14 DAY TRIAL // Tower defense games are to the independent gaming scene what first-person shooters are to the large triple-A part of the gaming industry, with dozens upon dozens of games flooding a variety of platforms, from the PC or consoles to mobile phones.
Now, 11 Bit Games introduces Anomaly Warzone Earth, a game that promises to take the tower defense genre and turn it on its head through fresh mechanics.
How does it do that? Instead of putting you in the shoes of a commander in the sky that needs to put towers on a map in order to stop invading forces, you're now on the ground and leading the aforementioned invading forces against a wide array of different enemy towers.
While the swapping of roles seems a bit obvious, few games have actually tried it and succeeded.
Is Anomaly Warzone Earth one of those games? Let's find out.
I played quite a lot of tower defense games over the last few years, and a lot of them seemed pretty simple, requiring you mostly to do all of your planning at the beginning of the matches.
AWE, on the other hand, is much more dynamic, as things change when you act as a commander on the ground rather than one in the sky.
You have no direct control over your troops, in this case various armored machines like APCs or mechanical suits, but you can select their paths through the levels, choosing from multiple paths, buy new troops as well as fix them on the fly through the powers of your unique combat suit.
The game's mechanics are pretty simple to learn but difficult to master, especially when it starts throwing your feeble forces against wide arrays of alien towers that, without paying close attention, can decimate even the mightiest armies.
At first glace, Anomaly Warzone Earth is a very intriguing title, which can carve its own niche with its reverse tower defense gameplay.
Check out the first mission in its single-player campaign in the video below.