Crystal Defense is a paid action game from the Torni Games team. This combines elements from first-person shooters and tower defense games, with the player in charge of both base-building defense and active, firsthand fighting. Explore a wide range of upgrades on your weapons and turrets as you face increasingly difficult opponents. What it lacks in story, it makes up for its potentially strategic gameplay.

Crystal Defense offers unique gameplay for a couple of hours despite its use of clunky animation, dated graphics, and a simple user interface. Imagine a cross between Halo Infinite and Bloons TD 6.

Simple and straightforward FPS TD

Crystal Defense is an ingenious combination of first-person shooter (FPS) and tower defense (TD) games. For the FPS part, you actively participate in the defense of your base with a rifle that can be upgraded toward being a long-range sniper, a quick assault rifle, or a mix of both. Choose between range, fire rate, and damage. Every upgrade in this game can be bought with money earned from defeating enemies.

Its other half is the tower defense, which employs similar upgrading mechanics. There are different turrets that follow a strength-weakness relationship with different types of enemies. The game is considerate, though, by offering you a build phase that also works as a break between enemy waves. It’s worth noting that turrets can only be built on designated platforms, which will require you to strategize at some point.

As mentioned, the game itself screams low production value. The graphics are dated, looking like an early 2000s game. In terms of animation, your movement and those of the turrets are clunky, while most enemies just float across the screen without their respective movement sequences. Also, while the “levels” change every now and then, the difficulty scaling doesn’t really keep up—making it boring midgame.

A step in the right direction

In terms of ideas, Crystal Defense has a promising concept that surprisingly isn’t picked up yet by other game development studios. You set up defenses while actively participating in the fight against the upcoming waves. Unfortunately, this combination of action and strategy is undermined by the lack of effort put into executing this premise. Additionally, the game immediately loses steam because of slow difficulty progression.