While there’s no question that strategy games can get pretty difficult and less mainstream-friendly on their challenging end, there are subgenres that have wider appeal. Given their popularity on tablets and mobile devices, tower defense titles absolutely hit that sweet spot, but ever since playing the Kingdom Rush series I haven’t seen anyone come to the table with new ideas to knock them off the top of the heap. Enter Thronefall, a tower defense game with quite a lot in common with that series, but that manages to pepper in both nods to the great indie strategy series Kingdom as well as a more sandbox structure as it progresses that helps it stand out as something special.

Forgoing strict paths that are often used in the subgenre, and instead using more open areas that can be approached from multiple directions, right off the bat I appreciate the fact that Thronefall doesn’t necessarily look like your average tower defense title. You’re instead just a king with a castle, who is then able to use whatever gold he has in a way that’s pretty well identical to how it’s done in the Kingdom series, throwing your coins either to build new structures or upgrade them. At specified points you’ll be able to construct defensive structures like towers, barracks, walls, and more, which you’ll obviously need to survive waves of attackers, but you’ll want to balance that with economic structures like houses and more to ensure that as each turn ends you’ll continue to accumulate more gold. You’ll absolutely need all the gold you can collect and be sure to continue to invest it wisely, hoping to set up for success as you reach the final waves that tend to bring heavier hitters to the party.

Those base elements obviously work well, but they’re really just the baseline of what you’d expect within the subgenre, where Thronefall then really takes things to the next level is in how many options you’ll unlock over time that let you fine tune your play. While your king is able to move around to both direct units and help attack enemies during skirmishes, his role will be capable of moving in different directions the more you play and unlock. Changing his weapons can make him more formidable in a number of ways, but you could also tune things to improve his troop control to make him more of a general rather than a participant. When you upgrade buildings you’ll also typically be given options for how you’d like to improve them, opening the door to a variety of strategies as well. If you find the game to be a bit too easy, or would simply like to try to unlock more even quicker, you’ll also have the option to enable a variety of mutations to make the game tougher by boosting enemy health, damage, and more. As you unlock more and more perks, weapons, and mutations you’re then able to really tune the gameplay further to your liking, making each round even more challenging and fun.

Thronefall has not only come to the eShop well prepared, it has managed to shove aside the competition to stand at the top of the tower defense hill without question. While it hasn’t radically altered what you’d expect from the subgenre, the depth of options and tweaks it puts at your fingertips is quite impressive. Figuring out how to remain generally casual-friendly, but then leave in so many provisions for toughening things up for those who want to be challenged, is a great step forward. Considering how many of these sorts of games I’ve played over the years that have pretty well remained stuck on the more dull and simplistic end of the spectrum, it’s great to see a title that proves with some ambition you can do so much more and continue to push the tower defense subgenre to new heights.