A difficult maze-building tower defense about Yuki, a cat trapped in a teleporting jar. Protect it from robots and endure its unhelpful comments. Build your own paths, adapt as levels change, unlock powerful items, and uncover Yuki’s story. A love letter to Warcraft III custom maps.

Sign in to add this item to your wishlist, follow it, or mark it as ignored

Download Jarred Defense Demo

This game is not yet available on Steam

Planned Release Date: Sep 22, 2026

This game plans to unlock in approximately 11 days

Interested?
Add to your wishlist and get notified when it becomes available.
 

About This Game

A cat is stuck in a jar. It's your problem now.

Jarred Defense is a tower defense for people who miss the strategic depth of old-school TDs. Place towers anywhere and use them to shape the enemy path. Force enemies the long way around, make them walk over level hazards, and create choke points for your splash damage. No spells, no first-person shooting, no random card modifiers. Just planning, placement, items, and upgrades.

COUNTLESS WAYS TO SOLVE EACH MAP

Build towers. Force enemies through lava. Adapt to melting ice blocks as heat sources reshape the level around you. Send the next wave early and pocket the bonus.

Swap your equipped items, choose different branches in the tower upgrade trees, and find a completely different way to beat the same map.

Enemies will try to ruin your plans too. Some stop to heal, some fly over your defenses, some split into more enemies when defeated, while others get faster the longer they travel in a straight line.

The cat trapped in the jar has opinions about all of this. They are not helpful.

UNCOVER YUKI'S STORY

Progress through the campaign to unlock cutscenes and find out why Yuki keeps appearing in jars, what happened to the robots, and whether any of this might possibly be her fault. Yuki will provide constant tactical support.

A FULL CAMPAIGN + COMMUNITY MAPS AND LEVEL EDITOR

The campaign takes roughly 4-6 hours to complete. Beyond the story, take on optional challenges and Endless Mode with leaderboards. Jarred Defense also includes a full level editor. Create your own maps, publish them to Community Maps, and play and rate levels made by other players.

Features 

  • No predefined tower locations or single correct solution, place towers anywhere and shape the enemy path

  • Handcrafted levels that change as you play

  • Early send mechanic with risk-weighted bonuses

  • Tower upgrade trees with branching specializations

  • Equippable items that change your strategy

  • Hazard tiles: force enemies to step on them

  • Enemies with unique mechanics and various bosses and mini-bosses

  • Optional challenges that unlock new towers and items

  • Unlockable cosmetics for Yuki

  • Endless Mode with leaderboards

  • Full level editor and Community Maps

  • 4-6 hour story campaign with cutscenes

THIS GAME IS KIND OF HARD

I built it because I missed the old-school flash tower defense games that didn't hold your hand. As a result, you’ll probably watch your defenses fall apart more than once. I consider that part of the fun.

ABOUT THE DEVELOPER

Jarred Defense was made by Mikolas Zuza, a Czech solo developer. Mikolas studied Computer Graphics at the Czech Technical University in Prague and works at Prusa Research, where he leads the company's Content team.

The game started as an evening project after he realized that the kind of strategic tower defense he wanted to play, where you can place towers directly into enemy paths and build the route yourself, had become surprisingly hard to find.

Jarred Defense was developed over roughly two years in his spare time.

Made by one person who just wanted to play a game like this and couldn't find one.

Powered by the open-source GODOT game engine. <3

System Requirements

Windows
macOS
SteamOS + Linux
    Minimum:
    • OS: Windows 10 64-bit
    • Processor: Intel Core i3-6100 / AMD FX-4350 or equivalent
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Intel HD Graphics 620 / NVIDIA GTX 600 series / AMD Radeon R7 — any GPU supporting DirectX 11
    • DirectX: Version 11
    • Storage: 200 MB available space
    Recommended:
    • OS: Windows 10/11 64-bit
    • Processor: Intel Core i5 / AMD Ryzen 5 or equivalent
    • Memory: 8 GB RAM
    • Graphics: NVIDIA GTX 1050 / AMD RX 560 or better
    Minimum:
    • OS: macOS 10.15 Catalina
    • Processor: Apple M1 or Intel Core i5
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: Metal-capable GPU (all Macs since ~2012)
    • Storage: 200 MB available space
    Minimum:
    • OS: Ubuntu 20.04 or equivalent
    • Processor: x86_64, SSE4.2 support
    • Memory: 4 GB RAM
    • Graphics: OpenGL 3.3 compatible
    • Storage: 200 MB available space
Review Filters