Defender's Quest: Valley of The Forgotten

 
Developer: Level Up Labs, LLC
Steam Release: Oct 2012
Hours Played: 11.4
Similar To: Bloons TD5 / Garden Rescue / Goblin Defenders / Sentinel 4: Dark Star
Rating: 3/5 Parsnips

GAMEPLAY
This is very much in the iBomber Defense mould but presented with pixel-art graphics and simple sound files giving it a very retro feel. It's standard and old-school: place your soldiers and level them up with your points to prevent the creeps reaching the princess. You begin by being shown the battleground which covers the screen. You see the path that the creeps will travel along and where you can place your units. You place your units on select spots highlighted in green as you hover over it. Hit the pause button as the level begins and then deploy your different unit types. When you are ready, click the game speed - which you can change at any time - and then watch as your units destroy the slow moving enemies as they make their way along the path.   


BALANCE & PACE
You automatically pick up PSI points as you kill your foe which you then use to upgrade the units of your choice. Either that or you use PSI points to activate power-ups. Some levels allow creeps to enter the fray at multiple entry points so you need to think strategically when deploying units. Overall, the game plays solidly enough. The player is kept informed as to which path the enemies spawn from and there are health bars displayed throughout. However I did feel that you could upgrade power-ups to the point where they became overpowered. Fully upgrading the lightning attack and spamming it if enemies got too close to the princess was not thrilling and did a slightly unbalanced feel to the proceedings.   

PRESENTATION & DESIGN
Defender's Quest uses the map system as you progress through your TD battles. A battle is represented by a dot on the map and underneath each dot are three stars which light up depending on which difficulty level you completed the battle on. You stop at various towns along the way where you can stock up on armour, weapons and new recruits for your roster. Once a battle has been completed you can revisit it at any time by zipping around the map and clicking on it with your avatar/icon. Re-doing battles gives you experience points (so you can level up your army) and money (so you can purchase more effective weapons and armour). Newer players will perhaps need to get used to the game's simple sound and art-style.



PROGRESS SYSTEM
From the map-screen you can visit your party-screen which shows you your army or roster. Each unit has a level and there is a skill tree which you upgrade as your units level up. It takes a while to figure out how to equip weapons and armour etc, but once you've worked it out you'll be buying, selling and equipping with ease. The main challenge in the game lies in completing battles on the most difficult setting and getting those three gold stars. As such, you will often go back over the map and have another crack at the same battle but on a more difficult setting; for me, that is what tower defense games are all about - experimenting and killing off the creeps on increasing levels of difficulty.

CONCLUSION
Defender's Quest is not a bad game and delivers all the TD goodness that you have come to expect in a classical TD game. The RPG elements, where you upgrade your army, weapons and armour also adds the extra dimension that it needs. However, with an overpowered power-up system that seems to get you out of trouble rather too easily and repetitive gameplay that does get just a little flat, the initial promise wears thin and the novelty soon wears off. with a fast-forward feature that I found myself using perhaps too readily, this resulted in the feeling that I was playing a TD game where I was just going through the motions.