Greetings, mighty Dungeon Master! Again the Hordes of Light are hammering their clean feet on our stony dungeon walls and doors. Are you ready to defend your dark realm against Adventurers, Priests, Dwarfs and battle-hardened Knights?

If you are ready for it, I suggest you try out Dungeon Warfare.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/355980/

I picked it up at the Cyber Monday (together with other cheap games). Current normal price is 9,99€.

Art

Pixels. HUGE pixels. And the feeling of olden times when a few pixels and 256 colors where all you needed and your mind would do the rest. It works very good here. I would argue that the pixel art makes it easier to see what is going on.
If you are OK with pixels, you get a nicely made map and nice grid dungeons.

Content

As you can guess from the title, the games goal is to defend your dungeon from the hordes of incoming more-or-less heroes. You will love the nobles and hate the knight-"rush". And the dwarfs, oh, the dwarfs!.

There are 22 enemies and 26 upgradeable traps that can stop them. Either by impaling your foes, setting them on fire, pushing them into lava or electrocute them. Or magicking them into frogs (which is expensive but funny). Or...

More then 40 levels and every level has it's own way to deal with the stampede. Well, theoretically. There are mainly 3 sorts of levels: Labyrinths where you kill them slowly. Hole maps where you push them down into the dark, the water or the fire. And mine cart maps (which I am bad at), where you let the minecarts do a lot of the killing. Which have quite random results, that is why I "hate" those maps.

After winning a game you get XP and gems. XP level you up - which means more gems and more starting gold. Gems buy you trap upgrades.
As you progress through the game you also get runes (including the infinite rune) which you can choose every level and that make it harder - and give more XP.

Balance

Most maps are easy to do without runes. However some cart maps are hard because you can't place enough traps to stop all hideous adventurers (and esp. the fast thief) if you are unlucky.
With runes it can be a very hard game where you need to start several times to place a trap in exactly the right moment.

I found some traps to be vast superior to others (based on cost). Some only work well in combination with others. All in all, for the amount of traps, a good but not perfect pricing.

Bugs?

I found only one bug: I can't get achievements to register after the first day. It is a bit annoying to always click away the same 3, 4 in-game windows "achievement reached!" every time you start the game.
The game does not show the effects the traps get with higher levels, so you have to try and see.

Buy or not buy?

If you like tower defense games then get this one. You will have a lot of fun (and some Arrrgh! Moments). There is nothing to regret except your lost time.
I think the game is also available on iOS.

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tl;dr: If you like tower defense, buy it!

Picture source: first steam, second pixabayc.om - domeckopol