SHREEKZ

Defense Grid: The Awakening (DG) is the best tower defense (TD) game I’ve ever played. It’s in the rare category of TD games that feature mazing, a level design mechanic that allows the player to shape and alter enemy paths through strategic tower placement. This gives you the freedom to craft elaborate mazes, stretch out enemy routes, and build devastating killzones. I’m really not a fan of TD games where you simply place towers in fixed spots and watch the enemies follow a rigid track.

DG’s story is pretty simple and cliched: aliens are invading, and you have to stop them from stealing your Power Cores. The 20-mission campaign is tough, and fighting for a flawless Gold Medal run on the later maps will genuinely test your skills. You can earn either a Bronze, Silver, or Gold Medal for each mission, depending on your score and how many Power Cores you were able to defend from being stolen. If you’re a hardcore gamer or a TD veteran, I suggest settling for nothing less than a Gold Medal on every mission you play.

Each mission starts with a certain number of resources you can use to build towers. You earn more resources by destroying aliens and by letting interest accumulate over time. Because of this, greed pays off. Delaying your tower builds until you absolutely need them allows interest to snowball, giving you a massive economic advantage for high-tier upgrades in the final waves.

In addition to the main Story missions, each map contains challenge modes that throw unique starting conditions, constraints, and objectives your way. You might face tougher aliens, frontloaded resources with zero resource recovery or interest, strict tower limits, or even restrictions forcing you to use only Level 1 towers. This gives the game incredibly high replayability. Plus, most maps in Defense Grid are like open-ended puzzles, meaning they can be solved in a variety of different ways.

Beyond the core campaign, the game has four excellent DLC expansions, and each comes with its own story and challenge missions. One of these packs – Borderlands – is included for free and comes with four maps. If you enjoy the base game, I highly suggest grabbing all the DLC. Together, they add 28 new campaign missions (including Borderlands), providing several more hours of top-tier TD gameplay.

Your tower arsenal packs a serious punch, ranging from the humble machine gun to a concussion tower that throws explosives all around it. Each tower has its benefits and quirks, and it’s up to you to figure out good placements to solve a map. The Missile tower was the only one I didn’t care for, as its limited use case of only targeting flying enemies felt a bit too situational.

You’ll face a fantastic variety of alien scum, ranging from basic “foot soldiers” that melt quickly under basic machine gun fire to hulking tanks that can take quite a beating from your army of towers. You’ll go up against shielded units, stealthy aliens that can’t be detected unless they’re in range of certain towers, aliens that provide stealth to other aliens, speedsters, and more. You’ll have a great time trying to demolish them all.

The game also features some nice voice acting, especially the narrator, Fletcher, voiced by the great Jim Ward (who sadly passed away in December 2025). Ward delivered a stellar performance that adds real charm to the campaign. The BGM, however, fades into the background and isn’t quite as memorable.

All in all, Defense Grid: The Awakening is a brilliant game that belongs in any tower defense enthusiast’s library. Being an older game, it is also quite cheap and frequently goes on sale.

MY RATING: 10/10