Crossroads of Life:

In Brief:
Crossroads of Life is a top down arcade game with both tower defence and shooting mechanics. To activate towers you first have to earn enough cash from destroying the waves of monsters that attack you. Once achieved you can activate a tower by pressing E while standing close to one, they initially look like signposts with a stylized turret tower with crenulations until a tower is built on them. At the end of several waves you will be faced with a boss, before you can proceed to the next level. Each level having a distinctive look (colour wise) that is different from it's predecessor.

Your character is able to move around the arena freely, though there are fences that can block your way. Some downed enemies drop cash, some drop ammunition for one of the three weapons you have. Take care, because you can easily run out of bullets; especially if you fire willy-nilly at the oncoming foes. . If you've not activated any of your towers, and you run out of ammunition with none to pick up, you lose. You can also pick up health, which is also essential as it's almost impossible not to get hit by some of the monsters attacking you. There are a wide variety of foes, from large more difficult to kill monsters to fast, snapping monsters that are hard to avoid.

Your health bar is located in the top left of the screen and the amount of ammunition for each of your weapons are located beneath the health bar. You can switch between weapons using the mouse wheel. Below the ammunition counters is the gold you've earned. Keep an eye on this because you'll want to activate as many of the tower defences as you can. Each tower is also upgradable, but costs more to upgrade than the initial cost of the tower, but can shoot further and is more powerful. Towers can also be damaged and/or destroyed by the waves of monsters that you'll encounter.

The indicator located along the bottom of the arena shows the health of each wave of incoming monsters as a whole. When the boss level appears, get this to zero (far left of the bar indicator) to win the level and proceed to the next. I don't know how many levels there are as I've not played the game to its conclusion yet.

You can see a video of game play HERE

The game is very similar to a game we were given earlier this year, with the same game mechanic, though a different scenario and graphic that was called Arkan Tower (also available on Steam HERE for the same price as todays, though today's game has some improvements over Arkan Tower such as the gold you earn does not disappear if you don't pick it up immediately, and the maps are easier to see.

Todays game has not been given away before

You can see a couple of reviews of todays game via Steam (neither are in English, but both are positive) HERE.

Conclusion:
If you enjoy top down Shooters and Tower Defense games, this is a clever melding of the two genres. I wasn't as happy with Arkan Towers as it seemed too easy. Todays game feels more balanced and I thoroughly enjoyed the game. That said, like many of these arcade games; it's not a game I could play for extended periods and is more a coffee /tea break game, or one I'd play during a break from more involved games (like my favourite game of the moment Way of the Hunter. For game play I'd score this a 7.5 out of 10. Graphic is pretty basic, but fits with the theme of this game; it's virtually retro.

The game was released to Steam on the 27th August HERE and when not on sale costs about the same price as a cup of Starbucks coffee.

Notes on Security

I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found zero hits from 63 antimalware engines. You can see the scan HERE