The tower defense genre is not quite as popular as it once was, so I was really happy to see Steam concentrate an entire festival around those kinds of games. That is where I discovered the newly released Artisan TD. And it’s certainly aptly named, as it’s one of the best looking tower defense titles to release in a very long time. Most tower defense games look kind of bland because the developers choose instead to concentrate on the mechanics of how players can employ defense-based strategies in unique ways to respond to waves of enemy challengers. For example, titles like Escape From The Red Planet are fun to play, but visually almost look like an eye sore. Even tower defense games that are somewhat visually appealing like the excellent Thronefall often opt for a more minimalist palette of colors coupled with simple graphics.
Artisan TD by contrast looks really impressive. Looking at the screenshots, I thought that maybe it was set in a fantasy garden where you were battling gnomes to defend the flowerbox or something like that. In fact, Artisan TD is set in its own fantasy kingdom, although to be honest, the plot does not make a lot of sense. Apparently, there is a series of islands called the Archipelago of Chaos where creatures called Titans are stealing souls and corrupting them – or something. The only way to stop them is to conquer each island by building elaborate mazes, towers and defenses to prevent monsters from wandering out from their generators and walking over to another portal. As the head of the Artisans Guild, that is exactly what you set out to do because, well, I guess it’s up to the artists to save the day? Like I say, the plot is kind of nonsensical and not even really explained much within the title, so you can pretty much ignore it and just start playing tower defense.
Like most tower defense titles, Artisan TD starts off pretty simply and then gradually expands while the player learns more about what everything does, and which towers are most and least effective against different enemies. The increase in difficulty over time feels about right, with Artisan TD giving you more enemies and more powerful challenges just about the time when you need it to keep things interesting. There are also three overall levels of difficulty depending on a player’s skill and preferences. The default or medium level is what everything is balanced around, but you can set things to either be a little easier or much more challenging if you want, a great feature that helps Artisan TD appeal to both veterans and those who are new to tower defense, or for players who just want a more casual experience.
The basic mechanics of tower defense combat are all present here with not too many surprises. Enemies that reach the end goal hurt you for one hit point, and if you lose them all then the level is lost. To stop that from happening, the starting unit on defense is the archer tower, which can be upgraded several times and eventually becomes a super-tower in later levels. Archers have middling damage outputs but are one of the only units who can target both fliers and enemies on the ground, making them an indispensable part of any defense. Then you have crossbow towers which pack a punch against armored enemies but fire very slowly. There are also specialty defenses like towers that slow enemies to allow other defenses to get more shots on them. Eventually, you get towers that do area of effect damage and other special abilities too. There is nothing too surprising about the defensive loadout. Most players have likely experienced all of the same types of towers in other titles before, although each seems balanced in Artisan TD without any of them being over-powered.
Despite the array of defensive towers at your disposal, the best protection you have is likely the mazes that players construct to force enemy creatures to weave their way along serpentine paths to reach their end goal. Many of the levels in Artisan TD are more or less open, and forcing monsters to walk longer paths, assuming you can put towers along that path to shoot at them, will force them to take more hits along the way. Placing towers close together will automatically form a wall, with enemy creatures quickly adapting and finding the next shortest path if you block their previous one. And no, you can’t totally wall off their routes and need to leave one good path so they can eventually reach their goal. There are even environmental hazards that can damage your opponents if you steer them in that direction, and other spots that heal them which are to be avoided if at all possible. Mastering maze building is a key to victory.
Most units walk on the shortest path to the goal that they can find within a player’s labyrinth, but some can break those rules. The aforementioned flyers move directly toward the finish in a straight line, bypassing every defense other than archers who can still target them as they fly around. There are other bad guys with surprises too, like the spiders that skitter up and over towers, disabling them until they have rushed past.
The only real criticism of Artisan TD is that it’s a pretty basic tower defense title without a lot of the advanced features found in some similar games. You don’t keep upgrades or coins that you purchase between levels and start from scratch every time. That is kind of disheartening, especially because Artisan TD is very miserly with providing coins needed to upgrade (an entire class of monsters called corrupted give no money when they are killed and are almost always mixed in with other normal creatures that drop gold when they fall). You go from being really wealthy and powerful to a poor weakling every single time you advance to a new level. You also can’t program your tower’s fighting logic, so they almost all target the first creature in a line, something the game takes advantage of to mess with your defenses sometimes. There is nothing wrong with how Artisan TD plays, but veteran players might get a bit bored in later levels.
Artisan TD looks really good, especially for a tower defense title, and covers all its bases in terms of gameplay. While it lacks some of the advanced features found in other games, it offers a fun experience for defensive-minded players, and one with a visual flair that really sets it apart from almost everything else out there. It’s a great game to try out during the Steam Tower Defense Festival, or any other time you are looking for something new in the genre.