Immortal Defense

The Good
Is there anything you would give up everything to defend? You are a nameless soul and you have pledged to sacrifice your corporeal form, possibly indefinitely, in order to take the defence of your entire planet to a new plain of existence. From there you observe, unseen, the invader’s ships moving through space. And you fight.

This is a game of deceptive simplicity. All control is done with the mouse, your “ship” firing automatically when an enemy comes in range. The right mouse button also charges up a special attack that deals more damage, though the ship won’t fire whilst it’s charging. Later in the game a longer charge will unlock more powerful attacks.

To deter the enemy, which travels along a set path, you place Points, which are essentially gun turrets. Each has a differing attack style, some causing the enemy to slow, some only attacking the least damaged enemy, some improving each point within range etc. You place these points simply by selecting them, paying for them with resources accumulated by the destruction of your enemies, and holding the mouse button down. Voila.

Unlike almost every Tower Defence games the enemy doesn’t actually fight back, but rather develops more and more fiendish ways of defending themselves from your attacks, from moving erratically over the course or defending each other to other more elaborate schemes. Your job is to prevent a set amount from making it through to your home system. As the game develops the map itself changes, becomes more hostile towards you. There’ll even be colossal boss battles, which are often exceedingly difficult.

The control system is probably simpler than any other flash Tower Defence games you find online.
The difference with Immortal Defence is the originality and genuine interest the creator’s have injected it with. Those aren’t gun turrets you’re placing. They’re emotions, hostile beings. You’re not some anonymous spaceship but a ghost that haunts your enemies, makes them fear you, forces entire armadas to their knees as they grow more desperate to defeat you. And, as you discover as the plot progresses, you aren’t the only path defender.

The plot is ecstatically engaging and emotional, one that you’ll invest in tremendously. What does it mean to become immortal? To become a god, or an avenging demon? How does it feel to defend your planet, and the daughter you left forever on its surface? There’s no way I’ll spoil it for you, but the narrative takes you through dramatic twists, highs and lows, and will really engage you with its high sci-fi nature.

The technical aspects of this game are simple, yet glorious. The game glows with throbbing lights and flickering illumination. This coupled with alien, unearthly sound effects and a superb music score draws your in deeper and deeper.

A truly engaging and emotional experience.


The Bad
I didn’t want it to end! The little demo utterly convinced me to pay for the rest of the levels, but I seemed to have played through them in under a day. Which is pretty poor considering it’s price (which isn’t expensive, but I have bought longer games for the same amount). That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of levels, but it’s very very easy to be caught up in the plotting. Hmm actually that’s not really a bad point…

The game’s graphics are euphoric on the default settings, especially in the last few seconds of each game where everything blurs into big swathes of colour. While this doesn’t impede the gameplay by this point the same effect happens when you kill lots of enemy at once, as it is possible to do on some levels. Then things get extremely Pink Floyd and only once it has subsided do you realise that some of the enemy made it through the barrage. There’s also an option to INCREASE the magnitude of this effect! I’ve tried it once and it was borderline unplayable, not least because I was writhing on the floor foaming at the mouth screaming about “fear points”.

It’s hardly a negative point but there’s a section of the narrative, in the chapter fittingly called “The Possession of the Idiot” where your character becomes a real douche bag. I won’t spoil what happens but it’s one of those situations that, whilst dramatic and interesting, is just something that I wouldn’t do.

The Bottom Line
It's worth a play simply to discover what an independent game is capable of in terms of quality, engagement and emotion. Powerful, beautiful stuff.