Takedown viruses in a computer through the power of tower defense! Are you ready? Then check out our Defentron review!

 

DEFENTRON is a 3D “Tower Defense” straight out of the 80’s with its retro look.
Get ready and battle for the ultimate upgrade. Defentron, the retro-futurist computer system is trying to safeguard itself from malicious viruses that seek to control its core.

Use strategy to upgrade your lines of defense and become the most powerful security system ever known.

Think like an 80s software. You will face fast, hard, resilient enemies, capable of regenerating or splitting when destroyed, returning to the battlefield. Nobody will be safe until the last of the living enemies falls.

Will you be able to save Defentron from the enemy threat? It all depends on you.

Defentron by Zerouno Games and Planetfall Studios is a new entry in the very popular tower defense genre. It follows the path of some other Tower Defense games, but Defentron is bringing the old-school retro vibe of the ’80s to the mix.

As I mentioned above Defentron really doesn’t deviate from the time-tested formula. You multiple tower types including your regular shot, one that will slow enemies down and one that does big damage, but fires slowly. Your enemies, in this case, viruses, the start will work their way down the path. There are specific points along the path you can build your towers, so it’s not complete freedom.

 

As you kill the viruses, you’ll earn currency and you can decide whether to spend that on new towers or upgrade your existing towers. For me, I would build out all of my possible towers and then work on upgrading them after that. You can increase the power or rate of fire on your towers.

What really gets you is the viruses themselves as you will have a few come through at a time including slower powerful ones, weaker fast ones, and average ones. The mix of these will vary from level to level, but you can expect them all eventually. That’s why when playing a level for the first time I would always try a mix.

Now as mentioned levels are repeatable. Each level has a three-star system similar to mobile to grade you on when you are done and Defentron is encouraging you to okay multiple times to get three stars. I found as I went back and repeated the level as I knew more about the enemies upcoming I was able to play my initial towers better. On some levels, you’ll just get the three stars and a mix works well, others will take a but and you’ll need to plan your options better.

 

Here is the thing, Defentron doesn’t really innovate on the genre or move anything forward. This is a level tower defense game, there are others that move the genre forward. It’s not bad, just nothing that makes it special. I will say being on Switch was interesting as it let you play with your standard buttons or in-touch controls. It was nice to actually use the touch controls handheld and I often find a lot of games don’t do much to capitalize on different potential control schemes.

From an aesthetics point of view, I did like the 3D retro vibe that it was bringing forward. It reminded me of some older atari games if they had been turned into 3D polygonal designs. I see the influence from older media including Tron(It’s in the name), it’s nice, but once again I have seen it done better before.

 

I enjoyed my time with Defentron. It’s a quick and breezy tower defense game with a neat retro aesthetic, but it’s derivative of the genre, and in a world packed with tower defense games, I’m not sure there’s enough in this one to set it apart from other entries in the genre on Nintendo Switch.

Disclaimer
This Defentron review is based on a Nintendo Switch copy provided by Zerouno Games.