Let Them Come is a novel Tower Defense game.

The trick is: you're the tower.

Your enemy: waves upon waves of alien beasts, whose only goal is to feast upon your brains, lay eggs inside your abdomen, and to turn you in to a husk of a human being.

Your only allies:
1.) Your trusty machine gun. Treat her well, give her upgrades, and keep her cool, and she'll serve you 'til the end of time. Feed her plain, incendiary, explosive, or other special ammunition...she'll eat anything, the Pig.
2.) Your boom box, capable of accepting and playing only the most modern 3-track cassette tapes, is the only thing separating your sanity from being overwhelmed by the lonely abyss of space and the endless, hive-minded throngs of xenos. The music is stellar, btw.

This game is solid as hell, even if a bit repetitive after a bit. There are boss challenges, online leaderboards, and connectivity directly to Twitch.tv (allowing viewers to control the gameplay via chat responses!!) to provide entertainment and replay value.

Enjoy!

When looking at the screenshots and trailer for this game, I found it difficult to discern what the "gameplay" here was. I mean... enemies walk at you in a corridor and you shoot them. Whoopdie-doo I thought. I had this same confused view on Tower Defense games, as well, before I played them. But it was like four dollars plus some cents and it seemed interesting enough to gamble that much on being a good game.

Okay... so that IS basically the premise.
You have your standard ammo which is unlimited and free. But your mounted gun will heat up as you fire, and it will grow more innaccurate as it heats. You nail anything walking, crawling, or flying, on or through the corridor by unloading thousands of rounds. Actually I've killed thousands of enemies, so it's more like tens or hundreds of thousands of rounds. Some of the enemies move toward you on the ground, some on the wall, some on the ceiling, and some fly.

There's a good variety in the enemies here. Tiny crawling insect-like things that will come at you faster via floor/wall/ceiling, and when close they jump at you. You'll need to swing your melee weapon if this happens. Then there's ones the size of a large dog that are not un-similar in appearance to Alien Breed 1, 2, & 3's "bulls" that walk toward you at an average pace. There's ones with armored legs that, once shot, will place their legs which are resistant to normal shots in front of them, until you stop shooting for a couple seconds. There's one that lay eggs which hatch the crawlers, ones that walk toward you with guns shooting you, ones that explode upon death, and a couple others.
These enemies come in waves, and you gain money for killing them.

Bringing us to the shop menu. Your character has various slots to equip your purchases.
Four for upgrades such as faster firing, better cooling, increasing your combo meter more for each kill. There's even two that change how you fire. One makes a shotgun blast of several rounds at once, the other you hold to build up eating more rounds as you do then releases it in a stronger shot. Both heat up the gun by a chunk, and the ammo slot has a cooldown before you can use it again, though it is short. One grenade slot, one melee slot, and two for ammo types. Your generic ammo takes up one of these, though you can start with only special ammo. I don't think that would be particularly smart since you'll run out quickly.

There's piercing ammo that is good for killing the foes with armored legs, and for shooting through one enemy and into the exploder behind it, making them all go BOOM. There's explosive ammo which of course deals AoE. There's other types I haven't used much like shock ammo that stops enemies for a second or two, cold ammo. There's fragmenting ammo that breaks into shards which spread out upon hitting something. I'm not sure why I'd use them instead of explosive, but maybe it's good vs flying ones and cheaper than the other. Plus an ammo that says it disintegrates enemies and is very expensive, but I haven't used it yet.

Then there's various grenades. Standard frag, cluster, molotov which set the ground on fire for a time, freeze bombs, and a some others like a black hole bomb IIRC. There's different "melee" weapons like the knife you start with, a bat, throwing kives and axes, a shield to put up for the enemies that shoot at you, and some others. A good variety here.

I beat the game in about 3.5 hours, but when you kill the last boss, watch the end scene and credits, you go back to the beginning again with all your purchases starting again in a sort of new game+ against tougher waves of more varied mixes of enemies right away, and more of them. I'm now at the second area for the second time and I'll likely play a bit more.
There's also an endless wave challenge mode for high score. So replayability isn't an issue. The campaign may have been relatively short, but there's more gameplay to be had if you enjoy it.

This game can be playing with mouse and keyboard, or with gamepad.
Gamepad works great. Either is an equal option.

Right! I forgot to mention the combo system!
As you kill enemies you build a combo meter. When it fills up you have a set of three, usually randomized, choices. There's things like health restore, some ammo/grenade resupply, one that flies does a bombing run on the enemies from left to right, and a couple that deal with score. Then there's temporary cool things like making your gun double barreled, giving you a gun drone or rocket drone that floats above your head auto-shooting at enemies, giving you free unlimited equipment use for the duration, giving you life leech on kill, making all enemies have a chance to explode on death, double damage, and a "frenzy" attack.

There's a button press timing thing after you select which you want, where a box fills, and the closer to full without going over is, I would assume, better.

This game was just... pleasant. It's pleasant to be an idiot sci-fi marine and flick away your cigar as you get back to manning the gun.

Gameplay was... fine? I found a combination early on that was so powerful, I never had to do anything and stopped dying or having to buy ammo, and was a bit disappointed by that. Maybe I'll get back to the New Game Plus mode later and that will require me to shake things up a bit.

As an impulse purchase, this satisfied the weird mood I was in. What else does one want in life?

Psst! Hey You! Yeah You, the one with face! Do You...
... enjoy fast-pumping non-stop gory Violence?
... adore gorgeous looking pixel graphics?
... love getting repeated seizures from lighting and effects that can only be classified as Hell's Sunday Rave?
... wanna crank up to 11 a soundtrack that absolutely slaps?
... fire guns with sounds so crisp that they should come with a veteran's PTSD trigger warning?
... crave the rapid and explosive murderizing of characterless enemies, over and over again just for the all-mighty high score?
... think that You've easily figured out the meta and that this game's easy, only to quickly realize that this game has bosses, that they hurt, are no joke, and have interesting, unique designs that separate them from each other as well as the rest of all the other enemies?
... wanna spend more time than You'd like to unlock 100% of achievements because repeating the same level and grinding high-scores is a "fun and engaging mechanic"?

Then You wanna play Hotline Miami Let Them Come!

Unfun fact: The controller support for this game is a-s-s! I personally feel that's a shame, mainly due to my preference of playing as many games as I possibly can with a controller. Luckily, the ol' faithful mouse & keyboard will do the trick... as soon as You rebind 99% of the keys! Personal suggestion, set right-click to Q, set Space to W, and set middle-click to right-click.

Read the 'bestiary'! The enemies aren't just spoopy-looking for the spoop factor, they do different things. Knowledge is power. I've seen tweets longer than the lore this game has...

There's no achievement for unlocking the entire inventory and, coming from a person who spent a lot of Score (score=money, simple enough) on unlocking and upgrading everything, there's no real point doing so... You can only change loadouts postmortem, or after finishing a boss fight. Unlock and upgrade only what You wanna equip. Items from columns 1 and 3 are the upgradable ones. The Purchase button becomes the upgrade button in later levels after the feature is unlocked.
Piercing Ammo is bae! After some tweaking, this can go on left-click replacing the default ammo. It makes a lot of waves easy, fast, and trivial. Add the Charge Mod to the Piercing Ammo and the simple, low charge left-clicks won't consume ammo. Fully charged up left-click attacks will also work great in some situations, and those consume ammo at a recoverable pace.
Explosive Ammo is side-bae. Best right-click any rootin' tootin' alien-shootin' gatling gunslinger could ask for. But just like any good side-bae, it's pretty expensive. However, explosions deal area of effect damage, killing things faster, and also filling up the Combo Meter faster. Every time the meter fills up, You get to pick a random temporary boon. Resupply is a good boon, Unlimited Items is better! Both will let You use Explosive Ammo a lot more often. Also, purchasing, equipping, and upgrading the Lucky Charm passive will lead to EZ-Combo mode, so do that. Combo boons help make the grind faster and easier.
Other passives to consider are Rapid Fire and Cooling. Power Suit is a solid 4th pick, mainly because the defensive passives won't end up saving You from lethal boss damage. Power Suit is also literally a flex, so why not?
For 'nades, Freeze Grenades have some godly area of effect crowd control. They're great for massacre bonus stalling, as well as for slowing down some of the faster, later waves. For the other secondary, nothing really compares to a fully upgraded Hand Cannon... although a Chainsaw is available and sometimes You just gotta Rip & Tear Until It Is Done. The Riot Shield can also come in clutch later on but a full upgrade isn't mandatory. (The Riot Shield isn't necessary as long as the entire loadout is fully upgraded and there's enough Explosive Ammo to go around)

For Combo boons, (apart from Unlimited Items and Resupply which are pretty much the top picks whenever available) there are:
- FRENZY. Prevents overheating, allows for Explosive Ammo spam when combined with Unlimited Ammo. Trippy.
- Double Damage. Double Barrel looks cooler but it uses up twice the ammo and the increase in damage arc doesn't really help clear a hallway faster; getting to have both active is amazing though.
- Score Award. Don't really know how efficient Score Multiplier is. It's good to pick the latter when other picks are circumstantial or bad. Personally, relying on Resupply is more fun than farming score to restock postmortem.
- Leech Life on Kill is better than Health unless You are literally about to die and don't need to restock. Both are circumstantial however, since they do nothing at full health.
Worthy Mentions are Barbed Wire (can last a whole life/level), Explode on Low Health (seems to be a 'permanent' buff per life/level; will sometimes disappear when Enemy Can Explode on Death is picked up; the latter is also useful), Rocket Drone (Gun Drone is weaker but both have a much higher buff duration than other boons). Airstrike is... meh? Never used Change It Up, didn't see the point.
All limited duration boons are orange and while they're active, they will not be available in the boon pool. A mostly perfect but sometimes awesome boon 'claim time' is 0.975 seconds. Do with this information what You will...

Every level unlocks a new mixtape (and upgrades and lore, but the music is the best part). Make sure to add all the songs to the boombox!

The challenges are lame... The respective achievements can be farmed by getting to wave 2 in endless and dying... The boss challenges are tedious but doable. There is nothing to earn from them. Worst yet, the boombox doesn't save after each challenge is done!!!

Let Them Come can offer up 2-3, 10, or maybe even 20 hours of alien killing fun and it's been on sale with every big Steam event. Personally, I feel that the boombox alone is worth it! The biggest sin this game's guilty of is that the soundtrack isn't available as DLC...

Disclaimer: A metric butt-ton of aliens were massacred in the making of this recommendation.
I give it 4 out of 5 Mixtapes!

A nice action time killer with cool graphics

The plot is simple. Aliens are everywhere. You are the HERO. Your power is immortality. Every time you "die" and smoke a cigarette and you are ready for the fight again.

Aliens comes from the left corner. If they reach a hero, he loses some health and die if loses much. If you die, you can buy several upgrades and consumable items and start again. Repeat until the game gets boring.

The gameplay itself is simple. Just press a button and kill enemies. Sometimes press other button to perform melee attack or throw a grenade.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1401374918

Pros
- Very attractive graphics, especially death effects
- East to understand and play
- Cool soundtrack

Cons
- Very limited gameplay. Just press left mouse button and sometimes use others.
- You can lose there. Every time you die, you make upgrades and start the game from the same wave.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1401374973

The game is pretty beautiful, but the gameplay is very limited. So don't expect much from this game. But if you want to skip some hours it is a good deal. I can recommend this game with 40%+ discount!

*Does contain spoilers*
Let Them Come is an extremely fun, fast-paced 2D shooter. With 100 waves, 4 bosses and 1 secret boss - equivalates to roughly around 2.5 hours to complete the main campaign (personal time). Options for replay-ability with further achievements, endless mode (global scoreboard) and retry boss levels with different builds.

It was quite enjoyable, do not have to think much except what upgrade build path you will go towards. Unfortunately, the game is difficult at some boss fights if the correct upgrades are not selected. Fortunately, to prevent you from being stuck they have added the ability to sell upgrades at full cost and apply them to other upgrades (although if you use all your ammo and have no money on certain boss levels, due to lack of spawns you can be permanently stuck).

All bosses are easily beatable through use of certain strategies and upgrades, although I found boss 2 extremely annoying and somewhat RNG due to having to get an Awesome or Perfect rating (sometimes high Great rating works) to beat the boss. The final, secret boss can also become annoying due to the hit-box not registering correctly (explosive ammunition worked better although still felt extremely random and at times unrepeatable). I ended up just using the Riot shield to reflect the bullets which made the boss extremely easy.

If you get stuck within the game, there are a few helpful guides - as your goal is not to unlock ALL upgrades, some being a tad difficult to use (to a level of being pointless) which will have you stuck on levels very quickly.

Overall, I loved the art-style, quirkiness with certain animations (such as beginning of each round), the soundtrack was such a vibe and the ability to replay the game. Trading cards is another bonus. Would love to see multiplayer or co-op added in some way, although as a standalone, single player game I thoroughly enjoyed it and was easily completed in a decent amount of time taking into consideration the lower price point.

TLDR: For the price this is a good mindless fun score attack game with some nice pixel graphics and soundtrack to compliment the alien killing.


Sometimes one just wants to have some mindless fun, this game is a good example of mindless fun. The gameplay is pretty simple, keep the alien waves from beating you into a bloody pulp with your trusty chain gun and powerups. This game contains two modes of play:

The campaign which has a boss at the end of each level. These bosses require some strategy as you need to pay attention to the boss pattern in order to hit the correct body part(s). Having the right loadout for the boss will speed up boss kills substantially. This of course can lead to some trial and error and become a bit grind heavy at times if you are having trouble. You can always grind yourself out of a tight spot and buy and sell upgrades.

The other mode of course is the score attack mode where you are given some credits to choose your loadout and see how far you can progress. Keeping your combo meter going is the key to success in this mode as the bonus powerup is a boon to your score.

Follow my curation page for more of my terrible opinions. http://steamcommunity.com/groups/Lesstalkmoreplay#curation

Ever wanted to be the tower guy from Starship Troopers, last Guardsman from W40k or the Marine from Aliens doing the last stand against the hordes of alien enemies ? Now you can !
This game is simple yet brilliant. I almost forgot to mention the soundrack which is amazing as well. But time to time I turn it off only to play Starship Troopers soundrack in the background instead :)

If we have to give these bastards our lives, WE GIVE EM HELL BEFORE WE DO !!!

I wasn't sure about this game at first. You know when you start playing an FPS and all you have is a pea shooter gun? Well, that's what Let Them Come feels like when you begin. But because the entire focus of the game is mowing down hordes of slimy aliens rushing your position, it feels... disappointing. Upgrades don't immediately seem to have the desired effect, although this is partially because the game didn't make it clear that there are several levels of upgrades to certain items... like your firing rate! Once I learned this, and once my firepower started to go up, so did my enjoyment. The game's character seemed to reflect this: the more carnage you create per moment, the more likely he is to holler, throw some one-liner out there, or whoop with bloodlust. This is when the game starts to shine, as the ichor and viscera start to fly, you're barely beating down the alien tide, then you get a meaty combo upgrade and everything starts to explore in a blur of neon death.

Ok, I get it now. I mean the game isn't perfect. There are times when you'll meet a wave that seems impossible, and the only way to progress is grind through it several times until you earn enough cash to buy a life-saving upgrade. At points like this is feels a bit cheap, like hitting your head against a wall until some coins fall out that you use to buy a better weapon. But other than that, it's great. Enhancing the experience is your boombox, and make sure you check it out occasionally and add to the playlist. There are quite a lot of songs on there, all great retro synthwave to blast aliens to.

Another reviewer put it best though: this is a tower defence game where you're the tower. You just have to give it a bit of time before it finds its feet.

What I imagend a sentry gun from aliens felt like in the tunnel that lead to the terraformer.