Nordhold

A surprisingly complex tower defense. It has the appeal of the GemCraft series, but the mechanics are different. You build your defense towers along a path on hexagonal terrain and at the same time build up the economy of your village to provide for more resources to build more towers. The first games you play are spent on unlocking all the buildings in some kind of meta-game. Once you have unlocked all the buildings, there is a change to the whole game dynamic as now you can chase beating the game to level 30, when all hex tiles are exhausted. After beating level 30, there is the chase of high-scores by getting your economy and defense good enough to survive wave after wave.

The game could be better, as the first 10 to 15 rounds of a game are mainly about kickstarting your economy, and that slog gets somewhat repetitive. Instead of having to play through these rounds, the game could start you in round 8 (or whatever) with ample resources instead. Otherwise, there is lots of strategy involved combining the right kinds of towers to find synergies. There is the bad luck of drawing bad tiles, but that usually isn't too punishing.

If you like tower defense games, this one is certainly one of the best in the last 5 years.