A smooth, well polished tower defense-rpg hybrid made with obvious care. The perfect archetype of a 2D indie game.

User Rating: 9 | Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten PC
I saw this tower defense game with old school 16-bit like sprites on Steam, and decided simply to check out on a whim, because it seemed to have some sort of characters and plot.

Even though one shouldn't expect some epic heart sweeping tale the likes of War and Peace or a convoluted story as per Final Fantasy's long time tradition, it has a typical fantasy good vs evil plot that has been explored many times ever since Lord of The Rings.

Strangely enough, even though the lore of the game's universe seems well written like they belonged on a school book, the party banter in cut scenes between battles does have a lot of light humored dialogues and definitely some teenage vibe going on, to make the characters empathetic.
But it is a game and not a novel, so that common piece of criticism can be ignored.

Anyway about the gameplay itself, it is a tower defense game, that has strong rpg elements, where you level your different characters classes (the towers in the game) that fight for you, train their skill trees, their equipment and the spells that the main character can invoke during battles.

You place your characters strategically on a 2D map and try to stop the waves of enemies from reaching your main character. There are even pause, fast forward or slow down buttons to trigger the game speed. It's all very well balanced, streamlined to perfection and extremely addictive.

Recommended game even if you aren't a fan of tower defense games.