When people say tower defense games my mind immediately jumps back to the mid-2000’s when tower defense games were synonymous with flash, web browsers and way too many hours wasted when I should have been doing something productive. So when X-Morph: Defense came to my queue as a game to preview I immediately thought I knew what to expect. However, as I kept reading and noticed that Exor Studios, The indie developer behind X-Morph, had decided to throw a TD and a SHMUP (Shoot-Em-Up) into the blender I have to confess that I was intrigued. After spending some time with the Steam beta version I can honestly say that this ain’t your grandpappy’s Tower Defense game!
The game introduces you to the concept that you are part of an alien race that goes around harvesting the resources from planets for the sake of furthering the development and survival of your own race. Think ‘Independance Day’ without the “Welcome to Earth” or Will Smith for that matter. It launches at the end of the month, and the preview build we played felt fairly polished and complete.
The concept is pretty straight forward in that your mothership drops a resource pod that begins to collect everything it can and you are tasked with defending the position from the pesky natives aka. Humans. You play the game from a traditional top down view with a basic HUD. So far it’s your standard TD style of gameplay.
However where this game really sets itself apart is that you’re not a simple constructor limited to building towers and watching as hordes of enemy forces bombard your perfectly symmetrical tower defense layout. Instead, you’re an alien battle fighter equipped with some serious firepower, multiple battle configurations and a license to destroy any and all resistance because you know, resistance is futile and stuff.
You control the ship with a twin stick shooter setup and the combat and building feels quick, responsive and well thought out. I only really played with the controller for my playthrough and found that menu navigation, weapon switching and movement were all designed with the controller in mind. As with most twin stick shooter’s I’ve never really felt that the mouse keyboard was as natural to use as a controller anyway.
The game offers a couple of nice features that add depth and breadth to what may seem on the surface to be a typical SHMUP/TD hybrid; not that a SHMUP/TD Hybrid is typical. The first is a skill tree system in place that is divided into three different sets of unlockable skills, one for your ship, towers and the main resource core that you are defending. I spent some time looking over the whole system and it seems to offer a lot of variety to builds allowing for a more SHMUP or TD approach to gameplay based on your preferred method.
Another interesting feature is the multiple battle modes that your ship can take on. Each mode offers its own special ability and, with the freedom to switch modes on the fly, allows for some great combo play. Boss battles and destructible environments that can dictate the pathing of each wave are just a couple of other things that makes X-Morph stand out as a unique and fun entry.
The final thing of note is that the game supports co-op play. As I was beta testing alone… it’s a lonely job sometimes… I didn’t get a chance to test the feature out but am really interested to see how it functions when the game goes live later this month. The potential of a team working together to hold ooffwaves of enemies in this setting is something I definitely want to try out. The game is challenging even on normal difficulty and the addition of teammates to coordinate defense and attacks with seems to me, at least, to offer some great replay and brings longevity to what could otherwise be a one and done playthrough.
Final Thoughts:
X-Morph: Defense really brings some great elements to the table, with smooth, quick controls, a well-balanced mix of TD and SHMUP and some nice progression systems in place, Exor Studios has really put some great design and implementation to their game. With a release scheduled for August 30, on PS4, Xbox One and PC It’s definitely worth putting on a wish list.
