Unleash

Review

Ladies and Gentlemen, be prepared for the amazing wave of monsters /aliens that will come at you! You must prepare your defences and lead the enemies through your own design maze. As soon as the black hole appears there will be no return, and it will come down to your tactics and design to repel the wave of monsters that has been unleashed on you!    

Unleash is an action / tower defence / strategy game where you design your own maze to eliminate incoming waves of enemies and win a stage.

The game offers three modes of play, a tutorial and a scenario editor. The campaign mode consists of 12 missions at this stage (the game is currently on early access) which become progressively harder as you go along. You can also play against other users online (up to 8) or bots (which have three levels of difficulty) if you can’t find an online game. There are three servers for you to choose from for this mode which are in Europe, USA and Asia.  The sandbox mode will give you access to all enemies and is pretty good if you want to practice your designing skills. When you finish, just send as many creatures as possible into your maze and see how good your design is. The scenario editor is simple to use.

The gameplay is a little bit different to what I was expecting.  In most tower defences games, maps have specific paths already allocated. It usually shows you in which position you can place your turrets. Well, in Unleash you must create your own path (maze) with walls and 13 different turrets available to you. I must say that if you decide to play the campaign mode, the maximum available towers will only be four per mission. Each of the towers has three upgrades which will cost a certain number of coins, and time as well. Most of the structures will take around 5 to 10 seconds to build or upgrade and it can be a struggle when you have several enemy waves coming at you rapidly!  Which structure will you upgrade to the next level, or will choose you keep building your maze? That is a tough question. I am sure you’ll figure it out . . . eventually!

At the start of each of your games, you’ll have a certain number of coins at your disposal to start your defences. Each time you kill an enemy it will give you extra coins, but not too many. You’ll receive extra coins each time a new wave is launched towards your defences. The more waves you manage to repel, the more coins you’ll receive – and thank God for that!

I really like the variety of enemies you play against in this early access version. From fast, strange-legged creatures to slow, burning golems; from massive slimy monsters to some sort of flying frogs that spit on your defences. It’s true – it’s great stuff! There are another two updates which are planned soon with new monsters, map editor, new towers and other features.

The graphics look good and I really like the sounds effects too. The interface is straight forward and easy to use. I did experience a few bugs here and there, but nothing drastic. I must say that I couldn’t find an online game at this stage.