Goblin Buster: Incremental Tower Defense

Edit:

There has now been an endless mode added, but upgrade costs in general have been increased in an effort to lengthen total gameplay i assume, between this and the fact endless mode is only post game the core gameplay loop has been slowed down and arguably become more boring youll have to repeat maps in the exact same way to grind for even more resources than before. Makes things more interesting at the end game however, but its still a very short title to complete overall, no new maps or modes added or even challenges. Still no hotkeys, towers still default to closest, enemy variety remains minimal. Glad to see its being worked on but it still has more to go.

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Pretty short and very repetitive, already completed 100% all content and i dont even have 3h played. Theres some cool ideas here but it feels more like a demo than a fully fledged game.

Theres only like 4-5 basic enemy types as well, gimmick is they just scale hp and so you repeat to grind resources to out scale the scaling. You dont really see maps with different wave varieties either, it will always be a mix of the same standard enemies so the strategy you gravitate towards will work on mostly any map provided you have the meta progression to get through the scaled enemy hp.

Theres also only 15 maps total then youre done. Between the small map pool and the limited enemy variety game started to lose my interest rather quickly.... but it was also over quickly to 100% the game. Both not great points to have in your game.

Theres also no endless mode of any kind on any of the maps in order to grind for resources faster or max out your defences,

I found myself simply repeating a map several times in the exact same way to grind resources to complete the next map. Not exactly exciting gameplay just going through the motions to unlock the next thing to beat the next map.

Skill tree could do with some restructuring as well, many perks are very boring % bonus to x, and skill tree also wants you to go down one path focusing on one tower to maximize benefits. with minimal enemy wave variety you can just beat the game by choosing a tower and upgrading its meta till you win. You dont really need to use multiple towers. Skill tree also a bit confusing at times, you dont know what you need to unlock in order to unlock the upgrade so you can start collecting the next tier of resource, you just stumble across it and kinda go "oh, now i can upgrade all this stuff i wanted to but couldnt until now" a sense of direction to the skill tree to at least point you to areas you should look for the next tier of upgrade currency would be nice instead of it being a bit of a mess.

Game also lacking some basic features youd expect to see in a TD like hotkeys in general (game is entirely mouse only) or change default tower attack preference (most towers default to closest which isnt the greatest option often)

Overall i think if this game was priced more in the $2-3 range it would be a charming little indie title, but as it stands the content just isnt there for the asking price, even on the 40% off sale.

Will revisit this if more content is added along with QoL but in its current state its certainly quite lackluster for what i expected. Happy to see dev working on it a bit though

A very weak "yes" recommendation. Not very deep, not very difficult, and definitely not very long. It is fun and has some neat ideas, but it is very simple to exploit a few things and win 100% this in a very few hours. My time only shows 8.4 hours as I took my kids out and did all of the Halloween things and forgot to close the game.

2.5/5 - The weakest "yes" recommendation I've ever given. Overpriced for how short it is. Even 40% off at $4.79 I would still say it is overpriced. At a more reasonable $2.99 price I'd say this is a 3.5/5.

100% achievements in ~2.6h

Very meh

There are 9 tower types but can beat the whole game with just archer towers (half hour speedrun this way)
And in game system encourages you focus one damage type anyway

Skill tree is too boring, enemies are too boring, < 3h for $8 game is unacceptable for an incremental game

Game needs an interesting skill tree, more maps, more enemy types, more mechanics, more relics, better pacing and interesting challenges