The Grid 2 is free over on the Humble site until 17th March. Definitely a decent racing game. The initial race configures the races to take account of your own skill; so, if you are good at racing games, it configures the game to make it harder. If like me you are rubbish at racing games, it makes it easier to win against the AI. You can find the deal HERE

Empire Of The Dead Souls

In Brief

A tower defense game that's more like a clicker defense game. Looks like this game was removed from Steam over the last day since posting the review. It was definitely available yesterday, but can no longer be found in Store.

Installation Issues:

Empire Of The Dead Souls downloads to a 30 MB zip file that unzips to two files, (a setup executable and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 30.4 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\Empire Of The Dead Souls

Five shortcuts are installed to the desktop, four of which can be safely deleted . If you want the games shortcut to be installed to the desktop, make sure the appropriate checkbox is checked. Even if this is left unchecked you will still get the four internet shortcuts installed to the desktop; (i.e. Falco Space - Online Game!, FalconLine Online Games Website, FalcoGo WebGL Games! and Free Games Downloads!). Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure the appropriate checkbox is unchecked when the 'additional task's window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window).

Introduction:

Empire of the Dead Souls - it's tower defense with elements of clicker, in which you need to defend your shrine from various dead souls, that are more than 1000 years old. Don't let monsters to destroy your shrine by killing them. With each level of the soul begin to move faster, also each new level you will meet new souls and at the last level you need to beat the boss. The game has a pleasant musical accompaniment. In the menu, you can change the volume level of the music. At each level, different backgrounds and arrangement of the towers were added.

Reference accessed HERE. Whiterabbit-uk 13th March 2019

The Game:

Empire of the Dead Souls is not a true Tower Defense game. It does have elements of a TD game, but there the similarity ends. Your mission is to defend your shrine from waves of incoming dead souls. The game includes ten levels, each with 20 waves of enemy souls, bent on destroying your shrine. There is no ability to place your own towers. Instead three destructible towers are automatically placed on each of the ten levels; also, there is no ability to upgrade your defense towers, and throughout the 20 waves, the towers remain in the same place. The only positive about these towers is that there is no limit on the distance they can fire upon the lost souls, so even the furthest tower contributes from the outset.

Priority should be to destroy the fastest before the slowest units; however, this is not always the case; for example, It can be also useful to kill the black witch's first, because they also spawn large groups of lesser souls at intervals during the course of the wave. Each series of three waves (except for the last of the three) lasts for 30 seconds before the next wave starts, so if you haven't destroyed the previous wave before the next one starts, you'll be hard pushed not to lose at least one of your tower defenses, simply by being overwhelmed by lost souls. If one of your towers falls the lost souls will then target the next nearest tower, though this isn't true of the red witches, who go straight for the shrine and some of the larger lost souls may bypass the first tower and attack the second one. The largest of the lost souls (not counting the final boss) can destroy a tower in just a few hits, so it's important also to ensure they are destroyed before they get too close to a tower.

The final level (10) includes a much larger boss with 15K health. Targeting the boss and destroying him will end the level, even if there are remaining waves to complete.

You can leave the first level without clicking on one lost soul, as the towers will automatically kill off any invaders, but on the second one, you will need to start clicking. Targeting the red witches, that are able to cross all barriers is the first one to target, then the black witches. These spawn smaller souls in great numbers that are also able to pass through barriers, but are easy to kill. Later in the first level you'll also see weird looking amorphous mounds that move slowly, when you destroy them, they automatically spawn smaller mounds that move faster. Killing these spawn even smaller and faster moving mounds that only take one hit to destroy, but there are so many of them, later on you'll be hard pressed to stop them damaging your towers. When you click on a lost soul they do stop moving, which can be to your advantage if there are a large number behind them. Each set of three waves ends in a rest period where you have to click on a 'start' button to continue. This is the only decent thing about this game because it gives you an opportunity to rest your increasingly sore fingers for a while. Each new level introduces new enemies.

Whiterabbit-uk 13th March 2019

Conclusion:

Tower defense games are one of my (top 3) favourite arcade genres and I've played hundreds of them over the years. Empire Of The Dead Souls has to be one of the worst tower defense games I've ever played. After surviving the first set of 20 waves, I only managed to survived five waves of the next level before my hands gave up. As you progress through each level, the number of lost souls ramps up, to a point, unless you are literally clicking constantly as fast as your mouse will allow, you'll be hard pushed to survive to the end of level ten. I'm not a fan of clicker games like these, I believe played regularly they will contribute to issues with your hands later in life. A big thumbs down from me (a very rare occurrence), not becasue of the clicker issue, but becasue there is no skill involved, nor anything original. I only played as far as I could so that I could post an unbiased review of the game. If you are into clicker games, then this may be okay, but comparing it to other clicker games that I've played over the last few years for example Clicker Heroes, Insanity Clicker and Ragnarok Clicker, this is a shambles with no real incentive to play beyond the first level.

Videos of :

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE & HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via Steam HERE. At the moment it's on sale for £039/$0.49/€ 0.39.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Empire Of The Dead Souls to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the developer Zazulin Alexander and the distributor Falcoware games for giving away Empire Of The Dead Souls and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Empire Of The Dead Souls doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums). The free game over at epic games is Slime Rancher a first person sandbox action adventure game with management elements and a female protagonist. It's free until March 27th. worth £14.99/$19.99/€19.99. Indie Gala also have a new showcase section with 18 free games listed at the moment including adventure, RPG, Simulation, strategy and casual games i.e. AntiSquad, Dreaming Sarah, False Birth, GOR - Gorilla Office Rampage, Home is where Chip is, Age of Fear: The Free World, Die Legende von Saya: Befehl aus der Dunkelheit - (The Legend of Saya: Command from the Dark), What Never Was, The Last Humans: Awakening, Childhood, Dunwell, Safe Not Safe, Hi Hotel, Bugs Must Die, Cuadradito y Circulito, Hellino, Hovership Havoc and Wake Up , or you can find them all HERE. Finally, there are some excellent bargains on sale via Steam HERE (almost 3.3K games on sale).