Forest Defense Review: A Tower Defense Prototype That Makes Me Miss Warcraft III
Mort-on made a tower defense prototype with 10 levels and random maps. I've played this exact game approximately 4,000 times since 2005, except those versions had animations.
First Impressions (Or: When 'Prototype' Is Doing Heavy Lifting)
I launched Forest Defense and immediately understood why Mort-on called this a prototype. There's your castle in the bottom left. There are goblins spawning top right. There are towers you can place. That's it. That's the entire pitch. No tutorial, no story about why goblins hate this particular castle, no menu music—just straight into level 1 with the understanding that you've played tower defense before and you'll figure it out. Which, fine, I respect the honesty. But I've been playing tower defense games since custom Starcraft maps were the height of innovation, and this feels like someone watched a YouTube tutorial on making TD games and stopped at video three. The random map generation is supposed to be the hook here, but when your maps are just different arrangements of the same bland tiles, randomization doesn't save you from monotony.
Gameplay: The Bare Minimum, Executed Adequately
You get gold for kills. You build towers. Goblins walk toward your castle. If they touch it, you lose. I've explained the entire game in two sentences, which should tell you everything about its depth. The towers—and I'm being generous calling them towers since they're barely distinguishable sprites—just shoot at goblins. No upgrade paths. No special abilities. No strategic choices beyond 'do I place this here or slightly over there.' The difficulty supposedly varies with random maps, but I played through twice and couldn't tell you which was harder because they all blur together into the same experience. What actually works: the pathfinding is solid, goblins don't glitch through towers, and the basic math of 'more towers equals more dead goblins' functions correctly. It's competent in the way a calculator is competent. It does what it says, but I'm not having fun doing long division.
Presentation: My Eyes Are Bored
There's no music. There are no sound effects. The goblins are little sprites that shuffle across tiles that look like a texture pack from 2003. Your castle is a building. Your towers are... tower-shaped objects. Everything is functional and nothing has personality. I'm not asking for AAA production values here—I've praised plenty of minimalist indie games—but there's a difference between deliberate minimalism and 'I haven't gotten to the art pass yet.' This is the latter. The goblins don't react when hit. Towers don't have attack animations. There's no visual feedback for anything. I watched goblins silently die for 10 levels and felt nothing. Compare this to even basic tower defense games from the Flash era—Kingdom Rush, Bloons TD, hell, even Fieldrunners had personality in its presentation. This has the visual appeal of a spreadsheet, except spreadsheets sometimes have color-coded cells.
What This Prototype Needs (A List)
Let me be direct with Mort-on: this is a decent proof of concept for learning game development, but it needs about six months of work before it's worth marketing as a game. First, add sound. Any sound. Goblin death squeaks, tower firing noises, literally anything. Second, give players tower upgrades or different tower types—the entire genre is built on making strategic choices about unit composition. Third, add some progression between levels. Right now beating level 7 feels identical to beating level 2. Fourth, make the random generation actually matter. Different enemy types, varied terrain that affects tower placement, obstacles—something that makes me care which map I got. Fifth, visual polish. Smooth out animations, add particle effects for hits, make the castle look like something worth defending. This isn't impossible. It's basic tower defense DNA that's been solved for two decades.
The One Thing I'll Reluctantly Praise
Here's what Forest Defense gets right: it loads instantly and doesn't waste my time with unnecessary menus or forced tutorials. I click play, I'm in a level, I can immediately start building. That's worth something in an era where even mobile TD games make you sit through seven splash screens and a login prompt. The core loop, while bare-bones, is functional enough that I finished all 10 levels without encountering a single bug or crash. For a prototype, that's actually respectable. Too many early projects fall apart under basic stress testing, but this one holds together. It's stable, it's playable, and it proves Mort-on understands the fundamental mechanics of tower defense. That's a foundation. It's just a foundation that currently has no house on it, and I'm standing in an empty lot wondering when construction starts.
Rating Breakdown
It's a prototype and it shows—feels like someone's first week with a game engine, complete with placeholder everything.
Random maps are the only twist here, and I last saw genuine tower defense innovation when Kingdom Rush added hero units in 2011.
It's free and you'll get exactly 20 minutes out of it, which is fair for the price of nothing.
The core loop works but I was checking my phone by level 4—there's no progression, no upgrades, just placing towers and waiting.
Silent goblins shuffle across blank tiles toward a castle that looks like a child's drawing, and I miss it when games at least tried to have sound effects.
Random maps should add replayability but when every map feels identical and there's zero variety in towers or enemies, why would I?
What Didn't Annoy Me
- Loads instantly without pointless menus or splash screens—I was playing in under 3 seconds
- Stable build with zero crashes or bugs across multiple playthroughs, which is more than I can say for half the prototypes on itch
- Random map generation works without breaking pathfinding, so at least the technical execution is solid
- It's free and takes 20 minutes, which means it respects my time more than most AAA games
- Core tower defense mechanics function correctly—goblins walk, towers shoot, math works
What Made Me Sigh
- Zero audio means I played in complete silence like a mime at a funeral
- No tower variety or upgrades removes all strategic decision-making from a strategy genre
- Random maps feel identical because there's no meaningful terrain variation or different enemy types
- Visuals are placeholder-quality with no animations or feedback—goblins just blink out of existence when killed
- No progression system means level 10 feels exactly like level 1 except there are more goblins and I'm more bored
Forest Defense is exactly what it says: a prototype. It proves Mort-on can build a functional tower defense game, and that's legitimately worth something if you're learning game development. But as an actual game you'd choose to play? It's missing everything that makes tower defense engaging—progression, variety, strategy, audiovisual feedback, literally any reason to care. I've played Flash games from 2007 with more depth. If Mort-on builds on this foundation with tower upgrades, enemy variety, sound design, and actual visual polish, there might be something here. As it stands, this is a tech demo that made me nostalgic for Kingdom Rush, and not in the fun way. Play it if you're curious about bare-minimum TD mechanics or studying game development. Otherwise, just boot up Bloons TD 6 and remember when tower defense games had personality.
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