Buy GemCraft - Chasing Shadows

I spent a large portion of my childhood playing GemCraft; mainly GemCraft: Labyrinth. When I heard Chasing Shadows had come out I instantly went and bought it. It was 80% off and after a few hours of playing, I felt like I hadn't paid enough. This is a Tower Defense game that offers insane amounts of content for its low price of $10. As a player, you're able to experiment and explore each level with increasing amounts of flexability as the game goes on. You can unlock mind boggling skills and create devastating combos with millions of outcomes. This game is a MUST-HAVE for any Tower Defense fan, strategy game fan, or someone looking for something new. Get this game.

the best tower defence game out, so happy to hear its out on steam

Very fun tower defense game. Be aware that it is very easy to get in the typical turn based "one more turn" mindset

Great game for tower defense fans.

I first got into the series back in 2008 when I saw Gemcraft available on Armorgames. I had a good time playing through it and all the following gemcraft games after that. After Labyrinth, I rarely looked up news about possible new sequel over 3-4 years until I found out that it would be available to buy on steam or playable on Armorgames again. I was happy, but I had other games to play and decided to wait for a steam release along with a discount.

Then one day, a new killer bundle comes up from Bundle Stars and I take a look at it - Chasing Shadows is right there, so I decide to buy. At this time I was still be playing other games, so I didn't install it until a few days ago.

The game is very fun and rewarding as there is a lot of variety! You can use various abilities on enemies, drop bombs on enemies and waves, place many kinds of towers, combine towers to upgrade them, add various rules that increase your exp gain, craft items and upgrade those items for various benefits all at your own pace (you can press space to pause wave and do whatever as long as you have the spell charges and mana for it). There is a big amount of achievements too.

I've failed some stages because of bombing waves too much, but it hasn't frustrated me. You can restart the stage after learning from your mistakes and use 9x speed to get back to where you lost rather quickly.

If you like getting achievements and playing tower defense games, I would recommend to buy this game.

10/10 (might edit this more later..)

I remember playing this game in a browser on some dotcom. It is still as fun and way more refined. lots or areas to unlock, apparantly thousands of levels to earn for your avatar. If you want to play a wave tower defense game this would be a good jam for you to relax or not :)

Spent like, $150 in the '15 Fall sale. Best purchase was for $2.49: This game.

Figures.

Gemcraft series is the ultimate Tower Defense experience for me, and "Chasing Shadows" is the best instalment so far.

At first glance it may work and look like a standard TD game - monsters enter the map in waves, walk to our base along predefined paths and we have to defend it by building towers and traps, as well as occasionally using some spells. However, not only Gemcraft does it superbly but it also offers depth and complexity you won't find in most TD games.

The most unique and fun feature of the game, in my opinion, is the wave angering. Player can spend some mana to make monster waves stronger (by increasing monster numbers and stats), which allows you to gain more mana and experience from killing the monsters... IF you can kill them that is. This one feature changes the gameplay from simple defense to the "how far can I push it" competition.

Another feature, which adds extra replayability value, is the ability to customize levels. It's pretty fun to return to some of early levels later in the game to see how much stronger you have become by beating the level with some extra difficulty settings. You can add more waves, make monsters stronger, faster, tougher or tweak some game rules to get a harder map with higher experience multiplayer.

Ah, the experience - player character can gain levels and unlock various skills and spells which will increase his efficiency in killing monster filth. There is no level cap, however some skills (not all) have a limit to which they can be improved. Add to it a wizard's talisman which can be socketed with talisman fragments gathered along your journey and you get quite a few ways of progressing, improving and specialising your character.

However, Gemcraft originally being a flash game, has some shortcomings. To many people graphics would be the biggest one. Despite it being pretty "clean", readable and fitting the game's darker theme, it's still 2D graphics in low resolution without all those fireworks that other games have nowadays. Personally I prefer it that way, but to each his own.

I have spent dozens of hours (flash version on ArmorGames, so obviously Steam won't show this time) with this game and can safely recommend it to other Tower Defense games fans. If you are unsure then you may try the free version of the game on ArmorGames to see if you like it. In any case be advised that GemCraft is not a game you can finish in a few hours. There are dozens of levels and some of the later ones can take as much as an hour to finish.

Disclaimer: I've played the free versions of this series for more than 300 hours, probably near 400. (about half of it spent with Gemcraft Labyrinth).

Gemcraft has always been my favourite tower defense game by far, the difference between this series and any other TD is just ridiculous. Main reasons why I love this series as a whole:

• Pause button and ability to act during pause. I hate TD's where I need to act quickly. This allows me to think about what to do at any time I want to.
  
  
• Pretty much everything has a hotkey, which makes the gameplay a bit smoother compared to clicking everything.
  
  
• You're always doing something. It's really rare that you get through a wave without building or doing some micromanagement with your towers.
  
  
• The math in the game. Everything is told with calculatable numbers. I hate TD's that only tell something like "A high damage, low speed missile tower" with no numbers to tell me what it really does.
  
  
• 148 levels. This is not some basic "get high score in these 10 levels" tower defense, but it has a story/lore, hidden stuff, multiple ways of progression/upgrades, etc.
  
  
• The insanely good difficulty scaling. It's not an automatic scaling, but I can choose how difficult I want the game to be. At easiest, it's pretty easy (and boring) to be honest. But you can adjust stuff that changes the gameplay a lot like "next wave comes faster", "you gain mana in waves instead of a constant stream", "faster scaling", "reduced effect of Slow", and of course, endurance mode in any level. You can enable multiple different things at once, and harder settings means more exp = more skills = you can go for even higher difficulty.
  
  
• Difficulty scaling from "easier than breathing" to "failed in first wave" also means that this game has a difficulty for anyone. Want casual click-and-watch-explosions? You got it. Want to see how long you can survive against impossible odds? You got it.
  
  
• Every fail is caused by you and you only. The problem I see with most TD's is the situation where you think "I have no idea which order I should build these towers to complete this level". But because of the difficulty scaling and the complexity of the game in general, I've never had that feeling in Gemcraft. The difficulty scaling causes me to always try harder settings before hitting a wall of "oh sh*t I went too high" like that damn Icarus. But because it was my own choice to begin with, it's just a facepalm moment and retry, instead of feeling that the game is peeing in my cereals.
  
  
• Continuing with difficulty scaling: even in mid-fight, you can make any wave of monsters harder by spending mana on it. Killing these waves rewards you with even more mana, but doing this requires you to really know your limits: anger them too much and they'll eat you alive. Using this mechanic is pretty much required to beat the hardest levels and difficulties, and it turns the game to a constant balancing of "how much can I take?". This mechanic is unique among the TD's that I've played, and it's also one of the many reasons I love this game.
  The usual "get a bonus by sending in the next wave earlier" is there aswell.
  
  
• The whole series is pretty much like Dark Souls of the tower defense genre. If you get into it, you'll say that it's the best one. The caveat is that it isn't the easiest game to get into, and it isn't for everyone.

The free version of this game can be found at http://armorgames.com/play/15760/gemcraft-chasing-shadows. I'm not even sure what's the difference because I bought this edition instantly after noticing it's on Steam. But I'd say go try the free one, and if you notice that you run out of content before getting bored with the game, come back here.

TL;DR: In the end it's still a tower defense game, but it's filled with loads of unique ideas/mechanics and everything is polished to the limit and above. For me it's the game that made every other TD suck just because they aren't nearly as good as Gemcraft.

I am flabberghasted at how awesome this game is. Ridiculus amounts of content and depth for a "simple" tower defense game. I have absolutely nothing but warm recommendations for this game. But, in the interest of diversity, I will mention a fair few flaws or gripes.

The game runs on Flash via Air. This means there's no hope of running this natively on Linux as it stands. It also means it will lag like crazy when you get to wizard levels 1000 and above and you really start to abuse the enrage mechanic and get thousands of monsters on screen at once. For simple story mode or casual play, you'll never notice. But if you're hardcore, lag will become a factor eventually.

It also means that the entire client will bog down and not respond to inputs as the game lags, this can make controlling the game hard when there's a bajillion things going on at once. Remember to pause your game before issuing commands if you are going into those deep-enrage endurance games.

Otherwise I have nothing but positives for the game. I freaking HATE the tower defense genre. Nothing but uncreative, pretty cow-clicky games with zero depth and no strategy EVERYWHERE. Gemcraft though? Totally breaks the mold and makes even a hater love it. That's the warmest recommendations I can ever give a game.

Prepare to be addicted!

A tower defense game with a dark, gritty atmosphere and tons of choices for upgrading skills, choosing which types of gems you prefer to use, as well as extra stuff like spells, shrines, etc. A map that lets you choose your path, and even replay levels to your hearts content. And best of all, tons of achievments that actually give you in-game bonus points to use in upgrading your skills. Finally, we achievment hunters can have a legitimate reason for getting achievements!

Now I must warn you that I have not completed the game yet. But 20 hours in and I haven't seen anything to change my mind that this game is highly reccommended.

Ok, so this is tower defense. You build towers (traps, too!) and hope that they kill off the incoming line of enemies. Only in this game the towers are powered by gems. Each color does something different. The green poison gem is my current favorite. The red chain hit one is good too. There's gems that steal mana from the enemy, deplete enemy armor, prevent enemies from regenerating their health, and more.

Gems are created with mana. You start with some mana but also gain mana slowly and by killing enemies. Use the mana to create more gems or upgrade your existing gems to higher levels. You can have gems from levels 1-12, but so far I have only been able to afford up to level 8. Each level costs more than the previous level to create a gem. You can also move gems around, but there is a short wait time for the gem to socket before it can start attacking. Gems can also be used to bomb enemies with wasp stings, but I haven't found that very effective.

Each time you complete a level it unlocks one or more new levels. Map sections are hexogonal and eventually it opens up two pathway options. So the game is not completely linear, which I love. You gain experience and also get shadow cores to use to upgrade your abilities.

There is so much customization in this game, so you can play it in your own style. You can redistribute your ability points any time you want, so you're not stuck with your upgrades. Or you can spend the shadow cores to increase your chance of getting better loot and rare items. The maps have quite a variety of pathways. And you can build little walls to make a maze to slow the monsters down.

Graphics are seen from a top down angle, and the most realistic looking graphics that I've seen in a tower defense game, though I haven't seen them all. Most of the games in this genre seem to be cartoon-like, but this game has lush forests, stone pathways, and dark insect-looking monsters!

Music is more of a kind of ethereal chorus or extended chords. Not a tune. But it's perfect for this game. It really adds to the monstrous ambiance.

Replay value is huge. As far as I know you can replay levels as much as you want, to grind for experience and to get the hard achievements. But like I said, I haven't finished it yet so I dont' know if there might be a reason not to take too much time.

Controls are done with the mouse and there are keyboard shortcuts.

Story-wise, there are sometimes pages that tell the story but mostly it's just killing monsters. Maybe there's more story later on, I dont' know. This game won't appeal to someone who just wants to play once through a game. It's for people who like to do the same thing over and over again. I like to challenge myself to use the least amount of mana and still make it through the level, and stuff like that. So, if that sounds like you, then buy this game without waiting! It is well worth the price. No need to wait for a sale.

The only bad thing is I'm neglecting my other games to play this one. My poor backlog!

Update: I forgot to mention that there is blood but no gore. And there's a setting where you can turn off the blood if you want.