Kingdom Rush Review

 Kingdom Rush is one of the most accurate transfers of franchises to the table. Conversions of well-known franchises to board games do not always turn out to be successful (it's not for nothing that no one discusses Batman: Arkham City Escape...). But in this case, it turned out to be a masterful adaptation that preserved the atmosphere of the original. All the mechanics make you think, "Well, of course, this is how it should work on the table!" The conversion is not one hundred percent, but fans of the series will certainly not be disappointed with the work done by the authors.

 Explanation for those unfamiliar with the franchise: a real-time tower defense game for PC and mobile. You build towers along the road filled with hordes of mobs. The more you kill, the more money you get, which you can use to build new towers and improve existing ones, which in turn will help you deal with even tougher enemies.

 In the co-op Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time, players also build towers along a fixed route, destroy hordes of mobs, control powerful heroes and upgrade towers. The game is designed for 2-4 players, the games take about an hour.

 The action of the board takes place after the end of the events of the computer original. In peacetime, the towers were dismantled, which gave the Time Mage the opportunity to gather the forces of evil and tear through the very fabric of space-time. The engineers and mages of the kingdom, which was left defenseless, quickly learned to cope with the magic of time and call towers from the past to the battlefield.

 During the player's turn, they place towers along the road so that they shoot at hordes of minions walking along it. On each tile of the horde, a grid is drawn, in which several minions are placed in a certain order. To defeat the horde, you need to cover with polymino attacks all the cells of the tile on which minions are drawn. At the end of each turn, the hordes advance, and if they reach the end of the road, each minion left uncovered by an attack will take away one HP from you. If there is no HP left, it's game over.

 Cool feature: You decide which towers to place where based on what polymino attacks they fire. For example, an archer tower shoots an L-shaped polymino that covers 4 cells - but only in the direction in which it is placed. Improved turrets can rotate. Some turrets can also fire in multiple directions, attack multiple times, or fire from afar.

 This puzzle is the essence of the gameplay; its most wonderful part. Attacks cannot overlap each other or hang from horde tiles. So, should we place a wizard's tower here? It will cover only 2 horde cells with 4 uncovered. Is this too ineffective a move? Or maybe detain it with a movement-blocking militia and destroy it in the next round? If the red player places an archer tower in front of my artillery, can we coordinate attacks? How to optimally solve the puzzle and arrange the Tetris pieces in their places is a difficult and exciting challenge.

 Yes, about partners: Another feature of Kingdom Rush is how you upgrade towers. To upgrade it to the next level, you don't play the tower card, but pass it to the player to your left. At the end of the round, they will return this card to the stockpile and instead take into hand an improved version of it, which will become available for placement in the next round. A simple and brilliant mechanic that forces you to plan ahead, taking into account not only whether you can afford not to play this tower on your turn, but also the fact that your partner will only be able to place it in themselves (unless they give it to you to re-improve ). Each player has a limited number of empty spaces under towers along the road. If played recklessly, a player may not have enough cards (or mismatched cards) to fill their rook slots.

 Another nice feature that greatly increases replayability is heroes. Everyone chooses a hero; he is your avatar (fans of the franchise will immediately recognize Malik and Aleria, for example). The hero is represented by a miniature occupying 2 by 2 cells. They can move along the road to the tail horde to attack them or use special abilities. Having lost HP, the hero will respawn on the next turn; sometimes it is advantageous to send them in a suicide attack. Also, each hero has his own abilities and his own style of play.

 To win, you need to destroy the portals opened by the Time Mage. Special cards in the horde deck are responsible for them. Portals appear at certain times. Not only are they hard to attack (only with upgraded turrets), but they also deal damage to heroes on engagement and destroy turrets that attack them. In short, you should be ready for them.

 The game feels well balanced. In every scenario, we felt tension and challenge, but we didn't feel like we were being pushed into a hopeless situation. Each time we won, but barely. You can't do without cooperation here, and planning ahead as well.

 The only downside to this mind-bogglingly large number of available puzzle options and combinations is analysis paralysis. Yes, one of our players experienced information overload while trying to find the optimal solution. In other cooperatives, there are usually moments: "Obviously, you have to do this and that," but here you can easily fall into a stupor due to the commotion with polymino.

 So, this puzzle with a cute cartoon drawing style (just like the original) can interest both children and adults. It is very cool and pleasant to find a way to optimally place the rows of your towers, annihilating hordes of attacking mobs. I recommend taking a closer look at Kingdom Rush.