Labyren, the new Tower Defense game which is being solo developed by Paulius Giniotis, has recently been announced on Steam, coupled with a Demo with the first few levels.
A headscratching maze builder
The game takes inspiration from lots of older Tower Defense games, specifically old custom games from Warcraft 3 (Gem TD, Legion TD, Tropical Tower Wars and many others). In many of these you had to handcraft your own maze layout as opposed to one being provided for you. Take your time to plan out the most optimal path for your enemies to traverse.
Fog of War in the Tower Defense genre
For most of the Tower Defense games, your towers had to fulfill one condition to attack – is the enemy in the attack range?
With Fog of War, vision comes into play as an additional layer of restriction, which requires the Player to carefully manage their resources and use a wider selection of buildings to complete challenges.
Medieval setting
Labyren provides a setting for a minimal story to take place. Your faction resides on a mountain and is widely recognized of having impenetrable defenses. Now is a peaceful time, wars are a thing of the past, and yet the other factions’ bloodthirst is unquenching. Searching for an outlet, someone suggested a competition… at your expense.
The other factions would take turns laying siege to the mountain where you quietly dwell and war-hungry leaders are not taking no for an answer.
Innovations and callbacks on the genre
In the game there are many more interesting takes on the genre:
- Path-blocking with barricades, forcing the enemies to slowly tear them down if they have no other path to traverse.
- Multiple waypoints that enemies have to visit before exiting the playing grounds.
- Utilization of the Fog of War system. Light enemies on fire if that keeps them in your sights.
- Irregular-shaped buildings. Small, big, narrow, L-shaped – anything that helps you with your maze layout.
- Upgrades through adjacent buildings, so you can build and upgrade at the same time and in a way, construct your own variations of towers.
Controller support
Controller support in the Tower Defense genre is rarer than other genres, considering how many actions you have to take at once. However, Labyren does not force you to take any action on a timer – neither while building nor when defending. That alleviates the pressure and allows you to kick back on your sofa, relax, and build some awesome mazes.
That goes for Steam Deck too!
