Hero Defense
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In order to destroy the world’s most powerful vampire, your team of slayers must impale, slash, tear and burn through legions of undead hell-bent on world domination! Take charge of five unique heroes that battle their way through various arenas to defeat Count Necrosis. HERO DEFENSE challenges fans from RTS, RPGs and Tower Defense games to strategically maneuver their upgradeable heroes to destroy hordes of sinister creeps.
Steam User 109
Average game.
Devs took TD idea and replaced towers with heroes. If there are usually a lot of towers in other TD games, there you can find only 5. Only 5, really? Yeah, it's the main game idea. You need to use heroes to defeat enemies. Every hero is strong against special type of monsters; the guy with arbalet kills vampires in a couple of shots, the old mage with holy water wipes out a pack of skeletons.
There is a city, where you can power up your heroes. You can learn skill for each of them. Tree skill is small, but anyway it's interesting to choose which skill you will learn right now.
Also, there is rune system. You can put different runes into hero's weapon and when you charge him (upgrade) in the battle, he will receive this bonus. For example, there are damage runes, range runes and more interesting tunes, like "75% change to attack with extra projectile".
So, you pass a mission, go to the town, unlock new heroes/buildings, upgrade your heroes and start new mission. Easy to understand.
What I like
- Awesome 2d art
- Fresh gameplay idea
- Easy to undestand
- Good voice acting
- Tree skill for every hero
What I didn't like
- There are only 5 towers/units. It's a really small amount. Also, you summon them all in every battle, so every mission you play with the same towers.. It's quite boring.
- The TD game is supposed to be strategy game. You need to think about tactic, find the best spots for towers and etc. The main part of gameplay of this game is relocating these 5 towers. When a wave starts you move them to a start point, some of them pass through, you move heroes to the end point. When new wave starts, enemies go on another road, you need to move heroes there. Repeat these actions X times (x - number of waves in the mission) to complete the level.
- The gameplay is the same in all missions. Yeah, there are different roads, some bosses come, and there are shrines for heroes. But, you play the same mission exactly is previous. I would like to see more diversity in enemies, more special skills, something new, which could let me give a desire to continue the game.
- Story is boring. Characters are usual. Dialogues bring nothing interesting to the game.
- Game requires playing previous stages to unlock new ones. I got stuck 3 times because of it. I couldn't finish the game, because i was forced to replay 6 stages to unlock the final mission. But I didn't want to do that.
- I would like to see active heroes’ skills. It's really boring when you can only move them around the map and upgrading them. For example, KR series has 2 active spells, meteor shower and reinforcements. It's really enjoyable to use them. There are no such spells.
- Rune system reminds me free-to-play mobile games. Grind gold, buy runes, combine runes to get stronger one. Repeat. I think, it wasn't a good idea to put this mechanic in PC game. Also, when you make an upgrade you don't feel what your hero become stronger. You start with "+10% damage rune". Really? The price of upgrading is equal to price of new hero. So, it's better to summon heroes instead of upgrading them.
- There are no numbers. You can't see amount of health of monsters, you can't find how much extra damage hero does. It's a bad for mw. I would like to see more information. It's an important part of a strategy game, which helps players to find the best tactic.
So, why have I given this game a positive review, if there are so many minuses? I have almost finished the game. I suppose, if you play the game and could complete it, it can't be a bad game. The 15$ price tag is too high, I am sure. But i got this game with 70% discount, and this price is fair.
P.S. I hope, devs will notice bad design decisions and make the next game more interesting. Because, the main idea is good, but the final result is really average.
Steam User 26
decently good Tower Defense game
Steam User 51
Hero Defense - Haunted Island is the tower defense game for gamers who aren't fans of tower defense games. I'm one such gamer, and that's precisely why my positive experience packs such a wicked punch.
Coming into the game, you're hit with striking characters and a fantastical world where supernatural creatures exist, and hunters are waiting in the wings to defeat them.
Using strictly mouse gameplay, you'll start off with Jack the ranger. Through gameplay progression, you quickly learn that by defeating a wave of creatures on a given map, you earn gold and skillpoints that can be used to upgrade Jake's weapon and upgrade or add skills to the character to make him a more deadly opponent. You can also rebuild the "town" by placing various building on the map that allow you to upgrade characters and weapons, and later to exchange gold coins for gems that are used for further upgrades.
During gameplay, defeated monsters drop gold and items, such as runes that are used to advance your character, and orbs that are used to "charge" your character, granting one of many short-term advantages or "buffs." You'll also find during the process of completing waves and upgrading Jake that other characters become unlocked and available for placement on the maps. Furthermore, you'll be able to build shrines on certain maps that grant buffs, and ven placement of one character next to another can provide an advantage.
All of the characters will advance in the same way as Jake, though they all have different skills. Barrows, the occultist, is stronger against certain opponents, and Sam Hain, the firebug, is stronger against others. The same can be said for the rest of the crew.
There's a great deal of replayability here, as each map can be repeated more than once at a higher difficulty level, and beyond that, extra challenges can be added to the maps that place your crew at a disadvantage of sorts and result in higher rewards for you. There's a lot of room for game customization here, too. No two games are likely to be the same when you factor in all the different characters, map placements, shrines, and rune combinations.
It's classified as Early Access, but I have to say that this game plays like a finished product. Graphics are exquisitely clear, and the soundtrack enhances this supernatural environment. I felt like I was playing in an interactive urban fantasy. The developers seem to be not only talented but active, so I'm looking forward to more content in the future.
This game is very well done, and it can be played both in long sessions or short intervals. The instant gratification factor is definitely present, as well. Frequent loot drops and upgrades make for a beautiful give and take experience. This is certainly not a "grinder." You'll also find trading cards and challenging achievements to keep you entertained.
I favor controller gameplay, and as I stated earlier, I'm not particularly a fan of tower defense games, so I would encourage any other gamers meeting those criteria to give this game a try. If you hop on board the Haunted Island tour during the Easter event, you'll find a lot more goodies waiting for you!
Steam User 65
If you think I missed something in my review feel free to tell me
Hero Defense - Haunted Island
Hero Defense - Haunted Island is a well made tower defense strategy game that has features which make it a pleasure in the TD Genre. I will add a TL;DR at the end
Gameplay
Hero Defense is not an average tower defense game because instead of building towers in a set area for them to just stand and fire at approaching enemies you get 5 mobile towers/heroes to use. Each one of these heroes has a speciality, skill tree, and weapon rune slots to increase their power when defending. The fact you control where your heroes move and have to tactically place and manage them to successfully fend off wave after wave of enemies helps add to how much fun the game can be. Within maps you also have the option to use and build shrines which can boost specific stats, characters, or simply give you a nice boost.
The story is actually pretty stale, nothing new, nothing surprising. More like a large cliché but that isn’t really harmful to the game as a whole.
Graphics/Sounds
The graphics can be unappealing to some, but overall it’s a more dark 3D transilvania look which matches the game pretty nicely. The artwork and design of certain characters helps to match that theme and help add an appeal to the game.
The music is overall ok, but some of the character voices are simply horrible. The main character Jack along with some of the other heroes make me simply wish I could mute them specifically for the entire game.
Pros/Cons
Pros
+ Mobile towers/heroes
+ Variation between heroes with strength and weaknesses
+ Unlockable runes to boost heroes
+ Skill trees
+ Enjoyable levels and variation
+ Requires tactical placement and preparation beforehand on heroes to beat later levels (require you to use your head)
Cons
**Note since this is an Early Access title Cons and other parts of the review as well are viable to change as the game continues to develop**
- Stale story
- Grind to get runes and gold to be able to advance (this does not apply to everyone as I know some people like a good grind)
- Some of the character voices are horrid
- Graphics unappealing to some
Suggestions
Suggestions I feel would help the game
- More enemy variations
- Preset targeting for heroes (First, Last, Strongest, Weakest) because more than once my heroes ignored the guys at the front and ended up costing me the mission (and hard to remote target if it’s a giant horde and constantly click so they attack front)
Final Thoughts
A fun tower defense game for sure, love the micromanagement and the rune system. Skill trees are a nice touch along with reconstructing the town for different uses. I did not like the story, it was very predictable following cliché after cliché in its plot. As a tower defense game I love the system of having movable towers since it really is a pleasure to have to use an extra bit of thought to properly position your heroes. Even having to decide if you need to build a shrine or move a certain hero somewhere to be more effective and trying to match runes to help the character be better in different scenarios really made the game more enjoyable.
TL;DR
Hero Defense - Haunted Island is a game for its gameplay with different shrines, runes, skill trees, and 5 different heroes to manage and defend against the undead with. A pleasure to see within the TD genre for its type of structure and overall offering a good amount of playtime potential if you like the game and its style.
** Key was provided by developer for review purposes **
If you liked this review or want to see more recommended games, be sure to follow our curator group: Follow Original Curator Group
Steam User 21
Personal rating: 7/10
What to expect of Hero Defense - Haunted Island:
Hero Defense - Haunted Island is a tower defense with a different twist on it: you don't use actual towers, you control them in the form of heroes, while far from being the first in the genre, it is the first time I've played a game where you can have control up to five different characters at the same time and are free to move them as you like.
SINGLE-PLAYER EXPERIENCE REVIEW
If you're here looking for an opinion on the co-op or PvP mode then move along. You won't find it here since I still didn't have the chance to play them (and I'm not keen on the idea of playing PvP anyway).
Tower Defense or Hero Defense?
Call it whatever you want, but having control over your towers/heroes is nice and refreshing, I know people that never got into tower defense genre as - in their own words - "you just click and watch" (although personally that is one of the reasons I like it).
Hero Defense has only five heroes, but they are unique on their own way and each one has defining traits and weak points which you'll have to work with in order to win.
Hero Management:
The controls are simple enough: 1 to 5 selects the hero, left-click moves them and Space will level them up if you have enough orbs. The game keeps it clean and simple as it should be.
Of course if these controls are not to your liking you can reassign them.
Town to rebuild, bonuses to get
Everything starts simple enough: pay gold (gems for one building) and get a permanent bonus.
But as you may already be thinking: Grinding? Yes. Read below.
Grinding
This is what could be the ugly part for me. Grinding is a VERY delicate balance that either makes a game good and tolerable or downright insufferable. And I personally can be very much fickle about this as well.
Hero Defense does it… Mildly right. While the beginning will certainly be bumpy and hard, the game has a nice, and may I add cathartic, surprise later on that will tell the difficulty of grinding to go suck a big one. But it's there merely to help you as town and weapon upgrades will get ridiculously expensive.
Skill trees
Every hero has its skill tree which will define their own style. Most of them are clear cut on what the hero does: focus on a single target, deals with crowds and so on.
For those who played games which give you tons of skills and makes you pull your hair just thinking what to do, what skills to leave behind, Hero Defense allows you to have all skills at once.
However you'll have to grind and level up your heroes accordingly. Some will love this, others will not. This left a mixed taste in my mouth; as in initially sweet but sour aftertaste. Why? While I do love having everything, it takes away some potential unique builds that would give characters even more distinction.
Heroes and runes
There's the usual tower defense: you get resources to start, put a hero, kill enemies, get money, level up your heroes, put another hero... Nothing out of the usual.
What makes it unique then?
Runes does.
Runes are how you make each hero unique on their own even with their skill tress. You can give runes to turn a mild damaging hero into something powerful, or give an attack speed rune to that slow attacking hero and watch them fill the screen with attacks.
Runes are scaled as this: Common - Uncommon - Rare - Epic. As you can imagine Epic runes will take the longest to get as they are fairly expensive, but at least you are granted to get one, but you'll still need to luck out to get the one you want (power up, speed up, extra projectile chance…).
The game has a simple craft system defined as "Merge" which allows you swap lower rarity runes into better quality ones. Use all of the same type and it'll ensure you a better rarity rune of that type. If you don't, you'll need luck as the result will be random.
Complaints and suggestions
Hero Defense may not receive a ton of awards, but it sure does try hard and the efforts of the team behind it clearly show. But the game, like 100% of everything out there, has its share of problems.
1) The loading time to use the Town is unacceptable. It is far too long and wears down on the player really fast.
2) Hero AI can be random or downright stupid at times. They tend to focus on enemies in the middle instead of the last in the group. While manual targeting DOES help, options of automatic targeting (most health, etc.) would be greatly appreciated.
3) Shrines costs gem. No problem. Shrines are permanent until you build something on them. No problem. Shrine cost increases with each one you build. No problem. The game doesn't keep track where you built shrines. THAT'S a problem.
4) This is a very little something but bugs me to no end: whenever you finish a map with a victory there's no Restart button. Sounds like nitpicking, but this is a game about farming to a certain degree and having to go back to the World Map to choose the map you want again gets tiresome.
5.1) The game has only five types of enemies and while they try to be distinct from each other they always feel "samey" when you reach higher levels. Since every enemy can have about every ability (with some exceptions), the only thing you'll end worrying about in most cases is which hero should fight which enemy.
5.2) Enemy abilities feel uninspired as they only affect themselves, enemies will never actively hamper your heroes' progress. Enemies could have other things like swapping heroes' position, swapping one hero for another, blocking one hero, reducing their range or attack speed, punishing players for clustering heroes too much or leaving them too far from each other…
6.1) Another complaint is the lack of runes that can give unique effects like Poisoning enemies, slowing them and similar effects to somewhat emulate other characters.
6.2) Lack of variety in weapons. While rune slot upgrades are good it'd give much more character definition having equipable weapons that increases their attack rate, attack strength or range.
7) And this feels more like nitpicking from me, but the game gets too easy once you get everything; town upgrades, powerful Epic runes, and weapons maxed. While it does feel immensely good crush Insane difficulty levels that were getting under your skin, that also loses its charm fast. And no, Endless is not a solution for this, Survival Mode in tower defenses never felt accomplishing or anything since, you know, they don't have end. Maybe a fifth difficulty could solve this.
8) Camera control. You don't have free control of your camera and more often than not you can end up having an obstacle obstructing your view which may cause anything from an annoyance to costing you the entire map.
Final words
Hero Defense - Haunted Island is a hidden gem that is still being polished by Happy Tuesday even after taking off its Early Access status, but it's far from being bad, broken or unplayable. As I've just noted, this game has its issues, feels like it still has a lot of potential, but it's very well worth playing.
In the end its lack of diversity of enemies, runes and weapons can make the game feel repetitive for some people, but Hero Defense - Haunted Island was charming enough to keep me captive for good 55 hours (as of this writing). And that's not counting the co-op mode which I haven't tested yet.
Knowing Happy Tuesday is still working and releasing patches on *drums rolls* Tuesdays to address known issues and seeing that they at least care enough to ask and answer people in their Community Hub is another good thing I want to point. If you have the chance, give Hero Defense a try.
Steam User 35
PROS:
✔ The graphics are truly amazing!
Hero defence was clearly designed by someone who knows their stuff! The choice of colour, and combination of fog with a cartoon environment simply looks awesome! But you can see that from the trailer!
✔ The GUI is Beautiful!
It’s aesthetically pleasing, scales correctly, and just looks and feels great. It doesn’t need any explanation, you just know what everything does, the skill menu especially!
✔ The sounds are immersive!
Every action has a different sound, and it’s very noticeable! No corners were cut with the sound design!
✔ It offers a challenging experience!
Some games start slowly and build up the difficulty, but not in hero defence. Right away, you’re thrown in the deep end, with one moment of concentration loss losing you the game.
✔ A unique concept, with plenty to do!
It’s very interesting to play a tower defence where you can move your units!
✔ Simple and effective multiplayer!
The multiplayer definitely has potential. In short, it’s an extended singleplayer. Instead of playing by yourself, your friend’s singleplayer map is put next to yours so you can see how they’re doing. It has to be said though, there isn’t much time to watch them! It throws you into the end levels regardless of how far through the singleplayer you are.
✔ You can skip the tutorial!
I definitely saw an option to skip it! It’s such a burden when games don’t offer this functionality!
CONS:
✖ It definitely gets repetitive.
You have to move your units back and forth a lot. Their range isn’t enough to kill everything from one spot, so you have to shift them along. Then, move them back to the spawn so there’s enough time to kill the next wave. Over and over again.
✖ The controls seem unnatural.
To move a unit, you left click it, and then right click the location you want them to move to. It took me a while to get the hang of this. There are key binds, but no option to change mouse control, unfortunately!
✖ You can’t select multiple units.
For the most part, you’ll want to move all your units together! But you can’t select multiple units, so you have to do it individually, which wastes a lot of precious time! Also, units push each other out the way to get past, but the unit that got pushed doesn’t move back after.
✖ The “Main Menu” is confusing
Instead of an option list, you’re presented with a burning city. However it’s not obvious as to what each building does. You just have to click them all until you find some gameplay! Floating text would be really helpful!
✖ The storyline felt forced.
This isn’t a game you play for the storyline, but even so. All the characters lack empathy or personality, and it all just feels slapped together. The protagonist told a guy who literally just lost his wife to a fire to “mourn her later”.
✖ Minor issues.
Enemies don’t move smoothly around corners, they snap quickly, which is very noticeable. The rune inventory is set. It looks like a standard inventory slot system, except you can’t put stuff where you want, everything has a default place. The heroes crossbow arrows come from the hero rather than the bow. Just little details like this that need fixing!
✖ One voice actor?
As awesome as some of the voices are, it honestly sounds like it was all recorded by one actor, using different inflections and pitch distortion software.
SUGGESTIONS:
★ Collaboration multiplayer!
I really would love to experience some more engagement between you and the other player! Maybe a mode where both you and player 2 can move all the units together. Or to prevent exploitation from strangers, maybe you take control of 3 heroes, and they take the other 2.
★ More units!
The joy of tower defence is that you can build more and more units! But here you’ll always be stuck with the main characters. If you could rescue citizens for certain levels that you could also control, to help tackle each wave, that would definitely add some replayability!
★ Streamline the skill upgrades!
I enjoy doing things quickly. One major issue I had with the skill menu, is that you have to close each skill after upgrading it before selecting the next one. I’d love to be able to click the next skill immediately without needing to close the info!
★ Make the tutorial GUI clearer
The tutorial mainly consists of clicking on what the arrows tell you to click. However sometimes, it’s easy to miss where the arrows are on screen! Make the rest of the screen darker or something, just to highlight where I’m supposed to be looking!
Steam User 29
Great artwork and graphics, a fun take on the TD genre. Recommended.