Goblin Defenders: Battles of Steel 'n' Wood

In Brief

Goblin Defenders: Battles of Steel 'n' Wood is a tower defense game that was previously given away on the 5th July 2015 four years ago where it received a 62% positive rating out of 346 votes with 61 comments being posted by the community HERE

Introduction:

Steam introduces the game with the following introduction: Tired of boring tower defense games? Goblin Defenders: Steel 'n' Wood breaks the mold with exciting and unique action! Why fight off enemies pouring in from one direction, like most other games, when you can battle hordes of monsters coming at you from all angles? That's what Goblin Defenders is all about!

Start with three guns capable of ripping through crowds of attackers and steadily upgrade your arsenal as the game progresses! But beware: the game gradually becomes more difficult as enemies approach from more and more directions! Your survival will depend on your ability to make the right choices when upgrading your weapons and towers. Ogres, spiders and evil spirits are coming for you, so answer their challenge in Goblin Defenders: Steel 'n' Wood!

Reference accessed HERE. 7th September 2019

Gameplay Videos:

You can see several videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE

The Game:

You can see a mixed reception (31 English reviews) of Goblin Defenders from the Steam community HERE

The following is my rushed review of the game posted on the 5th July 4 years ago, that was based on only 30 minutes of game play and using the Steam version , so some elements of game play will be missing from the review as I'd only progressed to the second level. The giveaway version is the same as the Steam version apart from you don't get Steam trading cards and with the Steam version there's no intro' adverts or browser re-directions when you shut the game down. For those who really enjoy this game and use Steam it usually costs £1.99/$2.99/€ 2.99 HERE when not on sale.

There are two modes of play 'Campaign' and 'Survival'. The survival mode is locked at the start of the game and comprises of 10 different rounds, these are, Hidden Hut, Ogre's forest, Toxic Desert, Quicksand, Tundra Maze, Ice Bridge, Sky High, Borderland, Hall of Flame and Molten Cave. Surviving each of these earns you a trophy, of which there are almost 60, for example, 'Legendary Engineer', which you can earn by earning 95% of all achievements (very hard to get), 'Epic Foreman' by earning 50% off all achievements, 'Two Castles' by surviving 12 rounds on Sky High in survival mode on hard difficulty, 'Protect that Bridge' by surviving 12 rounds of Ice Bridge on hard difficulty, or the 'Freeze' achievement by completely upgrading 10 ice towers.

The game starts with 4 towers available. As you progress through the game, more towers become available. in total there are 7 different towers, these are, Arrow, Blade, Demon, Tesla, Poison, Ice, Heavy and Light cannon towers.

Once you've chosen your difficulty (I advise starting on Normal difficulty, even if you are an experienced TD fan), you get a couple of still frames that tell you what each symbol on the playing arena denotes, for example from top left to top right you'll see a Star which equals your score, amount of gold, which, at the start of a new game starts with 30 gold, the jewel denotes the number of jewels you have earned . These are really useful items, which enable you to upgrade your towers or buy other upgrades, the next symbol tells you what wave/round you are in and the shield tells you how many lives you have left.

Whenever an enemy gets through all of your defenses you lose a life. Along the lower part of the playing arena you'll find the menu button on the left and all unlocked towers on the lower right. Each tower costs a different amount. You'll see what each tower does when you try it, for example, the snowflake freezes the enemy and slows them down, the arrow tower fires arrows at the enemy. this is the cheapest tower and inflicts the least amount of damage, but has a decent fire rate. You should spend your initial gold on these towers, placing them at the corners of the route as these give you the best strategic placement due to a wider coverage of the route the enemy take.

To place a tower, drag it onto the arena. As you do so, a grid appears, showing you where you can place your towers. Place these strategically to do the most damage at the start of the game. If you place a tower wrongly, or at a later stage in the game want to replace the tower, you can sell them by left clicking on the tower. Right clicking will open up an upgrade panel that enables you to upgrade and make the tower more effective by widening it's field of operation. You can also move the map by left clicking and dragging the map in any direction. (you can't see the whole of the map initially), or you can zoom in or out by using the mouse wheel.

Whiterabbit-uk originally posted 4 years ago 5th July 2015

I replayed the game when I saw that it was being given away again. I enjoy playing Tower Defense games, finding this one slightly better than the ones we have been given over the last several months. It's fairly generic when comparing it to the many TD games that have been released over the last several years, most of which are just copies with different environments. Goblin defenders is similar to those TD games, but I did find it a tad more challenging than previously given away TD games. I barely survived the second level with only 1 life left. So would give this a thumbs up and a score of 7.5 out of 10 for game play.

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