Deathtrap Review

Tower defense games have never been my true calling when it comes to gaming, however Deathtrap has such a unique style of play to it that I will definitely be going back for more. It takes what would normally be a familiar sight in tower-defense games and creates something very unique. It takes from what we know in a familiar genre and adds to it in a way that makes the game feel very fresh.

As the defender of the gates it is your job to set up towers/traps and wait for the enemy waves to throw themselves at you, in their mad attempts to reach the gates, and cause death and destruction. The waves of monsters become more and more powerful as the game progresses and you must strategically upgrade your towers and traps to compensate for the increased power of your enemies. Where I found the game got extremely interesting was when I began using the Action RPG element of the game.

Deathtrap takes an approach to tower-defense that makes the genre feel very fresh. When starting the game you must select a character from one of the three different classes; marksman, mercenary, and sorceress. Each of these classes utilizes a unique play style that allows the game to be played through in three very unique ways.

While the majority of tower defense games have you sit back and watch your towers do all of the work, Deathtrap has you take your chosen character and fight through the waves of enemies. It is a very direct way of making the defense of a gate more interesting. It also feels quite satisfying to be able to lure your enemies towards the crossfire of multiple traps and towers that you have set up. The use of the third person camera makes this much easier as you can see what path the monsters will take and how you can best lure them into a crossfire.

One might think that having a controllable character to help deal with the waves would make the waves too easy to deal with, however I found that even with the extra help I was struggling through the majority of the maps later on in the game. This choice of using the character as the camera also gave me a sense of urgency when I would realize that waves were pushing the other side of the map and I would be forced to rush over before they began to destroy my gate. This along with the ink portals, which teleport the user to any other portal on the map, gave significance to the role I was playing as a character. Each time a wave pushed close to the gate I was forced to use my character over the towers in order to overwhelm the waves. Interestingly enough this actually made the game far more fun than I thought it would be.

By having the player directly involved with destroying the waves of monsters, the developers have created a fast paced tower defense that is anything that I’ve played before. While many savvy tower-defense gamers would not be used to this style of play I am sure they will find this unique twist to be quite an asset.

Not only does Deathtrap allow you to use a champion to destroy enemies with arrows, magic, and steel, it also has a deep player progression system that acts very much like an RPG game. As you progress through each level you gain experience points that can be invested in several different areas. You have the choice between upgrading your traps, special attacks on your champion, and world skills. By using your experience points you can increase the amount of damage your champion does, spend points on your traps and you will be able to upgrade them while dealing with stronger waves, and the world skills allow you to debuff monster waves or buff your own champion.

Where the game falls off a bit is the lack of creativity with trap placement due to the pre-allocated spaces on the map. You are very limited in strategically placing your traps and towers in the game because of the cookie cutter placement system. While you can use your champion to aggro monsters towards your towers it is a negligible problem with the game. When upgrading your towers the game also lacks any discernible way of seeing which towers have already been upgraded visually. Instead you must click on each tower and see how many points you have invested in each upgrade. This seems a bit backwards in comparison to most games in this genre as you can usually see a visual difference between an upgraded tower and a standard one.

While I’m talking about visuals of towers I will go ahead and say that this game does look very nice for a tower-defense. The environments and maps that you play through have a very Gothic look to them that makes the game feel gritty when you slaughter a group of monsters. The detail added to the monsters is exquisite and you truly appreciate the work the developers put into making some grotesque looking creatures.

While the monsters and environments look great, the game truly shines through character progression, not just through research points but also through the armory and inventory. Neocore went to extreme depths when it came to completing levels in the game as not only do you get experience points, you also acquire gear as you progress through the game. The gear that you pick up will have an enormous impact on how well your character does in the next set of levels and don’t worry you will need them.

Deathtrap is not a game that is easy throughout every single level, you will have to consider what type of gear you have your champion use because failing to bring that extra 20 poison resist may mean the difference between winning and losing.

I would recommend enjoying the difficulty of the game because you probably will not enjoy the plot all that much. I say this due to the fact that there is not much of one to speak of. In essence you are tasked with safeguarding your home from hordes of monsters and that’s it.

While the game may be lacking a plot with any discernible depth, it does have a high amount of replay value that will have you going back for more. After a few hours I had hit a point where I could not progress without replaying a few levels in order to get some new upgrades for my inventory. While this may sound boring it actually was quite a bit of fun doing a grind like in an RPG.

Deathtrap is a game that has all the functional workings of a tower defense game and depth of an RPG, which makes for a surprisingly good combination. For such a low price it’s hard to go wrong with a game like this, while most tower defense games tend to get boring after a few hours, Deathtrap keeps you wanting more and more action. There were very few aspects of the game that I did not like and those were easy enough to forget about because of how entertaining the rest of the game is. I would highly recommend Deathtrap to any fan of tower defense games as it is a fresh take on the genre.