Don't want to see articles from a certain category? When logged in, go to your User Settings and adjust your feed in the Content Preferences section where you can block tags!
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

Defend The Keep from Vanille Games offers a familiar Tower Defense formula, with a few extra spices thrown in to make it worthy of your attention.

Note: Key provided by the developer to our Steam Curator.

While there's a huge amount of Tower Defense games available, even on Linux, a lot of them play it a little too safe with the mechanics. Usually, you will get set locations to place down towers but that's not the case here. In Defend The Keep, you can place towers wherever you like and build walls to stop the flow of enemies running into a village to destroy it.

YouTube Thumbnail
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

While you have the ability to place down towers, walls and traps that's not all you have at your disposal. The main tower in the middle of the village you're protecting also has elemental powers, allowing you to fire off special abilities at the waves of enemies approaching you and these can be upgraded too.

Altogether, the special abilities along with tower placements and wall building can make for some fun tactics. Stall the enemies with walls, while smaller placed towers bring down their health as you slow them down with lightning as they run through a line of poison you've placed down. It's quite satisfying I must say! The tower design gave me a bit of a laugh too, one of them is just a tower with a massive swinging hammer on top of it, smashing down onto enemies near it.

It isn't just the enemies and abilities you have that make Defend The Keep interesting to play, the day and night cycle keeps you on your toes as well. It's harder to see where enemies are coming from at night, even harder on the top difficulty, so it requires plenty of focus.

When you progress across the world map, you will also earn Crystals to upgrade your placed towers as well. You can get up to three, depending on how many buildings you save per-mission. You can improve their rate of fire, range, health and more.

Interestingly, the developer said they weren't originally sure if they would be able to get Linux support in right away. Due to supportive messages received, they went for it. I'm glad they did, as I thoroughly enjoyed it. Not too difficult and not too easy, difficult enough in some cases to make me replay a level to do better. In a vast sea of other games, it stands out quite nicely for me and I think it's worth picking up.

You can find Defend The Keep on Steam now for £5.99/$7.99/€6.99 and itch.io.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
8 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly.
See more from me
The comments on this article are closed.
5 comments

Kohrias Jul 16, 2019
Just bought it on itch! Tutorial and first level were nice and fun :)


Last edited by Kohrias on 16 July 2019 at 10:57 am UTC
TheSHEEEP Jul 16, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Interesting, will add to my wishlist.
iiari Jul 16, 2019
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
Purchased!
no_information_here Jul 16, 2019
Looks good. Thanks for the heads-up.

Any comments from the other tower-defence addicts around here?
Thetargos Jul 17, 2019
Purchased, looks fun and interesting.

Edit:

It actually is very fun to play (challenging, even).

Reminds me a lot of the Dungeon Defenders art style, and it also uses Unreal Engine.

I figured it was best of me editing this post rather than posting again.


Last edited by Thetargos on 17 July 2019 at 3:28 am UTC
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
The comments on this article are closed.