...........................................Moderator comment...................................

To all community members who won Steam keys for posting decent feedback over the last several months. I really am sorry for taking so long in sending you your keys. As a thank you for being so patient and not hassling me for them, please select a second game you would like. I've decided to give everyone a second key for taking so long.

I spent several hours playing and researching this game, using the version I purchased via Steam almost 3 years ago. It was only when I downloaded the MyPlayCity (MPC) version to check something that I noticed subtle differences between the MPC and Steam versions. I think the Steam version has been updated because apart from the MPC logo missing from the main menu page of my Steam version, there were other slight differences as well, mainly graphical. This could be due to the expansion 'Invisible Threat', which isn't included in the MPC version, but which I have installed as well; that said, the game play and shop items are just the same in both versions, so I won't be updating the images seen in this review to reflect the MPC version apart from the options menu image which had a different background in the Steam version. I've replaced the original with the MPC version.

To get a feel for today's game before you download it, please check out a few game play videos of Royal Defense HERE and HERE, plus a slideshow of around 30 in game images HERE.

Please only post comments about today's game giveaway; other comments either inappropriate, or comments with only one or a few words; for example vg, good, thank you, TY, bad, rubbish, this game is ****** etc , or if the comment has nothing to do with today's game or is complaining (send your complaints to the giveaway team via the contact form that I've linked to below), they may be deleted at the moderator or administrators discretion; however, a little light banter among community members/friends and with the moderator to keep this a friendly place to visit is acceptable and welcomed. All comments not specifically about today's game giveaway will be judged by the moderator and if deemed inappropriate, will be deleted and usually with no explanation. Please see the moderation policy HERE for details about posting comments. If you are having problems installing today's game check 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 is blocked by their security (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not) because Themida code has been known to hide malware, so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though they are actually 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. In the almost 11 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

Royal Defense

In Brief

A Tower Defense game

Installation:

Royal Defense downloads to an 83.3 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper, the set up file and a read me). Those with multiple hard drives are able to save games on any drive they wish. The newly installed game is 87.2 MB in size. The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed by the user if you prefer:

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Royal Defense

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop. three of which can be safely deleted (Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game which vary each week). Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you uncheck the box when the additional tasks window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window)

Introduction:

The castle needs a hero – hordes of trolls are surrounding it! Build towers, save money, learn spells - don't let the enemy in! Follow the exciting story of the dwarven kingdom's eternal struggle against the troll hordes, who want only to crush the dwarves and claim their territory

Features:

⦁ 60 different progressively challenging levels
⦁ unique game settings
⦁ 17 kinds of creatures
⦁ 12 kinds of towers and structures
⦁ Extensive magic system
⦁ Various upgrades

The Game:

For those of you not familiar with the tower defense genre, here is a quick overview. In tower defense games the object is to stop waves of enemies from reaching your castle, fort, stronghold, etc. In order to stop these enemies you need to build towers to attack them. Players need to strategically place different types of towers in order to try and stop all or most of the enemies.

Royal Defense has four basic types of towers with upgraded towers for each type. The game includes the typical arrow, cannon, mortar/splash, and the money tower. If you read my review of Fort Defense this will sound very familiar since it is exactly the same in Fort Defense. The majority of the towers that you are going to build are going to be arrow and/or cannon towers.

Just like Fort Defense you kind of need to decide whether you are going to focus on arrow or cannon towers. You should focus on one or the other so you are able to focus your upgrades on that type of tower. In Fort Defense I went mostly with cannon towers since they have a longer range and do more damage. In Royal Defense I decided to switch things up and focus on arrow towers. This was due to the frustration in Fort Defense where you couldn’t kill air units in early waves if you focused on cannon towers. I would say that the arrow towers are the right choice in Royal Defense since they do well against the air and ground units.

I didn’t have much use for the other two types of towers. I actually don’t think I built any mortar/splash towers outside the tutorial levels that explained them. I didn’t get much use out of them since most levels don’t have large groupings of enemies and for the few that do I didn’t feel like wasting upgrade gems to upgrade the mortar towers when I rarely used them.

I was actually surprised how little I used the money towers. In Fort Defense I used quite a few money towers since they were quite helpful. The money towers would be helpful in Royal Defense as well except that there is a lack of open spaces to build towers in Royal Defense. Since there are so few spaces, those spaces need to be filled with towers that actually do damage. Before world three I don’t think I built a single money tower.

Royal Defense is a pretty typical tower defense game. It pretty much has what you would expect. The game plays perfectly fine and the artwork is pretty nice. I had fun playing the game. Unfortunately Royal Defense is far from an original game. I honestly can’t point to one thing in the game that is particularly new or original. If you have played a tower defense game before you have pretty much already played Royal Defense.

Royal Defense relies pretty heavily on its’ special currency, gems. The idea behind the gems is a solid game mechanic that has been used by other tower defense games. I think it is a good idea rewarding players with the ability to purchase more upgrades based on how well they do in levels. Royal Defense is a little stingy with the gems though in my opinion.

The problem with the gems comes from the tower locations in every level that are locked unless you use some of your gems to unlock them. If there was one or maybe two locations per level that required using gems to unlock I wouldn’t have had a huge issue with it. In Royal Defense some levels have three or four locations that are locked. On top of it the locations that are locked are usually some of the most critical positions in the entire map. With this reliance on locked positions, the game presents you with two options. Either avoid using the key positions on the map or waste your precious gems to unlock a location that will only help you in one level. Since I wasn’t going to waste gems on unlocking locations, I had to play the game missing many important tower locations.

These locked positions just feel so pointless like they were added as an excuse for some micro-transanctions for the mobile versions of the game. I just don’t know why the game felt the need to lock them. If the game wanted to be more difficult it should have just eliminated these positions from the map entirely. Otherwise the game could have just kept all of the positions unlocked and given the player less gems in order to increase the difficulty.

Starting in world three the game starts introducing invisible enemies. These enemies can only be attacked by your towers if they are seen by one of your radar towers or if they have been recently damaged. I like the idea of invisible enemies since it makes you vary your tower strategy instead of just loading up the map with the same tower type. The problem with the invisible enemies is detecting them. There are only two ways to detect invisible enemies.

First you can use some of your special abilities in order to damage the enemies which will allow your other towers to detect the invisible enemies. This strategy works pretty well for a while. Unless you upgraded your special abilities recharge rate though, you will likely run out of special abilities to use on the enemies. You will then have to let invisible enemies through your lines until the abilities recharge.

The more permanent solution is to use the radar tower. The radar tower is one of the upgraded forms of the money tower. The radar tower is a good idea but it presents two problems.

First the tower is really expensive. In the later waves this isn’t a problem since you will be swimming in money. The problem is that the game likes to throw invisible enemies in the early waves where you can either not afford the tower or you have to spend almost all of your money just to be able to afford it. Usually you end up being forced to use your special abilities in the early waves to damage the invisible enemies so they can be spotted by your other towers.

The other problem comes from a lack of space. Each level just doesn’t have enough spaces to place towers on. Since the radar tower doesn’t attack enemies, this means that you have to waste spaces just to detect invisible enemies instead of using the spaces to build towers that actually damage enemies. Without unlocking the additional spaces, some of the levels only have a handful of locations to build on in the first place. This means that you will only be able to place a few towers that can actually attack the enemies.

The amount of gameplay you can get out of Royal Defense will depend on how much effort you want to put into the game. The game includes 60 levels, which is actually 20 more than Fort Defense, but each level only takes a couple minutes to complete. If you just play through the game one time without trying to perfect every level, you can expect around five or so hours of gameplay. If you replay levels, try additional difficulty levels or try for all of the achievements, it may take you quite a bit longer. Royal Defense was just not engaging enough for me to continue playing the game after I beat all of the levels.

Royal Defense is what I would call a very average tower defense game. Like its’ sequel Fort Defense, you can have fun playing the game but it fails to do anything original. Royal Defense also has some issues with level balancing and there are not enough locations for towers in some of the levels. If you have never tried a tower defense game before or you don’t particularly care for the genre, Royal Defense is probably not the game for you since there are quite a few tower defense games that are considerably better than Royal Defense. If you are a big fan of tower defense games though and you can find Royal Defense on sale, I think you could get some fun out of the game.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Eric Mortensen on 28 Jun, 2015. Edited by Whiterabbit-uk 8th Sept 2017.

Other Reviews and Videos of Royal Defense:

You can see Steam community reviews of Royal Defense HERE, and some videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. You can also see a slideshow of 32 images HERE.

Conclusion:

Tower Defense (TD) games are among my favorite arcade genres (together with shmups, physics based games and breakouts), so was pleased to see this being given away; it's been a while since we were given a TD game (apart from the limited competition giveaways Onion force (July 17 and Aug 16), Alien Shooter TD (Feb 17), and Defend your Life TD (Oct 16) and a full Steam key giveaway Kings Guard TD (Nov 2016)).

Royale Defense is a standard tower defense game, that aficionado's of the genre will probably find a little bland, but for community members who don't play much tower defense, it's definitely a worthwhile game to download IMO. Royal Defense has all the usual elements, a reasonable variety of towers, lots of upgrades, an in game shop where you can improve your towers using the gems you earn by playing the game, as well as some special abilities. The graphics let the game down in my opinion being rather standard, a little uninspiring, and a cheap look that reflects many of this type of game. Most of my favorite tower defense games allow you to zoom in to the enemies (some can even be played in first person) and usually have something new or unusual added to the game play; for example Defense Grid: The Awakening, which despite being several years older than Royal Defense has much better graphics and game play (and incidentally, is still one of my favorite TD games ever).

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback about the game; 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. To access the comments once the giveaway is over, open up the game giveaway to its 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 up the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review.

There are thousands of subscribers to the game giveaway of the day every weekend which makes this an ideal forum for giving developers new or fresh ideas as to what their consumers (i.e you) would like to see in a game. For example, you could suggest extra content such as better or more original mini games, or a level editor that you would like to see that would make it more appealing to you. Maybe you think the graphics are a little dated and are in need of re skinning, or maybe you've just had enough of the genre and want to see something different or something with more originality? Giving such feedback instead of saying nothing or just saying this game is rubbish or good may bring more developers to the site, which could mean more and better games. Would 'you' give away thousands of copies of a game (or extra content for a game) away to a community that complains all the time instead of giving useful feedback? It only needs a few moments of your time.

This site could be transformed if only the community would be more forthcoming in their opinions of the games they are getting for free instead of complaining about the way this site has changed, for example, they don't like MPC games, they hate HOG's, have had enough of Match Three and Time Management games, or they want to see the latest version of Call of Duty or some other big name AAA game given away or that they don't like Steam games. If something isn't for you then please move on to the next giveaway, or check out the forums HERE, HERE and HERE, where a few members of the community post details of various free games and free game sites as well as links to various indie bundle sites etc; you never know, you may find something that really interests you.

Having problems installing today's game?

If you are having problems installing today's game check the FAQ's thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted. The main issue we have is with the giveaway wrapper, which uses a Themida based code to protect the games executable. Unfortunately Themida is also used to hide malware; so, as a precaution, some security software may block the installation and sometimes even delete the executable file. Blocking or deletion is usually determined partly by the way your computer is set up. Usually you'll get a message saying ''the file is corrupted'', but in reality the files are okay. There are a couple of things you can do to overcome this issue. The first is to reboot in safe mode with networking, install the game then reboot, or secondly you can (at your own risk) temporarily turn off your security, install the game, then turn your security back on. A note of reassurance to those that choose the latter and quicker method. The game giveaway team have been giving away games for over a decade (Dec 2006 & prior to that, via the main site 2 or 3 times weekly from Oct 2006 to Dec 2006) and have 'NEVER' given away a game infected with malware; they always test every giveaway with several of the top anti-malware suites to ensure all games are free from malware.

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

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity 24/7 HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get the latest version (the Steam version has been updated compared to the MyPlayCity version) HERE via Steam It costs £4.79/$5.99, or you can get the Royal Defense bundle that includes an add=on for Royal Defense called Invisible Threat for £5.42/$7.18.

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Royal Defense 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:

The problems section that used to be posted here in the Game review is now included in the Game Discussion FAQ's thread; which you can find HERE.

I've updated the games section that used to be posted with the review. The thread is now called 'Weekly round up of game deals', formerly the games section of the weekly reviews. You can find the new thread (which I've posted in the sticky section of the game discussion forums to make it easier to find if you are perusing the game discussion forums) HERE.

The rest of the information that used to be posted in my reviews can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, do check out Delenns post for details of other free games and current offers HERE, thank you.