Shepherds of the Abyss

Ever since the Warcraft 3 Tower Defense community died out it's been hard finding a solid tower defense game with an emphasis on strategy, they are usually very straightforward and don't require much thinking. Shepherds of the Abyss on the other hand has delivered everything I have been looking for in a TD and more. While many games have abilities of some sort, they never really feel genuine, it feels like they were tossed in last minute before release, whereas in SotA you make up your own "army" consisting of some default creeps and your own Shepherds, these Shepherds all have special abilities much like DOTA/LoL and truly feel like they have their place. Items is also something SotA has done very well, you can buy items for your Sheps, some are active and some are passive bonuses, and they all feel very in-touch with the game. But the part where SotA really shines as a bright star above all other Tower Defense games is in its mazing. The martial art of making your enemies walk the l...

I consider myself a veteran of TDs, willing to try out any that look even halfway passable. This could have been a good one. But..it just failed. It has some aspects which *could* have worked well, such as the minigame where you can manipulate the upcoming wave's buffs. That's something new rather than just warning the player what sort of minions are approaching next. I'm not sure if it's very well implemented though, as most of the time all you are doing is reducing one buff that has an extremely high number and would cause you to lose instantly if you didn't do it, such as a 12x hit point buff. Hardly fun or interactive. The towers are quite limited in choice, there are only 5 types that do any noteable amount of damage, with no further upgrades. Most of them feel incredibly weak, which makes mazing highly necessary. There is no variety of minions, it is nothing but 'chompers', a generic rodent with sharp teeth, occasionally given a different colour according to it's buffs. Occasi...

Reminds me of the early tower defense games I used to play in Warcraft 3, but with a lot more depth. I really enjoy trying to figure out the best defenses to build and learning how the towers can be upgraded and work together.

Very disappointing game. Save your money. There is just one survival mode. Only 5 towers. There is an interesting mechanic with moving buffs the creatures get... but thats about as far as it goes.

This brings me back to WC3 tower defense, with upgraded graphics and an easy to navigate UI. All pros in my book. It has one of the most superb maze pathing guides I have ever seen. Ever wondered what path the enemy will take if you put a tower at location x? Well it clearly shows you what will happen, before you place the tower down. Every tower defense game should have this. I just can't rate this with a thumbs up, as it seems v1 has released, but yet, towers only have 1 level, and I can't help, but feel this will get boring fast, with so few tower varieties. This just kind of screams beta to me? Here is my suggestion, unless this game gets more tower levels and variety, consider buying it for 10$, and in worst case scenario refund it. I'll be back at some point, and hope to see ++betaContent Unrelated note, my firewall keeps bugging me, about this game wanting to reach out to the internet, even though I'm on single player, after denying it a few times, the game crashes.

NOTICE: I was provided a key for Beta Testing to discover Gameplay and User Interface bugs about a month before EA Launch. Shepherd of the Abyss takes well known Tower Defense mechanics and provides a heafty twist. Allowing you to building your towers in any location on your map to direct the flow of monsters coming from the portal. But there is more, you can select monsters for their next wave and heroes. The Heroes (Shepherds) you control with hotkey abilities. Allowing you to freeze towers, spawn waves of spiders, or even heal your wave monsters. These changes make for some fun gameplay and removes the wait to see your results on how well your towers tackeled the wave as there is some skill involved in making the best use of your Shepherd's abilities. Positives: Great twist on an existing style of gameplay (Tower Defense) Added mechanics (Heroes) Wave Control - you control what comes out of your opponent's portal! Negatives: UI needs some more work Heroes can be slightly confusi...

I am a huge fan of tower defense games and this really scratches an itch I've had for a long time.... MULTIPLAYER TOWER DEFENSE! You heard me right... and its awesome. A fantastic early access game!

Impossibly diffcult. Frustrating soul catching mechanic. The ability to catch what a mob drops is on a cool down. So even if you manage to kill a mob you get nothing for it if you didn't or can't catch its soul in time. Game is just not fun. If you want a 3D TD game try Prime World Defenders.

Bought the game and played a little. And while I give this a recommendation, it is mainly for the potential. The current gameplay is a bit lacking. I played against AI several times to try out stuff and it all came down to one thing: I did build more towers early and was able to kill the first batches of small creatures. Later on, when bigger creatues spawn, nothing seems able to kill them. So whoever had lost more life at that point, kinda won. And that brings me to my major issue with the game: Either I am to stupid to figure out how to kill the big mobs, or they are to tough. For me, they pretty much ended the game quite early. As neither me nor the AI could kill them effectively, they walked through the maze (which at this point only had like 20 towers of 50 possible, mostly not upgraded), dealt damage to the AI and me and soon the AI lost. But even against human players - as I don't know how to kill them and the monsters getting stronger every round, this means 1 or 2 rounds mor...

Here is a "tower defense" game that falls very flat. It just lacks variety, not nearly enough variety in towers. It gets boring very quickly. The soul catching mechanic is very awful, you end up getting nothing for many waves because of its cool down, just an awful way to do this. This is obviously a game that the developer probably planned much more for and then gave up half way through and just released it.