.
- Each mission is really long. Sometimes I wanted to stop the game, because i was tired, but it was only 5/7 waves :D
- Co-op mode with no LAN support. I undestand, you made the game for Xbos and PS4 in priority, but how should we play co-op at 1 computer without extra contoller or mouse. Arg...It's like to give user a car and didn't give him petrol.
- Enemy forces of all countries looks the same. I understand, use different models is impossible, but I would like to see national colors at least. It's really strange, when tanks in China, USA and Russia looks the same.

Cons
- Poor TD mechanics
- Skill tree for Towers and Defender is poor too. There are ~7 passive skills which doesn't affect gameplay at all. You can't upgrade the damage of your base weapons. So, you damage output at the first mission is almost the same at 14th mission. I think, devs should add more diversity to this part of the game
- Story is boring. Plot is good, but everything else you got is just old soldier grumbling. It's funny to hear "We experienced heavy loses" or "We have lost this battle" during the first mission. But he says the same meaning in other words for all missions. And, humanity didn't do really interesting with aliens. There are no plot twists. Everything is linear.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127426924

As I TD fun i wasn't satisfied with this game. So I can't recommend this game for a full price for strategy fans. I think, you should take it with 25-50% discount, because even with a lack of TD elements it provides an interesting mix of genres and new experience.

I play rarely at the games of not strategy genre. So I don't have much experience with arcade games, so can't say anything for sure. But visual are awesome, the arcade part of the game is cool, I liked playing it. So if you like games of this type - you should get it.

X-Morph Defense (XMD) is a Tower Defense / Shooter hybrid developed by Exor Studios, and set in a relatively close future, where one day aliens decide to invade Earth to harness the energy contained in its molten core. Of course the armies of the whole planet react and a furious war ensues. Players are the invaders this time around, and have to defend strategic cores while they become fully operational, using an array of automatic towers, ship weapons under direct player control.

🔵 Pros

• Excellent gameplay formula that combines the strategy of traditional TDs with a more involving, shooter-like approach.
  
• Very good challenge level on Hard and Brutal difficulties, requiring both combat skill and strategy to win.
  
• Inspired bosses, each with unique mechanics, modular bodies and various twists to the gameplay.
  
• Spectacular physics-based destruction makes every stage a mayhem of debris and collapsing buildings.
  
• Good variety of ship upgrades, enemy types and tower upgrades, each with a distinct feel and function.

🔴 Cons

• Time-based scoring system feels out of place without an early wave calling mechanic.
  
• Unreliable physics with collapsed large buildings, might open gaps mid-wave unexpectedly.
  
• Mediocre user interface about enemy types in waves, making it harder to understand what is coming from where.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1976104130
On the good side there is plenty to say about XMD. One of the first things to be evident, is the heavy presence of physics based elements throughout both combat and building phases, allowing players to fully destroy most elements of every level. This becomes very spectacular during combat, with debris and enemy pieces flying all around. After that, the hands-on approach, making the player a very vital part of the combat effort and not just a passive observer, is a great design decision as it makes gameplay feel more dynamic and involving, with a good array of ship weapons and upgrades.

The tower system, making turrets also walls by connecting them to each other and the ability to transform, re-position them at any time, changes the usual "wall-based" TD gameplay in a way not many other games do. Challenge level is above-average for a tower defense, with Hard mode giving a solid test for TD fans, while Brutal is a true test of strategic prowess, best undertaken after unlocking most upgrades and towers. Other than this enemy variety is good, with a special mention for Bosses, very well done and with unique mechanics each, not your average TD bosses for sure.

Even with many good points in its favor, there are also some bad sides to note about XMD. First of all, the presence of a Time criterion, when assigning the final score for a mission, rewarding faster completions, feels out of place as there is no function in-game to call enemy waves in advance, contrary to other similar titles. Secondly, the interface showing the enemy types coming in each wave is not very good, and feels confusing especially when dealing with many fronts at once.

This can lead to strategy mishaps, since players cannot understand very well what comes from which direction. While very cool, the physics-based system use in collapsing buildings to obstruct enemy paths is also unreliable, as sometimes physics will leave gaps, or create ones mid-wave even, leading to disastrous consequences.

Overall, X-Morph Defense is a stellar tower defense, among the best I have played in several years in fact, what it may not have in terms of variety, compared to other games of this genre, makes up in quality and polishing of mechanics, balance and gameplay systems. It took me 21 hours to complete each map on Hard with at least a Silver rating, some had to be retried once advanced towers were unlocked, after that for those interested there are Survival Mode, Community Maps and Brutal difficulty as well. Priced at 20€ by default, and offering good content amount and quality, I can suggest getting this game at full price without any doubt, especially for TD fans.

Excellent

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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1977176900
🎮 Gameplay Analysis
The gameplay of XMD is divided into Mission Preparation, Building Phase and Combat Phase.

Mission Preparation
Consists in selecting one of the available scenarios from a list, and afterwards spending the eventually available Technology and Upgrade points to enhance your ship, unlock new tower types and passive upgrades. Each cleared level gives some of these points, so also completing Optional missions is highly recommended to be fully prepared. Bringing the right tower types in relation to enemy types, displayed in a menu, especially when not all tower types are unlocked yet, is very important.

Building Phase
Happens at the start, and also in-between each wave, always with unlimited time to assess, change and prepare your defenses in the best way possible. During this phase, enemy waves are displayed from each side of the map spawning them, though in a way that can be confusing. Looking at what's coming, and moving, building towers accordingly is the most important thing to do, as it is making the enemy paths converse into each other, the longer the better.

Towers can be freely sold, transformed into others and moved at any time, while destroyed ones (by enemies or debris) will instantly be refunded into your Resource Pool. Turrets can be joined together via laser walls, used to make enemy paths longer, though a few enemy types can destroy towers or bypass fences.

Combat Phase
Starts immediately after the Building one, and all hell breaks loose. Enemy air support, dedicated only to destroy your personal ship, comes frequently and is designed to harass players to make overseeing the field, and helping ground towers, much more difficult. At the same time, ground units come often from multiple sides, a test to the formation you previously built.

Destroyed enemies leave behind scrap metal, that can be gathered while in Ghost Mode, a mode making you invincible, but also preventing from using ship weapons, only allowing building-related actions. Gathering as much scrap as possible is fundamental as it gives extra resources to make more towers, so making efficient enemy kill-zones is advised. While in standard mode the ship can be damaged but also fight enemies, if destroyed it will re-spawn quickly, but the final score will be penalized.

The central core regains a small amount of health in-between waves, though not on Brutal, and has shields that prevent single small enemies from ruining a perfect score if dispatched quickly. Combat against bosses is more a test of piloting skill than the usual waves, with towers and ship having to work together at all times.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1976104606

🔩 Technical Analysis
PC Specs: RTX2080Ti, Ryzen 3900X, 32GB RAM DDR4
There are no optimization or performance issues to report, the game runs perfectly in 1440p, 144hz maxed out with solid frame-rates even in the most chaotic situations. X-Morph should run comfortably on medium-low end configs for 2020 standards, especially if in 1080p, as the geometry and scene complexity are not very high despite massive usage of physics and destruction.

X-Morph Defense is an excellent Tower Defense / shooter title, that merges the strategy of the classics with a more hands-on approach, allowing players to feel involved in the fight and really make a difference with their combat skills.

X-Morph: Defence is an interesting combination of tower defence and shoot-em-up gameplay, where you play as an alien race who are invading Earth. Each mission begins with a spaceship landing on the planet surface, which then becomes your core. Human military forces attack in waves, by land and air, along specified paths. You need to place towers along their paths to destroy them before they can destroy your core. You also control a small flying ship, allowing you to move quickly around the map, assisting your towers with destroying the enemy.

You can build seven different types of towers. Plasma is rapid fire, but does weak damage (similar to a machine gun), flamethrowers are good against infantry, artillery has long range and can fire over obstacles, lasers are useful against strong armour, and there are three varieties of anti-air. You can create a laser fence between two towers that are close together, to block the enemy and shape their path, creating a maze to slow them down. Meanwhile your ship can equip four weapons, including plasma, anti-air missiles, lasers, and bombs which can destroy buildings to block the enemy path with rubble. Each of your weapons can be charged up to fire a more powerful alternate attack.

The Humans have a decent variety of units. Some of them focus on attacking your core (infantry, APCs, tanks, mechs), some will try to destroy your towers (artillery, bombers) and some will attack your ship (mobile anti-air, fighter jets, choppers). Advanced infantry and mechs are equipped with jetpacks to enable them to jump over your fences, or small gaps in the terrain. And a few missions end with you fighting a massive boss vehicle. If your ship is destroyed, you respawn at the core after a few seconds, but if your core is destroyed, you lose the mission. There’s a checkpoint at the start of each wave, so you don’t need to restart the entire mission.

Between waves you can take as much time as you want to plan your defences, and you’ll certainly need to take advantage of it. The Humans constantly change their strategy from one wave to the next, attacking from different directions and with different combinations of units, requiring you to design almost an entirely new defensive tactic for each wave. Fortunately you don’t lose resources for selling and repositioning towers. You can also build new towers, or change their attack types, during waves. You build towers in “ghost mode” where the enemy can’t hurt you, and this can also be useful as a defensive strategy to avoid incoming enemy fire.

Each completed mission rewards you with upgrade points to spend in a tech tree. Each of the towers and weapons mentioned above have to be unlocked. You can also unlock upgrades for your core, such as more health and the ability to shoot nearby enemies. Another important ability allows you to collect scrap from destroyed enemies, which adds to your available resources, allowing you to construct more towers.

I enjoy playing tower defence games, and I especially like those where you can control a character and directly attack enemies – games such as Sanctum and Orcs Must Die. You’re always involved in the action, and X-Morph can get particularly intense. There’s also an interesting tactical twist, as you figure out how to balance the workload between yourself and your towers.

If you feel the same way, then I strongly recommend picking up X-Morph. It took me 13 hours to finish the campaign, which includes a total of 14 missions, so there’s enough content to justify a full price purchase. However you might want to wait for a couple more patches, as I’ve crashed to desktop on two occasions (fortunately those frequent checkpoints meant that I didn’t lose much progress).

X-Morph: Defense or XMD is a combination of a 'Tower Defense' and a 'Manic Top Down Shooter'.

At first I had my doubts this was a good idea, but in game it makes perfect sense.

The issue with the standard tower defense is you place your towers, start the wave and sit back, maybe add or alter a tower or two during, then go back to waiting for the wave to end and repeat.
This is not the case for XMD, unless you're playing on Easy with all unlocks.

You have the usual between wave time to do what you need, place, move, sell & change turrets, but once the wave starts you can personally get involved, helping out how you see fit, as well as all of the above.

This is where XMD is so clever; I did my first play through on Normal [approx 10h total] and found [unless late mission with long well balanced turret combos] neither the turrets nor I could hold a path alone.
So at times it becomes manic, actually a lot of the time it felt like controlled chaos, swapping between placing new turrets after collecting fallen derby for resources and shooting at anything I could to thin out the attacking columns, or help weaker defensive lines.
But that is the point of XMD, it gets you involved, without taking from the tower defense.

They have made a good game here.

A tad more detail:
To assist in this you have a lovely little mini map that shown a basic outline of the terrain, turret positions, you, enemy paths, enemy types, and any turrets that are being hit or in the path of something that can destroy it [only 2 units and boss's that can destroy your turrets, its nothing to worry about 90% of the time], this all gives a great overview of the battlefield, and becomes an essential part of the game as it allows you to make tactical decisions from the other corner of the map whilst still dishing out the punishment to the poor sods your targeting.

Theirs 10 turrets to choose from once unlocked from the tech tree and all have a purpose.
Likewise you have a tech tree for your ship that allows you to swap from blasters, bombs, anti-air missiles and a laser, with each having an alternate fire and a secondary ability that can be added to it.

The tech trees are unlocked via points granted once a story mission is complete, and can be swapped around prior to any mission, as many times as you like, and all can eventually be unlocked ant once.

The ability to redirect your foes is done rather cleverly as well.
You place 2 turrets either side of an opening for example and tell one to connect a free laser wall between them. Now forcing the enemy to path change, you see this on the mini map and on the battlefield. You cant block all roads, one must always be open, but you can also redirect enemy forces by blowing up bridges or my personal favorite, dropping a building over the road they are using by blowing the base up on the side you want to fell it.
I didn't want to be a gamer, I wanted to be a Lumberjack, TIMBER.

In all this game is awesome; a good balance of tower defense, manic top down shooting, loads of action and it will definitely test your tactics for creating longer paths, your ability to maintain your composure under stressful moments [alright it will be more like 10-15min a mission than a moment], but that's what makes it so much fun and rewarding when you make it the the end.

The only negative I could put to this is I wanted more of it, it's not short & the higher difficulties offer replay as they change the enemy waves & add new paths rather than just throwing more at you, so its a different challenge.
I just felt like I was starting to master XMD when I took over the Earth, suppose that why getting the additional campaigns and survival mode [all can be played solo or co-op] will keep this game alive for much longer, then there's the user maps via the Workshop, and a local co-op [as if 1 ship wasn't hard enough to keep track of with a sky full of round, flames and thing blowing up].

I picked this up after playing a whole bunch of the studios last offering, The Riftbreaker (which is a fantastic game, check it out). Xmorph defence is great, and extremely polished for a small indie offering. Exor studios is definitely punching above their weight. I will be following their future offerings.

I have played every tower defense game I have ever seen across every platform and I can say without hesitation, X-Morph: Defense is my favorite TD game of all time. Briliant level design, solid core mechanics and fantastic presentation pushed this to be my biggest surprise and my choice for favorite game of 2017.

Good spin on the tower defense genre.

Played without issues on Proton-7.1-GE-2 with the launch options:
PROTON_NO_ESYNC=1 PROTON_NO_FSYNC=1 %command%

How is nobody talking about this game? This is one of the greatest, if not the greatest tower defense game I have ever played. I mean making a tower defense action packed and exciting? Who would have thought?

Ok so what even is the game: At its core it is 50% tower defense and 50% SHMUP, so while enemy forces are forced to go along their paths and get shot by your towers you can fly around with your ship and get in on the action too, something not entirely unheard of with games like Orcs Must Die and Sanctum.

The part that you play also makes up for the small selection of towers, all you have is 1 with long range 1 basic 1 vs groups 1 vs large enemies and basic anti flying group flying large flying. And admittedly there is a lot of TD games that stomp this tiny variety but thats ok it just all works well. The unit variety is a lot better and they bring unique challenges with them and are sometimes all thrown at you at the same time so having even more would be chaos. Your main ship has 4 different weapon options with upgradable secondary fire options, but also nothing big.

Now whats so special really? The physics! If you kill enemy Bombers and they crash into a forest beneath them the forest catches on fire potentially killing infantry units inside of it, if you use bombs to blow up the lower part of a skyscraper it will come crashing down and looks pretty realistic in doing so and more importantly this can be used to redirect enemy paths which is obviously something you will always want to abuse to maximum efficiency you cant however completely block enemy access the game will just remove the barrier.

Now the trailer tries to impress you with its awesome boss battles but lets be real here there is 4 in total so dont come in expecting to find a new boss in each of the numerous missions. Once they appear though especially alongside normal waves it makes for memorable showdowns.

Storywise it is refreshing but not deep, you are an alien invasion force start assimilating the planet area by area.

The music merely does its job, not worth buying a soundtrack for.

In my opinion there is no replay value but it took me 13 hours to complete and i rushed through fairly quickly so it will keep you busy for a bit.

Alltogether if you are madly in love with tower defense games and the balls to the walls awesomeness of exploding destructible enviroments on top of enemy waves sounds like a neat twist on the genre to you this is even worth full price, but i would still reccomend it to anyone who likes tower defense games even on a slight sale.

Best tower defense game ever! This game has it all!
+ shows incoming enemy paths and amount and type. No replaying because you didn't know what was coming (looking at you, Space Run)
+ enemies do surprise attacks from different routes, though you can react to that
+ you can maze! Like crazy long mazes!
+ shows which towers can still be connected to others while selecting the placement
+ it basically has all quality of life features a tower defense game needs
+ eliminates every tower defense's problem of waiting while the waves come in by being a top-down shooter hybrid. You permanently control a fighter ship which switches between build and fire mode. It has 4 different fire modes and alternative fire each suitable for different enemies. You also need to gather the debris of destroyed enemies to fill up your resources. You will be occupied the whole time!
+ has ground, air and jumping units skipping your lazer fences. Also there are mobile air units not attacking the core but your fighter ship. This makes very good gameplay variety!
+ skill upgrades!
+ good difficulty options! from casual easy, over normal to challenging hard and hardcore brutal. There's something for everyone.
+ has co-op mode. yes, co-op mode is required to get achievements. But you can play co-op alone on easy which is quite a challenge!
+ has even more: Survival mode and more levels in the DLCs
+ BIG EXPLOSIONS!
+ BIG BOSSES!
+ good variety of enemy types
+ very cool visuals overall
+ good story, good character images, good writing, very good voice acting!
+ destructable environment with very good physics engine! Structures fall and break down realistically!
+ very good level design. There are many options for you to approach building the defense
+ Very detailed! It's THAT detailed that if you bomb away a roof or a random floor of a high building there is complete interior furnishings!
+ You can bomb skyscrapers to let them fall like trees into the enemies' path blocking this way so they need to take a different route

Play it. It's worth your time!

So many people play 'basic' TD games like Bloons, but they're really missing out on the true depth and excitement that a proper, modern tower-defense-combat game can bring. Games like Sanctum and Orcs Must Die are great examples, and X-Morph is another. It has:

- Superb graphics, sounds and real-time physics.
- A good variety of towers and enemy types without being overcomplicated.
- Fences for maze building.
- Large maps with countless maze-building options.
- Enemies that fight back, and some will attack your towers too.
- Some enemy types that are able to traverse terrain and bypass fences in different ways, forcing you to change your strategies.
- Each wave of each map often feels radically different due to changing enemy types and spawn directions.
- Destructible objects that can change the enemy paths.
- Clear pre-wave information and a minimap that allows you to plan your defenses and assess the situation as events unfold. If you miss something, then you only have yourself to blame!
- Bosses!

The campaign can be played solo and split-screen using Steam 'play together' if one of you has a controller. It would be nice if there was true co-op, and that's my only real criticism of the game, but it's still a great addition.