Nordhold is out now, and one of the year’s most interesting tower defense games

Any strategy fan likes to see a nice tower defense game, and hey, here’s one now: Nordhold has you managing a little Nordic village and using replayable combinations of towers to defend it from hordes of fantasy monsters.

It’s chock full of all the modern roguelike stuff—metaprogression, a slew of customizable upgrades, and the like—but the foundational mechanics are what really matter, and these foundations are solid ones.

Earlier this year when I was playing and writing one sentence reviews of over 70 Steam Next Fest demos, I played the Nordhold demo and liked it.

“I’m a simple man: You give me hex-based grids and I’ll play your weird little tower defense demo. It was good, too,” I said. Turns out people think the same as me for the game proper, which is sitting pretty at 447 reviews, 91% positive, a few days after release.

Rounds of Nordhold start with choosing your hero, but in true roguelike style they snowball with relics for economic and defensive bonuses, customizable upgrades that get picked from unpredictable pools, and an oracle that appears to give devil’s bargains like a few rounds of stronger enemies that give bigger rewards.

It’s definitely a contender for the most interesting tower defense that’ll release this year, mostly because it’s just so very replayable. You can find Nordhold on Steam for $20, though it’s 20% off until April 8.