Defentron (Switch) Review

Defentron is as simple as a tower defense game gets. The only gimmick it has is the neon 80s visual theme.

Each stage is small, linear, and lacks any creativity. The enemy horde starts on one end, you place a few towers in the middle and prevent them from reaching the other end. Unfortunately, the difficulty is extremely high despite having a very straightforward approach.  Even on the early stages, you will lose if you do not immediately place a new tower the second it become available. Eventually the player will gain access to new towers, like the typical one that reduces the speed of enemies or the powerful but slow shooting canon, but each unit can only be placed in specific tiles, again, restricting player freedom.  There are only a few placement options available but still easy to get it wrong and have to start over.  Towers have the ability to sacrifice themselves for one big attack at the cost of permanently losing that tower. Using this kamikaze approach is necessary to complete some stages but feels like a setback instead of empowering the player since losing a tower results in precious resources lost. You might win that current wave but could very well lose the next because now you don’t have enough resources to build another one.

Camera movement here on the Switch version is also a little strange. Instead of simply moving the camera with the analog stick, the player needs to use the pointer to click to the screen to toggle the camera into position.  At least the neon visuals match the 80s synth soundtrack. 

Although there are built-in Achievements and a 3-star ranking system, it is difficult to recommend Defentron when there are so many other tower defense titles more compelling.  The plain-but-difficult approach is much too rough for newbies and tower defense veterans will crave more depth so I am not sure who the target audience is here. The 80s neon visuals are cool but not enough to save the mediocre gameplay. 

Also available on PC Steam.

Not As Good As: GeoDefense (Windows mobile)

Play It Instead: Defense Grid 1 or 2  

Wait For It: Ninja Town 2

By: Zachary Gasiorowski, Editor in Chief myGamer.com

Twitter: @ZackGaz