X-Morph: Defense

insanely fun defense game that also has a twin-stick shooter element. this is a solid, addicting game that is a must play if you're into tower defense games.

If you like base/tower defense in rts style with a hero this is your game :) X-Morph: Defense is basically the counter game to Anomaly: Warzone Earth. You're part of an alien invasion force, which's goal it is to gather the ressources of Earth, and must defend your Core structures in 14 levels from human attacks.
Like the game description and screenshots already tell, this is a tower defense game, where you actively participate in the fight. You're controlling an alien ship, which can switch between attack mode and ghost mode on the fly, whereby the ghost mode is both a defense mode and your building mode.
The ship itself hast four attacks. A rapid fire dual plasma gun, bombs, anti air rockets and a laser beam, which all offer a secondary fire option. The Plasma gun can be charged to fore a single plasma ball, the bombs can be charged to the Dark Matter bombs, which can destryo buildings, the Rockets offer an EMP attack and the laser creates an anti gravity hole, which is basically a block hole that instantly destroys most enemies. During combat, your ship can be damaged, but also regens health when being out of combat. This also goes for the ghost mode, which makes you invincible, but disables your weapons.
To the gameplay itself: Each level starts with your Core landing on Earth and you have to defend it from waves of attacks, which become harder the longer the level goes on. At the start of each round and between waves, you have an unlimited amount of time to place defense turrets. Like the ships, these turrets have various weapons. Each turret starts with a plasma cannon, but can be upgraded to wield flamethrowers, artillery guns, lasers and anti air weapons.
The amounts of turrets and upgrades you can build is limited by a ressource meter, which is filled up by beating a wave, killing enemies or collecting their scrap with a ship upgrade. Additionally to their weapons, turrets also have impassable laser fences, which can be used to block off enemy routes, so that it takes more time for them to reach your Core and to funnel mutliple enemies into a choke point. Between the waves and during combat, turrets can be relocated and reconfigurated. For example, if you fought of a bunch of bombers and now a group of soldiers is walking along the turret during the next wave, you can change the anti air gun into the flamethrower free of charge. Relocating turrets is also free and you also get your spent ressources back, if one of your turrets gets destroyed, which makes the game player friendly.
The enemies are a slightly futuristic, global army, which resemble the GDI from Command and Conquer. They have tanks, APCs, helicopters, fighter jets, anti air units and other vehicles, which all are serving different purposes. Tanks for example, just attack your core, anti air vehicles are serving as a medic unit and attack the placer, APCs deploy infantry units if not destroyed and bombers target your structures on their flight path. Additionally to that, the game also has three boss enemies, which all work a bit differently and bring a small bullet hell element into the game.

Fun defense game with a fully controllable ship which is a good addition

This is a wonderful game, what a surprise it was... it's a action tower defense game, much like Sanctum 2, where you place your towers to influence the path of the enemy, and instead of just letting them do the work, you are also a unit that goes around doing damage, in this case, as a spaceship doing some top-down shooter combat.
The action is non-stop, as the ship you are always active, one of the game's greatest strenghts is never having down-time. Not to say you'll be constantly overwhelmed, it's very well paced, but you'll always be doing something. Shooting and observing how effective your towers are and collecting destroyed enemy scrap, flying back-and-forward to juggle multiple lanes. You can also build mid-round in a pinch. It's the only tower defense game I've played that does NOT need a fast-forward button at all.
The tower placement is pretty unique, you can greatly shape the path of the enemy, much like Sanctum, but in a more dynamic way. The grid is a lot smaller and blockades can be made in any wacky ways you can think of... very satisfying to force an enemy path to do a Loop-the-loop around street blocks.
My favorite part of the game is how dynamic everything is, almost everything is destructible and all the bits have physics to them, and it's not all just for eye-candy, lots of it has purpose. Enemy debris can be collected for points and extra build materials, smaller buildings when destroyed can open up new paths for enemies to use, or open up line-of-sight for your turrets, and larger buildings can tumble onto roads, the debris blocking whole paths for the enemy, and also doing damage if anything under. Plus it IS just extremely satisfying to use a bomb and see all the things explode majestically around.
And the graphics are pretty charming I'd say... it has a late PS3/360 vibe to it, but while still having plenty of vivid color and appealing visual effects. I don't know if this 7th gen vibe was intentional or not, but I appreciate it none the less, the first level looks straight out of Metal gear rising or Resident evil 5, but with high res textures and modern niceties. Not stunning, but I'd call it very competent.
So yea, that's about it, it's just a bit of a hidden gem, found it at random, it was dirty cheap, didn't expect much and was blown away by the quality. Extremely fun, recommend it to everyone, even if top-down shooters arent your thing, they aren't mine, it STILL hooked completely.

I'm a few levels in, so I scrapedx the surface.

So far, the game is pretty fun.

+ Wave based Tower defense.
+ place towers and interconnect them to block/redirect walking paths
+ optional: manual shooting mode using your ship
+ optional: focus turrets only
+ destructible environment, such as bridges and the buildings

as a top-down tower defense real-time strategy game , personally recommend :
1. almost included all kinds of military attacks simulated here. (except of Guided missiles and navy forces)
2. basic tutorial is easy to learn , but missions are hard and Challenging. (it wont be bored and cold.)
3. the degradability of the environment is High , So you have more freedom to take actions.(enemies and cities designed as reality)
4. During defense planning , able to fight with Quadruple physical technologies. (like Gravity hole and EMP bomb)
5. after finishing the waves , you will challenge with heavy armored bosses. (this is literally addictive and fun as hell.)
6. It doesn't require strong hardware to run.
7. Musics match with game-play.
8. available to try on co-op , survival mode and also few dlc.
9. the Demo version exist for testing.
*even If you have money problem, next Steam discount will Satisfy you.

9.4/10
Great mix of tower defense and star fighter mechanics. DLC is also fun, but probably easier to justify buying only when on sale.
Had a couple bugs, but that might just be my out of date PC.