Siegecaster Review — Wizard Tower, Tetris Walls

Siegecaster is a unique take on the tower defense genre, going its own way with mechanics and portraying a chaotic, if not colorful, fantasy world that really wants you dead. A bit amateurish, the game has its problems, but it is also clearly designed with love in every single pixel, making a game that stands out in a sea of template-built titles and games with stunning visuals and boring gameplay. If nothing else, I hope this review nurtures your interest in Siegecaster, as it is definitely a title worth trying on your own.

I get a lot of offers to review upcoming games. Sometimes, these are marketing agencies sending out mass emails to known reviewers to get some coverage for their games. Other times, studios I have reviewed titles for in the past will send me their new releases or follow up on one of my early access reviews with a request to cover the game at launch. Siegecaster is one of the rare and always charming instances of a developer reaching out to me personally. The creator of Siegecaster apparently read my review of Thronefall, saw that I was a fan of tower defense games (or more specifically, games with horde defense mechanics), and told me I’d probably enjoy Siegecaster. They were correct.

Siegecaster sees players as a wizard hoping to collect the remnants of his shattered darkness, a malevolent force that does not seem happy to be contained. To do so, players go through a series of levels where they must defend their tower against hordes of orcs, dragons, dark magic, and siege engines, collecting gold and building defenses as the hordes get progressively bigger.

This is pretty straightforward for a tower defense game, but there are two main aspects where I think Siegecaster separates itself from others in the genre.

First of all, and perhaps the most interesting change, is how Siegecaster handles base building. Your tower must be defended at all costs, and you have two types of structures to protect it: weapons such as ballistae, archers, and cannons (your traditional tower-defense “towers”) and walls. The walls are built through a Tetris-like system of procedurally selected shapes, where you cannot choose which shape you place next, and you have to place the shape to move on to the next piece.

I thought this was an interesting way to handle wall-building. The hordes of enemies will break down your walls before attacking your tower, and you must encase an area in walls to build turrets there or to collect runestones across the map that buff your offenses. These runestones are based on buffs you bring into the level, which can be merged outside of the level to create stronger versions.

The second, and probably biggest, way Siegecaster is different from other tower defense games is that you have to manually attack the enemies. There are no automated defenses. This adds a lot of mechanical skill to the game. With limited ammo on each weapon (increased by reload time buffs and the number of turrets you place), you want to make sure each attack counts, which can be hard when shooting at moving targets across the map. Different weapon types have different effects, with cannons clearing large areas, ballistae doing big damage to a single target, and archers serving as your main spam weapon. It takes some time to learn the best way to use each weapon, and you have to know when to focus on fighting over building and switch between the two during a level.

A game of Siegecaster can become overwhelming quickly. The levels, while they start rather slowly, can see you surrounded by a huge horde of enemies, and the different attack patterns and behaviors of each enemy type can be a lot to track at once. This challenge is either exactly what you are here for or can be a bit too much to enjoy. I will say it took me maybe an hour to get past the first level and a few hours of gameplay to really learn the different enemy interactions and best strategies.

This is partially due to the game’s tutorial. Siegecaster’s tutorial introduces you to all of the information at once in a quick description of how things work. The way it’s written is a little too brief, which can make it hard to fully understand how to play. Thankfully, the game itself is not all that complicated. There is just a lot of trial and error involved before you fully understand how the elements interact and what the best strategies are, with the core gameplay coming to you fast.

Siegecaster is not free of bugs. The one notable example I remember was a crash to desktop that happened when I fired a cannonball at a group of enemies that seemed stuck on the first level. After it hit, the game froze, and I had to close it and restart, losing a bit of progress.

All in all, Siegecaster is an incredibly interesting little tower defense game. Though I didn’t get to the later levels and often found myself overwhelmed by the massive hordes, I chalked this up to a “skill issue” and certainly had fun with my time. While I can say that it won’t be a game for everyone, and not a game every tower defense enthusiast will enjoy, there is plenty to like, and it is worth giving it a chance if it has caught your interest.

Try Hard Guides was provided a code for Siegecaster for this review. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Siegecaster is available on Steam.