Kingdom Rush, by developer and publisher Ironhide Game Studio, is a Fantasy Tower Defense game that will leave you desperate to replay the levels that gave you the most grief. From top-down view, you play as commander, clearing the kingdom of multiple threats. Each threat becomes more and more difficult to contain, and not all defenses are obvious in the first round. Kingdom Rush stole a few hours of my life in what felt like minutes.
Our story starts with us clearly the roads, removing low tier mobs by enlisting archer towers. The first few levels introduce you to the four main towers you can build: archers, footmen, wizards, and dwarf mortars. Each have their place in your repertoire. Archer deal small damage, but are quick. Wizards are slow, but deal out more damage. Footmen can hold the enemy in place and deal some damage as well, but they can only occupy three mobs at a time. Dwarven cannons can deal a lot of damage spread in an area of effect. A good strategy can start with bottlenecking enemies and raining projectiles onto them while they are pinned down.
You will struggle! Some levels open up new challenges, such as an alternate path from which more enemies will appear. Enemy variants become more armored and deadly. Ogres are notorious for busting through your line of defense, killing anything in its way. Sometimes you will be more favored, and a unique unit will be available to you, like an elite knight or an elven warrior. You need the right combination of towers and tower upgrades to deal with the situation. Sometimes knowing what is right around the corner will help you prepare in earnest.
But there is more! You can unlock special abilities that can save you if you use them correctly. You can call for reinforcements, summoning 2 low tier melee units that can operate like the footmen. An ogre will dispatch them in one swing. But you can also make it rain fire, causing substantial damage with an area of effect similar to the dwarven mortar. These skills, as well as towers/spending on towers, can be upgraded while hovering around the level-select screen.
The game is fast paced despite sometimes having a large number of waves. You are free to restart at any time as well, and sometimes it is better to just rage-restart than to waste the gold. You learn to be flexible. In the beginning I struggled with pivoting resources to another path, even if that meant scrapping earlier towers. In a situation when there are a lot of weaker variants, they can run past the footmen easily; that is a specific situation that calls for area of effect damage. Armored variants may need upgraded footmen and a combination of projectiles.
Overall, I had an enjoyable time. The sound effects and the few voice overs are great. While the soundtrack is playing fantasy music, you can listen to the roar of battle. The level progression is challenging and fun. I felt the upgrades made a difference, and they even encouraged me to replay scenes where I struggled. I think a fair rating for this game is a 9 out of 10.
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Related: Reviews by John Pruitt
I like to think of myself as the average Joe who grew up alongside video games. I have fun playing strategy games, RPGs, shooters, sandboxes, the whole shebang! Every game provides an experience whether it strikes you as profound, mundane, or someplace in between. I'd like to weigh in my two cents before you spend a single penny.
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