Artificial Defense is a top down orbital shooter and tower defense game. It’s also got some strategy games elements. This game was developed by a single person and I was quite amazed at how much depth this game has.


The graphics are sharp and pretty straight forward. Most of the graphics are based on different shapes. E.g. the obstacles are square, the enemy creeps can be triangle or other shapes. The game is very colorful and pleasing to the eyes. The whole game has a PC theme going on. The levels are based on PCI card/motherboard design which has fans, USB ports, Audio ports, hard drives etc. This was pretty nice and I liked the fact that the creeps(enemies) come from the USB ports, which in real life also is most likely the places you get viruses. The game is very well designed visually and the tutorial and learning factor is made much easier the way navigation is done in the game. I had smooth over 100 FPS throughout the time I played and noticed no lag or slowdowns.


While the sound can use some variety, the soundtracks that come with the game are pretty upbeat and nice to hear. Voice overs are also present in the game with the announcer having one of those 80’s era robot voices. Some of the sound effects are a bit loud compared to other things though.


Now this game has innovated the tower defense genre. By combining top down orbital shooter mechanics, tower defense and RTS elements this game is pretty unique. There’s a lot of different missions to play. You have to defend your OS from creeps who are trying to infect it. Basically you have to stop these creeps form invading your OS. You can do this by placing towers or shooting them using your orbit guns. Using weapons and towers costs RAM which is your currency in-game. So keeping an eye on the amount of RAM is crucial as running out of it will most likely be a disaster for you. You can earn RAM by killing cookies, these cookies are harmless and spawn pretty frequently and they are trying to get to their cookie hole, so killing them nets you RAM. Other method of getting RAM is by building production towers or conquering things in the map.

To kill with your orbital shooting weapons, you have to lead your targets as the bullets/missiles take time to get there. You have a gun weapon, a missile and a nuke weapon. These are self-explanatory. The guns have the smallest hit area while the missiles have a bit bigger area and does splash damage to nearby creeps. The nuke has a larger area and does massive damage. When you start the game your weapons are not powerful at all (minus the tutorial, for tutorial they give you nice weapons). You can buy new weapons from the UPLAB by spending “kBytes”. These kBytes are earned when you do missions and the challenges earn you extra kBytes.

There are 3 types of towers you can place. Short range towers, long range towers and production towers. As their names imply, the short range has a short range of attack. The long range has long range attack and the production tower simply produces RAM from time to time. These can also be upgraded from the UPLAB. In addition to the guns and towers upgrades you also have hardware upgrades, this includes passive bonuses like health increase, fast forwarding etc.

You also have conquer option in the game. You can conquer databases and honey pots. Once you conquer them they will send out “datablips” and once these datablips reach their destination you will earn RAM. So this game requires you to do quite a lot and focus on many things at once, like placing towers, conquering stuff and concentrating on collecting RAM and shooting enemies. There’s 3 different difficulty levels so if you find the game hard you can always lower the difficulty.

The controls are probably the part which let this game down in my opinion. You can control the game in 2 ways, either drag the screen like you do in RTS games or the “move screen with mouse movement” feature can be toggled on. While this was my preferred method the mouse for some reason doesn’t feel natural. Like most of the times the mouse would move to another place instead of where I was moving the mouse. It’s like when the map rotates (which it does automatically) the mouse controls also move, so the mouse movement also moves along with the map, this can make the aiming consistently harder and you continuously have to “practice” your mouse movement before making shots. I hope the developer can add a static up, down, left, right 1:1 movement of the mouse, that can make the gameplay much easier.

You can find a short gameplay video below:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=724642842

Graphics: 8/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Overall: 8/10


If you like tower defense genre or RTS, you’re in for a surprise with this game. The game is extremely fun and nice looking. There’s plenty of stuff to do and if you are a techy person you’d like all the PC related references. The quality control of the game is amazing even though it’s a one-man developed game. I was quite surprised by the fact that this was made by one person. Definitely worth checking out in my opinion

First off, don't expect this to be your run-of-the-mill tower defense game.

This game focuses heavily on resource management and plays more like a hybrid shooter/tower defense. The tower cost scales up quickly so you can only afford to place a few strategic ones to back you up. The rest you have to shoot down with projectiles/missiles/bombs manually, and every one of those costs resources. So this is not one of those place towers and watch things die TD games. It is more challenging than most TDs, but has an interesting balance. I found it to be quite enjoyable, though frustrating at times in a type II fun sort of way.

The developer is very active. Just today I had an issue with the game, which I posted on the discussion board. Someone on the board picked up on it, notified me that the developer was offline at the time, that he has forwarded this to him. The issue was acknowledged, responded to on the board, solved, and patched within 24 hours of the issue being posted on the board. For an one-man-show developer, that is impressive.

In short, if you're looking to try a new TD hybrid that is challenging, I would recommend giving this game a try. It's a fun indie game with a developer that I feel is worth supporting.

I think this game is worth trying out, it is really well done especially considering it was made by one person and I think this game should be way more popular. I completely reccomend this game! Nice Job Thiemo!

where do we start with this amazing game!

well for starters you play a game that you play in a AC-130 kind style of game play as the map constantly rotates while you shoot down the waves of enemies from multiple spawn points but then there is the ammo. your ammo, is also your command cost and tower placement cost so once you spend it it's gone so use it smart.

after you are done with the tutorial you already had your trail by fire cause the tutorial teaches you the game but also let you taste how the game is for most of the time, planning and defending most of the time you want to shut down once you compleet a challange as it gets to hecktick after that.

at the start you are weak and try to be careful but as you progress and get better you get more comfident but the game scales with you as you go to new 'systems' where new chalanges await and a new type of creep

the creeps aren't your biggest worry but that are the bosses, they tank hit until they die andeach new bos is stronger then the last one, so you not only pushed by the challange but also by the time you take cause the longer you take the bigger the waves get and the harder the bosses are to kill.

as you finish challanges you get RAM, RAM is used to upgrade your weapons, structures and CPU but sometimes older/weaker weapons are more usefull then new ones this differes per map but how you use them is up to you

all in all this game is amazing and get you really hooked to beat the game on the hardest difficulty and then to realize, thanks to the tips, this entire game is made by just

ONE

briljant guy: Thiemo Bolder

Wow. I suppose that's the best word to describe my thoughts on this game. Finally, a tower defense game that innovates! And it's actually quite good!

So, let me clarify something - calling this a "tower defense" game is actually kind of horribly incorrect. It's more of an orbital shooter with a bit of TD and RTS sprinkled in the mix. I had initially thought I'd be placing towers and whatnot like usual, but instead the towers are merely an option the game includes to simply help you out.

See, Artificial Defense is what some people have called an "orbital shooter", like I mentioned earlier. I've never really heard this term before, but it makes sense - one of your two methods available of killing the little nasty creeps invading your computer system (the setting of the game) is to rain down bullets, rockets, and bombs onto the little buggers. It's pretty interesting, and definitely makes the game seem more RTS-like than anything.

Yet, there's also aspects of the tower defense genre of course. This means that you need to place production buildings to acquire RAM, which allows you to then either fire projectiles at the enemies yourself, since that costs RAM, or you can place either long range or short range towers. The long range towers have to reload, but their range is obviously a bit larger than the short range tower, which fires quicker but has a much smaller range than its counterpart.

The weird thing is though that for the most part I found myself rarely using offensive towers. Instead, I preferred to rush production buildings and just fire away myself at the creeps. This is because the game isn't really about lasting as long as you can, though that option is available to you. Instead, the game's progression system focuses on completing a set of 3 objectives that are specific to each level. These can include just simply killing a set number of foes or something weirder like sending out some little blobs of your own to "conquer" a building on the playing field. And here's where the game becomes a little too chaotic for more casual RTS players like me: juggling the 3 objectives while simultaneously trying to survive can be a bit daunting for inexperienced players in the genre. Yet, the game does include 3 difficulty settings in case things become too hard.

Thankfully, even though the 49 levels become harder as you progress, especially with the new enemies introduced every 7 levels or so, there's also a shop where upgrades for your weaponry, towers, or system itself can be bought. So, a really difficult level can be made a bit easier by buying new rockets for example. The interesting bit about the shop is that new upgrades aren't necessarily the best option for every level since older upgrades may actually be better depending on the situation. This creates a great extra layer of strategy in some cases and it's a nice touch that older upgrades can still be equipped.

In terms of the basics, that's pretty much it. The graphics aren't incredible but they're functional and fit the theme of the game (since it takes place in a computer). What did impress me however is the music - it manages to be energetic and engaging while not being overbearing or annoying. It's some kind of electronic stuff, but I enjoyed it (can you tell that I'm a musical genius who just knows all the correct terminology?).

• Pretty neat gameplay mechanics - more of an orbital shooter/RTS than a tower defense though, so just be aware
  
• Diverse set of objectives - generally not just "survive", but much more varied and unique between levels
  
• 49 challenging levels with 3 difficulty settings (and an upgrade shop!) give no shortage of content
  
• The music consists of some cool and catchy electronic tunes
  
• Steam achievements, trading cards, controller support, and Cloud saves are all available

• The difficulty can be a little intimidating for inexperienced RTS players since the game is more RTS than TD (though there's multiple tutorials, lower difficulty levels and an upgrade shop to ease players in)
  
• The graphics are serviceable, but they aren't anything noteworthy
  
• Sound effects (especially that damn explosion noise when you exit a level) can be a bit loud by default

Artificial Defense is something unique for its genre(s?), and that's one of the key factors I personally look at when deciding if I'm interested in a game or not. It's more of a RTS than a tower defense game, but for fans of either genre, it's a fantastic title to check out. Plus, it's made by one guy!

TL;DR at the end

Time to complete 12hrs+, heavily depends on your difficulty setting
Time to 100% less than 18hrs
Difficulty: [■□□□□] to [■■■□□] - Easy to Mildly Challenging
Genre: RTS, TD

Very nicely executed gameplay, with a lot of freedom to play around and counter smartly designed hurdles. The music and visuals are pretty good and blend well with the idea of the game, which has very few to no bad points.

since currently some of the last levels are incredibly frustrating and not fun to play, as they don't rely on player skill, but most players probably won't even get there, and this issue is most likely going to be fixed in not so long, so this is not a very big deal

• All the good parts of the Tower Defense genre's game mechanics, and with a lot more liberty of playstyle
  
• You can easily adapt the difficulty to your liking: the game offers 3 difficulty settings which have almost no impact on your progression into the game, and the various amount of upgrades allow you to efficiently dampen the difficulty of any level to your liking

Unfolds very nicely, it's pleasant to take in hand and master, not too hard to get used to, and most importantly it is really nice to play and go back to, to the point where it's almost addicting.

• The various aspects of the game blend together very smoothly. You can focus on what you are most proficient with, or use every asset available to you, since one playstyle is not more efficient than the other. Furthermore, the amount of options available to you is big enough that you can always find something you are comfortable with
  
• You can freely switch in-between levels, and replay any level on any difficulty. Levels are very easy to unlock (all you have to do is complete others), and any unlocked level can be played at any time. The difference in difficulty between levels is small enough that you are able to successfully complete ahead later levels with just a bit of skillful play

Varied levels, containing lots of smartly crafted maps. The layout of each map is very different, and each of them asks for a particular playstyle, adding a lot of diversity to the gameplay.

• The map design is a lot richer than a regular TD game's, because each map instead of just having a few unblockable paths, has multiple path routes, some of which can be blocked, and each can have a different way of being controlled. That means, unlike other TD games, you can just use countermeasures for every path instead of placing towers alongside it
  
• On top of that, the different pathways of each map are surrounded by various elements you can interact with. Because of the way the maps are designed, each level unveils its available strategies like a clever puzzle that you have to understand in order to be efficient

As said briefly above, the game gives you a lot of freedom of choice, and you can progress in the way you want

• Various reward mechanics are available to make playing and replaying levels serve your interests and strategies
  
• Very interesting upgrade system, where instead of just getting better gear than the previous, upgrades have unique features which means that sometimes just buying bigger is not better, and gives you an opportunity to choose what you are most comfortable with

TL;DR: Neat game with clever gameplay, that blends genres very well and lets the player choose their own playstyle

This game is freaking awesome, it's more of an orbital bombаrdments than classic TD, but still you have towers to protect your core.

+Juicy graphics, explosions, this game just looks cool despite how simplified it is.
+Great music - different music tracks, not getting bored by them and they are good.
+Nice strategy game - well strategy varies depending on your current upgrades, on the mission targets, and on how do you plan to win, you can build a lot of turrets or you can build a lot of RAM income and less turrets if you have upgraded guns and rockets.
+Nice balanced difficulty - easy mods are easy @ gold medal mod is pretty challenging.
+You can compare your results for every mission completed with other people (like top 3% overall score or top 68%)
+Steam achivements, steam cards
+Cheap
-None

And the most surprising part is that all of that stuff have been made by a single person :O

Artificial Defense is something I believe I have never seen before, part tower defense and part real time orbital shooter makes it one of the most interesting tower defense games I’ve played in recent times.

The theme of the game is rather interesting, you are tasked with defending a computer system against waves of malicious software. The maps are layout fit perfectly this theme, with spawn points for the enemies being USB ports and having different types of enemies that you can kill, including neutral creeps that grant you resoruces in the form of “cookies”.

Aesthetically speaking, I’m a huge fan of these simplistic visuals and the “digital” look to them and the different tracks of eletronic music are also rather pleasant to listen to. That said, if you get stuck on a level for a while they can get quite irritating because the music just goes on a loop.


The game lets you choose 1 out of 3 different difficulty modes with the most challenging one being “Normal”, ironic isn’t it? After playing through a couple of the first few levels I was forced to choose a lower difficulty level in order to proceed because the game was too hard on me on the “Normal” difficulty. This allowed me to return back to normal later on because, as you play you’ll gain a specific currency that you can then use to upgrade your turrets and abilities. The amount of currency that you get per level depends on the difficulty you’re playing on and if you complete or not certain sets of 3 tasks (3 tasks = 1 challenge = 1 challenge per level) that you have in each level.

You’ll also increase your rank the higher difficulty you play on, but rank serves only as a metric and has no real impact in the outcome of the game, at least thats how I perceive it. There are a total of 49 challenges (147 challenges) and while there are only 3 weapons/abilities that you can use at any given time but their upgrades amount for a total of 21 different types of weapons. Still, they’re pretty much variants of a machine gun, rocket and a meteor attacks. In that sense, there is only 3 different towers that you can place but they also have 21 variants. You’ve got a production tower, a close range and a long range tower. Nonetheless I didn’t really find myself using towers that much, other than the production towers, when compared with other Tower Defense games and that is why I say that this is more of a top down orbital shooter than it is a Tower Defense.

On each level you’ll have to prevent the enemy creeps from reaching your nodes. You may also send units to key points in order to gain resources (RAM) and use that to buy new towers or to use your weapons, which cost a certain amount of RAM per use. The level design is probably one of the weakest points of the game for me. Levels are flat and usually the only obstacles between the enemy entry points and your OS (Operative System) are these square structures that force the enemies to go around them. Usually you can only place your offensive turrets in an area given to you on each level. Other than that, you can use your offensive anytime and anywhere you want, provided that you have the RAM for it.

If you don’t mind a a mobile-esque interface and the simple visuals, and if you’re a fan of Tower Defense games who is looking for a rather unique twist on the genre, I think there is plenty in Artificial Defense for you to enjoy. Also, if you’re not a fan of Tower Defense games, don’t let that stop you because, like I’ve previously mentioned, the game can pretty much be played without recurring to towers.

Artificial Defense is an addicting and engaging experience that rewards your “skill” with a progression system,gradually increasing the abilities at your disposal as you make your way through harder and harder levels. Recommended for fans of TD games or those looking for an interesting twist.

This review is part of the Steamified Community Review program. For giveaways and similar reviews please visit http://www.steamified.com/

ARTIFICIAL DEFENSE is classified on Steam as an action indie strategy game that was recently published onto Steam by Thiemo Bolder and ONEMANGAMES. Bolder has attempted to create an entirely new genre of game in what he classifies as a combination of RTS, tower defense and orbital shooter. The player is given access to a combined total of 21 offensive weapons, 21 defensive towers and 7 hardware levels to battle their way through a massive 49 challenges across 7 different levels. There is also a mix of 13 different music tracks. At first glance I was a little staggered. This appears to be a huge number for a first time Steam developer-publisher. I was more than a little worried that the dev had bitten off more than he could chew. Grandiose plans don’t always function as fully intended.

Given my worry I am going to start with the negatives that I discovered. The game has a few bad control-related bugs that agitated me perhaps more than they ought to have. The first came when I tried to play the game with keyboard and mouse yet had my controller connected to the computer. The game doesn’t like that at all. It wont allow you to play properly with K&M when you have a controller connected. Weapons do not fire as they should and there is no aim. You can even have the weapons land on the enemies and it do nothing. I exited the game, disconnected the controller and reloaded it and the game finally played the way that it was intended.

The other mistake and for a reviewer who loves to alt-tab out to take notes on the fly it was pretty damning. Once I alt-tabbed away from the game going back to it my cursor was gone. It disappeared and I tried everything that I could think of to bring it back but that baby was done. Again, I had to exit the game in order to progress which sadly meant that I had lost my progress.

But that’s exactly where the negatives end. Two bugs that can, I believe, be easily patched out of the game and knowing how hard Thiemo Bolder has worked on his gem will be just as soon as he finds that messy line of coding that needs to be repaired. While on the subject of hard work I sincerely believe that this game is the result of blood, sweat and more than a few tears. It’s an absolute masterclass and showmanship of how a one man developer can create a game as technically sound and enjoyable as what Artificial Defense is.

Not only does the game and the combination of genres marry very well together but the game is both exciting and enjoyable. It’s one game that I will attempt to one hundred percent with achievements. The game incorporates all of the technical aspects and mechanics that make tower defense games so thoroughly challenging. However, the shooter component of the game shines through and makes the game more exciting and fresh than your standard tower defense game. It’s a wicked combination that incorporates more than its fair share of strategy.

Once I overcame my initial bug with (the controller issue causing keyboard and mouse to be unplayable which I’m used to as a tower defense fan) I found that the game was fundamentally very simple to learn. This is in part thanks to the somewhat humorous but very easy to play through tutorials that teach you the basics. This makes the learning curve somewhat marginalized.

The beautiful thing about the game is that it encourages different styles of play. If you’re much more used to playing shooters you can emphasize that more in your playthrough than you would the tower defense aspect. Of course, the most skilled players will probably use a strong combination of both but the choice is ultimately yours and there really isn’t a right or a wrong way to play the game. You can be successful with a number of different strategies. One thing that this enables players to do is to increase their competencies in the weaker of their two chosen genres. Shooter fans may find themselves enjoying tower defense games much more than they may have previously and vice versa.

An intriguing aspect of the strategy that traditional tower defense players need to be wary of is that the avenues to the different parts of the machinery are much more varied and open than they will be traditionally used to. Learning to block paths is important but even more important is understanding and learning which paths will be unable to be blocked so that you are in your best position to thwart the AI attack. Thankfully much of the level design has been thought out to perfection.

Due to its enormous amount of possible gamestyles and fantastic reward and upgrade systems the game offers a lot of replayability. In fact, I don’t believe that a single playthrough will be anywhere close to enough for those of you who become fans of the title. I can easily see players reaching tens of hours with the title.

Artifical Defense is such a fantastic game that I have trouble believing that it was developed by just a single person. An absolute must buy.

This is a Steamified review. For fantastic giveaways and similar reviews please check us out.

My very first impression of Artificial Defense: the discussion forum. The developer is very active in the community and is highly receptive to feedback and actually gives a ♥♥♥♥ about the game. This deserves credit where it's due.

And to expand on that original impression everything in the game is quite sleek and thematic. Nothing notable was left out in this regard that I could see.

Contrary to my expectations, but not negatively impacting the results, Artificial Defense is 80-90% orbital shooter with minimal tower defense elements. This is mostly a comment there for people who really like tower defense and don't care for orbital shooter - look elsewhere.

As kinda a mixed bag, I can tell that the optimal input device to play with is a controller with an analog stick. Using the mouse to aim was a bit unintuitive for me, but ultimately I figured it out okay. Using the keyboard to aim is possible, but based on splitting the shots of multi-round salvos effectively, I would highly recommend against it. I don't know if my initial struggles with keyboard/mouse controls are more a factor of myself or the game.

And finally, the price is right. Especially if you're picking it up on sale like I did.