To get a feel for today's game giveaway, Royal Defense: Ancient Menace and before you download it, please check out several game play videos HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE. I've also check out over 40 images in a slideshow, showing various 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.

Royal Defense: Ancient Menace or Royal Defense 3

In Brief

Royal Defense: Ancient Menace is the third in the Royal Defense TD games, this time with a darker environmental theme. It's similar to the previous two titles, though it does start a little harder at the beginning of the game because right from the outset you have multiple entry points on each level rather than a single route to content with. thee only warning you get which direction the enemy are coming from is a next wave indicator, which if you click on it right away awards a small amount of gold, the sooner, the more gold you get, but that gives you less time to prepare for the attack. So, you really need to carefully think about where you are going to place your first tower defenses to cope with the various routes the enemy can take.

Installation:

Royal Defense: Ancient Menace downloads to a 101 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 106 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 - Ancient Menace

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:

Defend your lands from the monstrous invasion in the dynamic game Royal Defense: Ancient Menace! Due to the ability to choose the difficulty mode this game is suitable both for kids and adults. The game Royal Defense: Ancient Menace is a perfect time killer that will make you live through the dangerous yet exciting adventure. The hordes of monsters are invading your lands! Will you be smart and strong enough to protect your territory? Two wonderful campaigns are waiting for you: "The Molten lands" and "The Mystery valley". However you need to earn 40 stars to unlock the second campaign. Your aim is not to let the enemies cross the outpost. Build the towers at the sites and use spells to kill the invaders.

The variety of your enemies is striking: worgs and scouts are fast yet have poor health, while the troopers are slow but strong. Skeletons can even restore their health, besides they are immune to poison. Keep your eye on necromancer as he is able to raise skeletons from the fallen allies! But don’t worry about the strong invaders, you can choose from a great variety of towers to build and spells to use against the enemies. Make the hordes fear the meteor rain or the deadly swamp that you will conjure! Remember: the more enemies you kill the more coins you get. Besides, pick up the crystals with which you will be able to buy numerous upgrades. Make your towers or spells more powerful, get more coins from each killed ally, prolong the durability of outpost and more. Protect your lands from invaders and become the best player in the game Royal Defense: Ancient Menace!

Reference accessed HERE. 29th Sept 2017

The Game:

For those new to this type of game, the aim of a Tower Defense game 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.

The time for the ultimate battle has come for dwarves in Royal Defense 3 Ancient Menace PC Game. In your key positions you are going to use even cannons - yes, gnomes now can build cannons and set them aside of the magic towers, putting deadly spells across the enemy hordes! Ancient Menace came from the deepest caverns under the gnome kingdom, and only desperate attempts to hold them back are continuing the existence of the dwarven kingdom. Download full version of Royal Defense 3 Ancient Menace PC Game and destroy enemy waves one by one until no one will left to threaten dwarven homes!

The game it is all about strategy. Using the right weapons or mix of weapons. Upgrading the right weapons, placing them right, using the spells at the right time. Try, and try again but try something different. This game is such a breath of fresh air in contrast with those games that you simply get gold by clicking your fingers off or doing things in a certain order. And it was the right kind of difficulty - you can get 3 stars on each level it's doable, but probably not the first time you try.

Royal Defense: Ancient Menace has four basic types of towers all upgradable in two stages. The game includes the typical arrow, cannon, mortar/splash, and the money tower. Though the majority of towers that you will probably build are going to be arrow and/or cannon towers becasue each level only has a limited number of positions you can place your towers, so trying to make to much gold for example isn't of much use if you cannot spend it on more towers. Personally I've always found a mixuture of the two main destructive towers are the best forulae for success, the cannot weapons tend to have a longer range and are more destructive, but cost more to build and upgrade, so it's always best IMO at the start of a level to build the cheapest arrow towers so as to get the maximum number of towers built from the limited funds you have a the start, but also, arrow towers are effective against both ground and air targets so you are prepared right from the putset to cope with both types of enemies.

I did notice in contrast to last weeks Royal Defense: Invisible Threat giveaway that there were more grouped hordes of ememies as opposed to a constant stream, which does mean the use of motar/splash towers can be a lot more useful instead of arrow towers due to their greater destructive power over larger groupings of enemies. However those concentrated groupings made the magic spells/meteor shower weapon less effective because the magic spell/meteor shower which takes up to a minute to recharge only lasts for several seconds at the most and is partly wasted on these concentrated groups as opposed to a constant stream, where the effects of the spell/storm are more effective.

Royal Defense relies pretty heavily on its’ special currency, gems. The gems allow you to purchase more upgrades based on how well you do in a level, with gems being dropped during the level and a tthe end. Do watch out when purchasing tower upgrades while playing through a level because if you don't have enough gold you can use the gems instead of gold, but gems are better used to improve your towers through the shop purchased upgrades that are permanent rather than buying the temporary tower upgrades, especially as Royal Defense is a little stingy with the gems. It's easy to accidentally spend your gems on upgrading your towers and every level also has a placement that can only be unlocked by spending gems, but I found I could ignore that position most of the time..

Edited reference accessed HERE. Re-posted, edited and added to by Whiterabbit-uk 29th Sept 2017.

If you find the game difficult you can download a couple of trainers for Royal Defense: Ancient Menace HERE and HERE. The former link adds 1000 gold, 20 gems and makes the fort invulnerable, and requires win 7 or above to work. The latter link gives you access to either a 32 bit or 64 bit trainer that gives you the maximum amount of gold and gems plus an infinite number of lives. I haven't tested either trainer, so cannot vouch for them.

Other Reviews and Videos of Royal Defense: Ancient Menace:

You can see Big Fish community reviews of Royal Defense: Ancient Menace HERE, and more information via the Big Fish forums HERE. You can also see some videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE, plus a slide show of over 40 images HERE.

Conclusion:

Another take on the Royal Defense Tower Defense (TD) game, basically the same as the two previous incarnations, but with a different skin to make it look slightly different. After playing the game for several levels I didn't find anything new added to the game apart from different routes and the start of the game being more complex in the various toutes your enemies chose to take. Still, if you like Tower Defense games, this is another one for the pot. Personally I much prefer TD games like ..... but I'd still score this a decent 7 out of 10, partly becasue I'm rather biased towards TD games.

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.

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 it HERE via Big Fish Games.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Royal Defense: Ancient Menace to work please visit the FAQ's Thread which you can find 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

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Royal Defense: Ancient Menace 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 todays' game doesn't grab you, but you still hanker for a new game, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free in the 'Weekly round up of game deals', HERE (I've not updated in 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 thread for details of other free games and offers HERE