Gemcraft Chasing Shadows has been released on Steam

[TheVampire100]

It's finally here, teh Steam version of Gameinabottle's latest Tower defense Game. Gemcraft is a series of uniqe TD games were you don't build specific towers, instead you craft gems with different propoerties and you can mix those gems to combine their powers. This gives you nearly unlimted possibilities how to play the game. Long range snipers with chain hit? Is there. Slowing Poison? Also in the game. How about a tower that crushes you with hue damge and get's even stronger the more it attacks? It's all in there.
For me the series is probably the best TD games ever. It is complex and hard, be ready to get crushed more than once. The high difficulty comes with the huge varity to play the game. The game has also a roleplaying component, you can unlock skills and level them, you get better yourself the more you play and there is even equipment.
The game features three basic towers. The normal tower is the simple shooting tower that you know from other TD games. It uses 100% of the proberties of the inserted gem. than there are traps. Traps deal far less damage but their special proberties like poison, slow, chain hit, wirk a lot better that the tower gems. Then tehre are amplifiers. They don't attack but add damage, range, speed and even special properties to nearby towers and traps, making them more deadly if used right.
The game features 9 different gems, slow, posion, mana steal (money steal), bloodbound (gets stronger with more hits), manabound (gets stronger with more mana), chain hit (hits multiple targets at once), critical damage, armor destruction and life suppress (monster regenrate heal, this gem prevents this).
You can mix the gems like you want, creating the dream gem you ever wanted. the game is been known to get literally destroyed by ambitious fans that find out every exploit that there is possible, making them unstoppable. Maybe yo want to be the one that finds a new exploit.

The game cost's fully 10$ and is 10% off on Steam. Grab it now while it's hot.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/296490/

[orzelek]

I've been waiting for this one from some time.

I liked it in flash version but it always feels a bit less then a game as flash

[eRe4s3r]

Yeah count me in One of my favorite TD's (well, the flash one) and SO much customization. And having it proper also means 419 achievements to get, hah

[TheVampire100]

The Steam version does not add many new features. Mainly the Iron Wizard Mode (New Game+?), better resolutions/graphics, full screen mode and of course included Magic Pouch (Premium Web Version).
I have completed already the first tile but that's the simpelst and fastest one. After that it gets only harder.

Lol, 419 achievments. More than AI War with all expansions purchased. That's a lot of stuff to do.

What is a little sad, no Chain Hit as starting gem. But on the other side, starting with the red gem has made you a little op because you cpuld apply all the other traits on multiple enemies at once. I'm curious where it is now, ther emust be either a new tile or it is added to an old one.

[Cyborg]

Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

I see a bit of mazing in the trailer....I think.

*shudder* Don't get me started on DG2 though...what a disappointment.

[Aklyon]

I thought DG2 was alright, but I don't put a huge amount of hope on my non-creeper world TD games in the first place. Either they're alright or they aren't to me, for the most part.

[Cyborg]

Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

I see a bit of mazing in the trailer....I think.

*shudder* Don't get me started on DG2 though...what a disappointment.

Where you can redirect the flow of the enemies by placing towers?

[KingIsaacLinksr]

Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

I see a bit of mazing in the trailer....I think.

*shudder* Don't get me started on DG2 though...what a disappointment.

Where you can redirect the flow of the enemies by placing towers?

Hmm, rewatching it, it seems like you redirect it with "blocks" of sand/dirt/whatever material that is. It's not with the towers themselves. I don't know, I haven't played any of the Gemcraft games.

[TheVampire100]

Looks good, but I don't see any mazing? Compared to defense grid, which lets you maze.

Gemcraft has some basic mazing depending on the levels, some more, some less. If you want a Gemcraft with heavy mazing, look for Gemcraft labyrinth on the internet. This was (like the name suggests) designed around mazing. There was a level in GCL that has literally nothing, only a huge free space, ideal for your own maze. Also one of the hardest levels int he game.

You can build blocks and towers in the way of enemies and they have to move around them. Blocks are cheaper and are easy mazing material but they cannot attack. You can however always build towers on top of blocks, so they are good for inital mazes until you get enough mana for towers.

I have also the opinion that a good TD game is not defined by the ability to maze it or not. Soemtimes mazing makes the game also a lot of unbalanced and harder and trust me, GC is already hard enought with all the possibilities. You can also control the flow o enemies via monster nests. IOn a lot of levels there are these monster nests where monsters spawn. You can destroy them, so monster do not spawn there anymore, letting you control where you want monsters to spawn.

[Draco18s]

Gemcraft is OK in my opinion.  Not outstanding, but definitely a solid game.

Just not one I'd put money on.  The last (?) iteration they did on Kongregate I never got anywhere near completing.  I just didn't feel compelled to continue playing.

Also, pure gems are better than mixed color every time.  You can get away with dual-color most of the time, but it tends to be hit-or-miss on whether or not two colors combine to be better than the sum of their parts, as often the penalty for mixing colors outweighs the benefits for having two abilities.

[TheVampire100]

Dual-Gems deal more damage, have better range and attack speed,  pure gems are only better in terms of special abilities.
It depends on what style you use of course, raw power, more abilities or combined stuff. You could also go all out on traps and spells.

[tigersfan]

I've put a TON of time into this game so far. I'm loving it. I'ts super polished, I've not run into a single (even minor) bug.

Also, yeah, the focus here is absolutely not on mazing, so if that's your thing maybe look somewhere else, but personally, I'm not a big fan of mazing.

[Mánagarmr]

Ancient DOS Games made a filler video about it here. This was about the old Flash-based game though.


I'm curious: Have the game moved to a new engine with the Steam release? If so, I'm probably getting it soon. I'm not to fond of flash based games. They tend to be wonky as crap.

[Draco18s]

I glanced at the screenshots the game has on its store page.

They are super-busy with non-essential graphical material, to the point that on one I wasn't sure I was looking at path with monsters on it, or terrain.