Goblin Defenders: Battles of Steel 'n' Wood:

In Brief:
Goblin Defenders: Battles of Steel 'n' Wood is a Tower Defense (TD) game. We've been getting quite a few of these recently. Today's version is standard fare with a 2D top-down perspective with a vague isometric feel to it. Each of the ten levels include up to 25 waves and levels are generally bright and colourful.

The game was originally given away on the 5th of July 2015 where it received a positive 62% from 346 votes with 61 comments, which you can see HERE. It was again given away just over three years ago on the 8th of September 2019 where it received a positive 91% from 22 votes, with 14 comments which you can see HERE


You can several videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and one via the Steam Store page HERE.

You can also see a mixed bag of 35 Steam community reviews (65% are positive) of the game HERE (only four Steam community reviews have been posted since the last time this was given away in 2019).

The Game:
This giveaway version is the same as the Steam version apart from you don't get the trading cards common with many games from the Steam store. Also, with the Steam version there's no 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' with two difficulty settings i.e., Normal and Hard. Depending on which difficulty you choose, you earn a victory bonus on completion of the level, i.e., five gems if set on Normal difficulty or fifteen gems if set to hard. These gems can be spent in the store to buy various items such as tripling your starting gold (costs 100 gems) or super upgrades for each tower. The hard mode also earns you double the points and enemies have more lives.

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 in total, for example, 'Legendary Engineer', which you can earn by earning 95% of all achievements (very hard to get), 'Epic Foreman' by earning 50% of 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 available towers; however, as you progress through the game, more towers become available making a total of seven towers variants, these are 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, just to get the feel of the game), you get a couple of pages introducing you to various aspects of the game such as indicating what each symbol on the playing arena denotes; for example, from top left to top right you'll see a green arrow; this starts the enemy advance but can be paused (useful if you wish to take a short break, the next symbol is a blue Star which equals your score, the amount of gold you have, that starts with 30 gold when starting a new game. The pink jewel denotes the number of gems you have earned. These gems are really useful items, as they enable you to buy special upgrades from the store, the next symbol tells you what wave you are playing, and the shield tells you how many lives your home base has left. Finally, the double green arrow speeds up the game.

Whenever an enemy gets through all of your defence's you'll lose a life. If all of the home bases lives are lost, you lose the game, but you can restart at the last level you unlocked. Along the lower part of the playing arena on the left, you'll find the menu button (it looks like a cog) that includes the Help, Restart, Sound/Video/Quit and Shop buttons and all unlocked towers can be found on the lower right. Each tower costs varying amounts and upgrades cost increasingly more. You'll see what each tower does when you try it, for example, the snowflake slows down the enemies advance by freezing them, the blade tower fires arrows at the enemy. The latter mentioned tower is the cheapest 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 the enemy takes because these give you the best placement due to a wider coverage of the route that the enemy takes. Some levels don't contain specific routes, so placement of towers can be harder to figure.


To place a tower, drag it onto the arena. As you do so, a grid appears, showing you where you can place your towers, if the grid is red, you cannot place the tower. when it turns green you can then place the tower. 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 a tower (it's a good idea to sell off some of the less effective towers such as the Blade tower, especially if you've placed them in the most strategic positions as later waves are much harder to stop . You can sell them by left clicking on the tower, though you don't get the same amount you paid for them. Right clicking will open up an upgrade panel that enables you to improve and make any tower you select more effective by widening its field of operation. You can see the effect of upgrading from level 1 to the maximum upgrade (level 4) by visiting page three of the help section.


There are seventeen different enemy types divided into two main types, i.e. land based and flying enemies. Flying enemies are especially dangerous because they do not have to stick to the routes on that those maps that include paths. Some enemies also have unique abilities such as the spiders that are called re-spawners because they respawn after dying. A couple of the enemies are also immortal and can respawn multiple times and other enemies are immune to specific defences for example tanks are immune to poison, giants are immune to frost and electrons are resistant to lightning.


You cannot see the whole of the map initially, but you can move the map by left clicking on the map and dragging it in any direction; or you can zoom in or out by using the mouse wheel.

Re-written and expanded review that was originally posted by Whiterabbit-uk seven years ago on the 15th of July 2015.

Conclusion:
I enjoy playing most Tower Defense (TD) games, finding this one slightly better than the ones we've 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 decade, most of which are just copies with different environments and variations on the tower types.

Goblin defenders is similar to many of those TD games, but I did find it a tad more challenging than previously given away TD games we've had. I barely survived the second level with only 1 life left. So would give this thumbs up and a score of 7.5 out of 10 for its game play. It's not a game I'd play regularly but would definitely keep this giveaway if I didn't already have it in my Steam account.

Despite its generic game play, I do consider it a re-playable game as there are multiple ways you can play each level.