Quick Review: Rock 'N' Roll Defense

….Rock… on…?

Why let the creeps towards the stage anyway?
Let the fans come towards the band instead!

NukGames are the creators of Rock ‘N’ Roll Defense, released on August 10th, 2016. In this game with an eclectic soundtrack, you are a rock band performing for fans while “creeps” come towards the stage. You destroy these creeps by setting up speakers by their path, then let the POWER OF ROCK take them down. Speakers blast at the incoming enemies, destroying them and earning you money that can be used to set more speakers or upgrade existing ones, dealing more damage and attacking faster, and so on.

The Power of Rock! Sound Wave!

Yeah, it’s a tower defense game, in spite of the game’s best attempts at hiding it. You choose among eight different types of speakers, and can freely swap them around for any loadout – but you only have access to four in a level, so choose wisely. There’s the usuals: One basic tower, one tower with low power but a large range, one tower that deals constant damage within its range, one tower that temporarily slows down the enemies it hits… Each tower can also be upgraded twice. You can sell towers to regain money and buy new ones. You can’t place your towers anywhere; they have to be placed on the designated circle spaces around the path. If things get overwhelming, you can click the stage to unleash a sound wave that will damage every enemy on the field; but that effect has a cooldown. Finally, you click to release each wave of enemies yourself; the waves don't move forward on their own.

Ugh, that giant guy singing...
Go back to your karaoke bar!

A couple more levels on these greens
before we move on to the country deserts.

The game is split in four worlds of ten levels each, and each world features enemies of a different musical genre: Pop in the first, country in the second, techno later, etc. Of note, when you finish a world, you move instantly to the next; you can’t return to previous ones. The boss enemy is always the same for each world, and the regular enemies don’t really change much from a world to another – same tactics, different coat of paint. At the end of a level, you get 0 to 3 skulls as an indicator of how well you performed, with 3 skulls if no enemy ever reached the stage.

There isn’t a lot of depth to be found in the strategy: Set a lot of low-cost towers early on and upgrade them whenever possible, and/or sell one and get something stronger. Later levels start with more money, so you can set up stronger towers from the beginning. It’s all about positioning them correctly and getting them strong enough to beat everything, enemies and bosses alike, before they reach the stage, and use said stage if things get dire. It never really changes.

There's a lot of folks? Set a lot of towers.

It’s nice that the loading screens are well-drawn pictures of the “bosses”, and it’s a decent stylistic choice to have the stage’s screens focus on different stuff on the field. The soundtrack, while cool, only contains a few songs, so you’ll very quickly cycle through them and hear them over, and over, and over. Putting aside said soundtrack, there isn’t much here to make this game stand out from the average tower defense game. It reminds me of games I played in the Flash days. At least it’s a functional product with a decent length of playtime. And credit where due, for someone’s first game, this actually turned out pretty well, and NukGames have been releasing games ever since. Everyone’s gotta start somewhere, after all!

Rock ‘N’ Roll Defense is available for 0.99$ USD.