Namely, in this serie of articles we will bring you review of Indie games which can be bought at Steam, or on few other online locations, often directly from development teams, which sometimes mean playing without any kind of DRM “protection”, and, also, it is good to know that all the money goes directly to authors of game. We must say, that those games deserve your attention and our recommendations – we guarantee that anyone can find something on the menu – tower defense, unusual strategies, top – down shoot’em up shooting games, adventures, RPG / Guitar Hero combinations, or action strategies / managers of oil platforms. Sounds interesting? Of course it is! From the articles in this serie you can find out why!

Orcs Must Die!

Before you say anything, our answer is: “You’re wrong. Totally wrong!”. We are in doubt that another tower defense with tinge of fantasy is

Orcs Must Die!

something that can interest you at first sight, especially when you have in mind its name which sounds as song of 3 Inches of Blood band, and when you add exclamation mark at the end of that name.

But, as we said, if you are pessimistic about this game – you are wrong – Orcs Must Die! is first class game, which in tower defense genre brings its own innovations, and, to fantasy theme injects special charm, which suite even to bigger titles and development teams. But, Robot Entertainment isn’t full of newbies – namely, this is team which once, under name of Ensamble Studios, created serial Age of Empires. And what else to do, except to be thankful to Microsoft, they got fired?

Orcs Must die! is tower defense in which you take direct control ( in manner of TPS ) on your commander, in this case it is the last live wizard – apprentice, which will destroy thousands of orcs, goblins, imps and other vermin. And all of that in few campaigns divided into missions, in which enemies are coming in waves, and between them, sometimes, you even have time to take a breather, and then it is possible to without any disturbance, arrange traps and choose special skills for your character. There is a lot of traps – from pools with tar which slow down orcs, over troll shooters, to big maces which swing from the floor, your character will have arsenal of magics ( fire, ice, storm… ) and with just few copies of arm, with possibility to advance few skills ( on every level you can choose if you want stronger traps, magics or something else, with advancing on special skill – tree for every individual choice ).

However, even if these mechanics doesn’t sound too interesting, we stayed surprised how they are incredibly incorporated in this game as a whole, whether you want to play just one level before you go to sleep, or to sit in front of computer for hours. Simple and polished ideas, together with stylized graphic presentation, excellent voice roles and instrumental music a la Nightwish. When you, to the all mentioned above, add solid duration ( 12 – 13 hours ), stages which bring additional challenges ( not only in number and strength of enemies ), and DLC addons with new campaigns and weapons, in front of you is the game which you must play!

Rock of Ages

When you put together Monty Python like animation ( all hail Terry Gilliam! ), tower defense games, bizzare story, history of art, ACE Team (

Rock of Ages

meritorious for weird Zeno Clash ) and giant sphere which crashes all on its way, you will get Rock of Ages, game, which, in contrast to previously reviewed Orcs Must Die! attracts attention at first glance.

Games like this one can’t be seen every day: Rock of Ages uses third generation of Unreal Engine for pretty unusual graphic, which, the easiest, can be described as excellent imitation of Terry Gilliam’s work on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. This graphic is used for tower defense game, in which you will be, using the giant sphere with face, destroying enemy’s towers, crashing with cows and elephants, and all that with final goal – to destroy enemy’s gates.

Namely, all maps in game are symmetrical: you will start from the top in the middle, just as your enemy, each to his own, and on the way to the bottom and the main gate which you need to destroy, you will supervene to enemy’s towers and traps ( which vary from catapult, over blockade towers, to the cows and elephants which will run on enemy’s sphere in intention to throw it out of the map ). Destroying them, and the following objects, too, you will earn money, which you can spent on building your own towers, and for buying various improvements for your sphere, so that it could make more damage to the enemies.

All of that is packed in the bizzare story, journey through the history of art, from Antique Greece, over middle Ages to the Renaissance, and when we, in this equation add multiplayer and extremely low price, result is clear – must play!