I will mix it up this week with a tower defense demo. I haven’t played a tower defense game in a long time. I enjoyed Pixel Junk Monsters for the PS3, putting a ridiculous amount of hours into it. It had a nice balance of fun and challenging gameplay. This week is a tower defense game where placeable pieces make or break the game. This week is Emberward.

Emberward is a rogue-lite tower defense game from ReficGames. It has a planned release of 2024 for Steam.

Darkness is beaten back by the “fire essence” and you are the protector of this essence. Use Tetris pieces and turrets in a wide range of ways and beat back the darkness.

Emberward‘s games start off like any other tower defense, where you have a set amount of money and a few turrets to choose from. Emberward gives you a few choices of specific tiles and turrets and a perk to choose from in the beginning and that is all that you get until you venture forth and complete challenges.

The map is then laid out in front of the player with so many possibilities in which to navigate to the final boss. A deck of tile cards is placed on the right side and turrets are on the left. Cards are drawn from the deck at the beginning and subsequent rounds and you can place them at any time. After completing a set of waves a new turret card is available to acquire that can be used in subsequent battles.

There is an ever-present chevron showing what paths the baddies are going to take making the placing of the tiles easier. If a tile is placed in the way of that chevron then a new path will be chartered, making the new route shorter or even longer improving the chances of the player’s success. Enemies come out in a single file line like in every tower defense until they die or successfully break through the defense. Enough get through the line and darkness wins and it is back to the beginning.

The demo has a few turrets that the player can choose from: the frost turret that slows enemy movement, a poison gate that poisons enemies, two basic cannons, a turret that relies on a die roll, an electricity-based turret, and a drone that covers a wide area.

The core gameplay is fun and the variety of turrets is really good for a demo.

Emberward is a clean-looking video game. The overall areas are colorful and the Tetris pieces are a lighter color to make placing tiles easier. The baddies are cute and threatening and the powered spaces are easily identifiable on the map.

Emberward is a fun but challenging video game. I think I played the demo for about an hour and I really never got that far even when playing on the casual mode. The onboarding is well done, and the tower defense gameplay rewards players who pay attention to enemy routing. Sometimes enemies meld together and it is hard to distinguish which kind of baddie is still alive.

Overall, I think that Emberward is a fresh take on the tower defense genre and I am excited to delve back into the genre.