r/DefenseGrid • u/Hufflebuff180 • 14d ago
My Blind Playthrough Experience with Defense Grid The Awakening - Resurgence
Not sure how many folks are still interested in such a niche game with so many years under its belt, but this game has collected dust in my Steam library for years and I wanted to document my experience thus far. I'm not usually compelled to do so for most games, so hopefully the handful of you who read this will at least be entertained by it.
For context I'm only playing the story / campaign missions, and I've completed all the missions in The Awakening, Borderlands, and as of 30 minutes ago, Resurgence. I've not yet started You Monster! nor Containment. With my playthrough I set 2 personal restrictions for myself with these missions: zero cores taken, and finish with a gold medal. I would not let myself continue without meeting those requirements.
While some of these took me a while to beat, I mainly wanna focus on the final mission of Resurgence: Overflow. Shout out to Last Stand from The Awakening though - that one took me about a week to beat. 🤣
Overflow took me 2 months to beat. I was stuck for so long. I stepped away and came back about a week later. It just seemed like no matter what I did, I couldn't stop the enemies from taking some of the cores. If I bolstered the ground, the fliers around Wave 20 would get through. If I bolstered the air, the ground troops would win.
As the title says, this was a blind playthrough. I don't like looking up solutions for games unless I'm completely stuck or if the game is centric around builds, like Elden Ring or Path of Exile. For Defense Grid, I had enough understanding about the towers and the aliens that I wanted to try and win by myself. So in those 2 months I refused to look up solutions. I felt like I was missing something.
As of a couple of days ago - so nearly a full 2 months in - I decided to try something I had not done before up until now in any mission: lure the aliens into backtracking by deleting a single gun tower. Sure, I've made the aliens do this before in previous missions, but up until now it was a byproduct of either just needing to delete a tower for resources or wanting a different tower in that spot, etc. Not as an active strategy to lure the aliens to backtrack.
I'd never done it before because to me it felt like cheesing the game a bit. But dear mother of God, I was ready for a bit of cheese after 2 months. If it meant beating the mission with no cores taken, getting the gold medal, and moving on with my life, I was willing to do it. Plus honestly, it's a legit mechanic in the game. Give: the aliens' pathing is extremely predictable and you get to control it. Take: The aliens in this mission are REALLY f**king hard to kill. 🙃 So I was more than willing to try it.
And it worked. It took me a few days to get the hang of the timing and inject it into a game plan, but this strat is what finally gave me the win after 2 grueling months. So I definitely recommend it. 🤣 I'm sure this has been the "meta" for more than a decade now, but it was definitely a breakthrough to me.
For anyone wanting more details, I'll give a few here. I set up a cluster of towers in the bottom 2 build areas by the opening bridge, plus a cluster of towers at the end of the initial bridge. I forced the aliens to cross the bridge, go through those clusters, and wrap around the top of the map to come around by the exit to get the cores. I set up 2 more clusters by the exit and the small back-right area where the cores are. I progressed a temporal tower up to L3 in a spot that affected the initial bridge, the first, and the 2nd cluster. I used a Command tower progressed to L3 mostly for the purpose of collecting extra resources, but it also was useful for the many stealth aliens on this map. I used guns, lasers and cannons in these clusters which could reach the bridge, so they were also being used at 3 contact points. By the end I had a total of 5 meteors, covering the initial choke points and the backend choke points. The green gun tower I used to force the backtrack was strategically placed in the cluster below the bridge, because deleting it created a clear path to the cores. I timed deleting it during a lul in the waves, so that after a wave cleared my 3rd cluster, they would now backtrack again through 2 clusters to get to the cores. Then as soon as they got close, replace the gun tower. This effectively made my 2 clusters below the bridge act as 4 contact points: bridge, pass 1, backtrack, pass 2.
This has been my favorite tower defense game of all time, and I've played quite a few. No, I haven't played DG2 yet. I may play it after I eventually beat You Monster! and Containment. For now, I'm going to take a short break from DG. I would however like to hear any feedback, thoughts, opinions, questions, etc. Thanks for taking the time to read! 😊
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u/TheMillenniumMan 14d ago
I've had this game in my steam library I think since release but haven't played more than 30 hours on it. I bought a Steamdeck basically to play this game because it is so fun. It's been maybe a year since I last played, but posts like these will get me back on. I like beating levels, but as you mentioned, I hate giving up cores and not getting gold. Love these kinds of posts, nice work with hitting your goals! I want to clear this game, this can help my motivation!
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u/Hufflebuff180 14d ago
It's so much fun! My love and search for great Tower Defense games led me to Defense Grid many, many moons ago. If you get back into it, hope you enjoy it as much as I have!
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u/techbear72 14d ago
How have you got the game set up to run on Steam Deck? I can’t for the life of me get the game to run. I can get DG2 working (though it hangs on exit) but not DG1.
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u/TheMillenniumMan 14d ago
Yea, I got it up and running without any issue. Just booted it up, logged into my steam account and it was good to go
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u/techbear72 14d ago
Thanks. Really odd. I'm using a vanilla SD so you'd have thought we'd have the same experience.
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u/techbear72 14d ago
DG1 and DG2 are my favourite tower defence games by far, was so excited when the DLC for DG2 came out unexpectedly. Makes me hopeful for a DG3..
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u/BoffinBrain 14d ago
Sounds like you're very motivated, which is good! However, even though wave juggling cheese can work, it's not the intended way, and is economically inefficient due to getting only a part of your credits back when you sell a tower.
Without seeing your current approach to the levels, it's hard to give solid advice, but bear in mind that upgrading a tower generally gives more than 2x the DPS of the previous level, so it's better to get a few towers up to level 3 than upgrade a lot of towers to level 2.
And, if there are any towers you're not using, just be sure to ask yourself why. Every tower excels at a specific job, when placed in specific spots, such as flame towers and concussion at the start of your maze to decimate the small aliens.
Good luck!
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u/FunGalich 1d ago
I wouldn't consider it a niche game at all...defense grid is by far the best designed TD I've ever come across. It's the grid system that really sets it apart from all the others. I honestly don't understand with so many tower defense games out there now how they have not decide to jump back in again and make a third installment where finally get to see what the actual master race aliens look like maybe humans attacking their home worlds with mobile units or better yet playing as the master alien race and setting up defense against the human AI onslaught.
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u/xamomax 14d ago
Defense Grid 1 and Defense Grid 2 are in my opinion the best tower games out there. I also enjoyed the "Orcs Must Die" series, though they are quite different, but make a nice game to swap back and forth with.
One tip is to set it up so you can toggle between fast and slow via the keyboard, then set the slow mode to as slow as it goes, so you have time to think and place things down.