Steampunk Tower II

Genre: Tower Defense

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in the Awesome Platformers Bundle (5 in 1) along with Spirit Roots, Super Cyborg, and Sweet Witches, and Swaps and Traps.)

Steampunk Tower II is a Tower Defense game with light management elements released on PC in 2018, ported to mobile platforms in 2019, then ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2020. Players manage a base as they build up their resources and expand to protect a growing territory using a transportable tower that drills into the battleground and allows players to arrange turrets on it as needed.

The game’s presentation is pretty good, with hand-drawn 3D visuals and some nice character artwork, backed by understated instrumental music that fits the tone and theme of the game. Nothing truly outstanding, but it all looks and sounds decent enough.

The game itself takes a pretty unique approach to the Tower Defense genre, as there is only one tower, which is also the spot you need to defend in each level. To do so, you’ll be installing, upgrading, and moving around turret emplacements on that tower, adjusting them based on the sorts of enemies you’ll face in the level. Doing so requires keeping an eye on the turrets’ reload times, and being mindful of the logistics needed to physically move the things around, which can require some shuffling around when the space to transport them within your tower is narrow.

When not in battle, players will have some light base-building management elements to direct the upgrade of their tower and its turrets. There’s a pretty good variety of options for upgrades. What’s more, players who find their current story mission too challenging always have the option of grinding through side-missions to upgrade their facilities so they can come back to the fight better-prepared.

This leads me to one of the negative elements of this game. Powering up their facilities requires multiple types of currencies, and the missions players can opt to partake in for the grind include wait mechanics. Now, this game doesn’t include any microtransactions, but it would not surprise me to discover that another version of the game did, and Nintendo Switch owners are having to deal with the side-effects of that earlier version. However, while these elements do raise an eyebrow, they’re generally not so cumbersome that they interfere greatly with the gameplay – players tend to have enough options that they can usually invest their efforts somewhere else while a wait mechanic is ticking down.

One other thing I should mention before wrapping this up. Steampunk Tower II features pretty good controls regardless of whether you’re playing using traditional gamepad controls or touchscreen controls. While not transformative, having the option to use the touchscreen in handheld mode is a nice plus.

Overall, Steampunk Tower is a unique and worthwhile addition to the Tower Defense genre. It doesn’t truly revolutionize everything, but it’s unique enough to stand on its own, and while its multiple currencies and wait mechanics are bothersome, they aren’t so much of a burden that they significantly damage an otherwise good game.

tl;dr – Steampunk Tower II is a unique take on the Tower Defense genre that has you managing various turrets on one tower under attack. This fairly original take on the genre is joined by some pretty good light base-building elements, and while the game is hampered somewhat by its use of multiple currencies and wait mechanics, these issues don’t mar what is otherwise a good, original entry in the genre.

Grade: B

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