Dungeon Defenders

Dungeon Defenders
Xbox Live Arcade Cover Art
Developer(s)	Trendy Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Reverb Communications
Engine	Unreal Engine 3
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows, Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network, iOS, Android, Mac OS X, Linux
Release date(s)	iOS NA December 15, 2010 Android NA December 23, 2010 Windows, XBLA NA October 19, 2011[1] PSN NA October 18, 2011[2] Mac OS X NA March 15, 2012 Linux NA December 19, 2012[3]
Genre(s)	Tower defense, Action RPG

Dungeon Defenders is a multiplayer video game developed by Trendy Entertainment that combines the genres of tower defense and action RPG. It is based on a showcase of the Unreal Engine named Dungeon Defense.^[4] The game takes place in a fantasy setting where players control the young apprentices of wizards and warriors and defend against hordes of monsters.^[5] Dungeon Defenders was announced on August 25, 2010, and has been released on Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and PC.^[6] Support for the Move accessory is planned for inclusion in the PlayStation Network version.^[7] Epic Games' Mark Rein has stated that there will be cross platform play between the PlayStation 3 and the PlayStation Vita.^[8] The game was released on October 19, 2011 through Steam.^[9]

Dungeon Defenders has been a commercial success, selling over 250,000 copies in first two weeks of release.^[10] As of December 22, 2011, the game sold 600,000 copies worldwide, mainly through the use of Steam.^[11] By February 2012, the game's publisher reported over one million sales across Xbox Live, PSN, and Steam.^[12]

Gameplay

Dungeon Defenders is a mix of Tower Defense, RPG, and High Fantasy/Action/Adventure where between one to four players work together to protect one or more Eternia Crystals from being destroyed by waves of enemies which include goblins, orcs, kobolds, ogres, and wyverns. The game features a number of levels, consisting of around five total waves, through its campaign mode, or other levels as part of challenges; some of these levels may feature a final wave that includes a boss battle against a unique foe. The player characters defend crystals by either magically creating, maintaining, and upgrading towers or other defensive elements that damage or divert the enemy monsters, or by using melee and ranged attacks to defeat enemies directly. On easier difficulties, players have an indefinite amount of time prior to a wave to study the level's map to see where monsters will come from and the type or number of monsters, to place traps and defenses, and to manage the characters' equipment. Traps and defenses are limited by the available mana that the character has - more mana can be obtained by defeating monsters or opening chests that appear between waves - as well as a total "defense value" for the level, limiting the number of traps that can be placed. The characters can be damaged by enemy attacks, and can be killed in battle but will respawn after a few seconds, unless Hardcore mode is selected. If an Eternia Crystal has taken too much damage, it will be destroyed and the players will lose that level. Successfully defending a wave will earn the characters experience points in the form of banked mana based on the difficulty plus additional bonuses, such as preventing any damage to the crystals; successfully completing all waves of a level will earn the players a large banked mana boost. Monsters will also drop items that can be sold for additional banked mana.

The difficulty of the level is set by the hosting player after choosing a level; the strength, number, and types of monsters that are faced are influenced by this selection and the number of players in the match, as well as the quality of the equipment that may be generated as rewards. The player has additional options, such as removing the indefinite time between waves, instead forcing players to prepare for an upcoming wave on a countdown timer. For the campaign levels, players must work through each level before unlocking the next, but may return to earlier levels to try to improve their performance, challenge the level at a higher difficulty, or simply to grind for better rewards.

Characters are persistent for a player. The player can manage any number of characters, though characters are kept separate between Trendy's ranked servers and for unranked play. Characters are selected from the available character classes: four were shipped with the game, while additional classes have been added in the form of downloadable content on the Microsoft Windows version.^[13] Each class has a unique set of traps or defense, a specific set of weapons that they can equip, and two special abilities they can use in combat. As the character levels up with banked mana experience, the player can allocate points among a range of characteristics affecting the character or the traps or defenses they lay out. Additional bonuses to these characteristics can come from the equipment the character is equipped with. New equipment can be purchased using banked mana either in the game's store or in other player's auctions, dropped by killing monsters, or collected as rewards after defeating waves of enemies. Banked mana can be spent to upgrade equipment, allowing the player to improve the bonuses that the equipment provides to the characters. The player maintains separate inventories of equipment across the ranked and unranked servers, but this inventory will be common for all of the player's characters in that mode.

Dungeon Defenders: First/Second Wave

First Wave is the obsolete mobile version of Dungeon Defenders, and was one of the first Unreal Engine 3 games available for iOS and the first available on Android, with a recent patch allowing cross-platform multiplayer gaming between the two mobile operating systems via GameSpy.

Second Wave was a mobile version of Dungeon Defenders. It was free on the Google Play Market, but paid on the App Store. It featured a revamped menu system and improved controls.

As of December 2012 it is no longer available from the Google Play Market.

Sequel

Dungeon Defenders II was announced just prior to the 2013 PAX East convention, to be playable there and starting a beta period. The sequel will feature the same gameplay, but will expand to a larger roster of 24 characters at launch along with many more varied tower types. The game will be free-to-play with microtransactions to unlock certain heroes that are otherwise earnable through play.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 83.15% (PC)[14] 80.85% (PS3)[15] 78.40% (X360)[16] Metacritic 81/100 (PC)[17] 80/100 (PS3)[18] 77/100 (X360)[19] Review scores Publication Score GamesRadar 7/10 (PC, PS3, X360)[20] GameSpot 6.5/10 (X360)[21] GameSpy (PC)[22] IGN 8.5/10 (PC, PS3, X360)[23][24][25] Official Xbox Magazine 9.0/10 (X360)[26] TeamXbox 6.5/10 (X360)[27]

Dungeon Defenders received generally favourable reviews. At review aggregator website Metacritic the game attained overall scores of 81, 80 and 77 out of 100 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360 respectively.^[17][18][19]

References

External links

• Official website