Preview by: Neilie Johnson

Let's face it, tower defense games are in serious danger of becoming one of the most shop-worn genres in interactive entertainment. With 2009's hit game Plants vs Zombies having breathed new life into the category, developers over the last couple of years have gone a little crazy creating their own—mostly less creative—versions of the traditional tower defense game. Undaunted by the high number of TDGs flooding the marketplace, this holiday season Paradox and Hungarian developer Most Wanted Entertainment bravely brings us their own take on the genre with Defenders of Ardania.

Defenders of Ardania is a fantasy-based tower defense game set in the world of Majesty and borrows a few of that game's real-time strategy concepts. In fact, it's that blend of RTS gameplay and traditional tower defense mechanics that Most Wanted is hoping will differentiate its game from the rest of the TDG titles currently on offer. Having taken a look at pre-release version of the game this week, it seems their formula is working—sort of.

The game's tutorial levels teach you the basics—with easy keyboard controls and a selection of reasonably varied maps filled with charming (if not overly creative) fantasy villages, forests and castles. The tutorials also do a respectable job of explaining the ins and outs of this RTS/TDG hybrid, throwing in some funny touches such as a Sean Connery-ish narrator/guide who says in his best Highlander phrasing, “there can be only one” (although in this case, he's talking about rally points.) You're introduced to the idea of castle defense, tower and unit building, capturing resource points and spell casting, and then taught how to fend off enemy heroes and create heroes of your own. The inclusion of RTS concepts means more complexity than most of us are used to in a tower defense game. It also means winning requires more than just clever positioning of your defenses; it's about tower offense as well as tower defense.

RTS players will grasp this “RTS-lite” aspect immediately. After placing your towers, most of your time is spent creating units and sending them in waves against your enemy's stronghold. In the tutorial maps I spent time with, that meant doing things like protecting a village against its own rogue clerics or aiding a group of wizards in defending its mountain fastness. Units can't be controlled directly and learning to nudge them in the right direction by setting rally points and declaring bounties took some getting used to. It also took time to adjust to the way enemies were able, from the beginning, to build towers right next to my base. To avoid getting frustrated by these built-in limitations, RTS players like me will probably have to spend each game repeating the mantra: “it's not an RTS, it's not an RTS.”

And that's the risk Most Wanted's taking here. Defenders of Ardania firmly straddles the line between two very different genres and as such, risks disappointing players of both. While both types of game require strategic thinking, real-time strategy is about multi-tasking, the deft handling of resources and the destruction of an enemy base while tower defense’s more streamlined approach focuses entirely on the skillful positioning of defenses. Combining the two genres correctly could mean a new, highly entertaining hybrid genre and a win for Most Wanted—combining them poorly could result in a game that's too simplistic for RTS players and too chaotic for tower defense fans

However it plays out, upon release players will have three playable races to choose from: Humans, Nature (tree-like creatures) and Underworld (undead) and 2-4 players can take each other on both locally and online in all the single player campaign maps. At this writing, Defenders of Ardania is looking pretty solid. Its voice acting and graphics are good and its tutorials do a respectable step-by-step job of teaching the game's hybrid mechanics. And while the jury's still out on whether it'll be able to truly live up to its feature list, all indicators point to the game delivering on its promise.