Ancient Islands is a combination of the classic tower defense game you played 15 years ago with a city builder game (much simplified).Ancient Islands is a combination of the classic tower defense game you played 15 years ago with a city builder game (much simplified).
Although Ancient Islands offers something new that I haven't come across in this type of game before, it's the simplified city building that just comes down to producing the resources needed to build towers and other defenses. Without gold, stone, and wood, we won't last long, so the economic thread is closely tied to the defensive game.
Additionally, on the next maps, there is a challenge, we will face a situation where there are no stone or wood deposits. Then we have a market building at our disposal, where we can (and on some maps, we have to) sell/buy the resources we are lacking.
Another building is responsible for % of the improvement of towers on the given map. In it, we can upgrade the effectiveness of individual types of defensive towers.
The defensive part is very thoughtful - if we go on the defense with knights, which seem to be a little more effective than shooting towers, in the next maps it turns out that flying units appear, which the knights can't reach and we can easily lose the game. That's why balancing different types of towers is essential.
Next in the game are spells, which we can cast, but only after building the right kind of building.
As most people probably know, there are many ways to improve towers and other buildings. There are also branching upgrades, meaning we decide which direction the tower will develop and lose the other development path forever.
On the map, there are occasionally small resources that help in the game. Sometimes they come from opponents (like wood), sometimes there's a statue of a mage by which the resource appears. If we don't collect it quickly, it's gone.
After winning a map, we get 1-4 stars depending on the level we're playing and how many attacks reached the city. We spend these stars in a global upgrade tree that affects gameplay in future maps.
There are many options available, even a one-time playthrough of the game does not have to end the fun because we can try to beat it on a higher difficulty setting.
I'm currently on map 11, after 6.5 hours of play, and I still have a ways to go. I highly recommend this game - it's a very successful tower defence game with an economic twist.… Expand
