Siege of Centauri provides a familiar and fun tower defense experience with plenty of reasons for players to keep coming back for more.
Siege of Centauri is a standard tower defense game with enough depth to remain engaging for its six to eight-hour campaign. As a tower defense game, Siege of Centauri doesn't do too much to set itself apart when compared to the likes of Orcs Must Die or genre hybrid Plants Vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare, however the game still provides a fun and enjoyable experience. It's very easy to get into but quite difficult to master and face waves of enemies on the tougher difficulties. Furthermore, the game should feel right at home to StarCraft fans as the game shares a similar aesthetic to Blizzard's massive sci-fi real-time strategy.
The campaign in Siege of Centauri is made up of a standard mission structure that has the player going from location to location to defend colonies. The story revolves around the planet Proxima Centauri, one of humanity's first interstellar colonies. After Centauri goes dark, the player finds that aliens have invaded and must use a variety of towers and orbital abilities to defend their people. The levels themselves are varied and feature unique landscapes and paths that become more interesting as the game progresses. Additionally, levels start barren with a couple of facilities that players can upgrade. Eventually, traps will be introduced that provide one time uses that'll allow players to get themselves out of a tight spot.
Towers are the primary source of defense in Siege of Centauri. There are plenty of tower types that players must become accustomed to in the game and they're all unlocked as the campaign progresses. In addition to towers, special units and abilities are available via a separate currency. Giant mechs, energy beams, and standard defense units can be deployed to hold up massive waves of enemies who'd otherwise soar right past towers. It's mixing these abilities with the player's tower defenses that brings about the most fun moments in Siege of Centauri.
Currency plays a major role in tower defense games and this is no different in Siege of Centauri. While players aren't able to build specific structures, they can upgrade any of the premade buildings found throughout each level. Many of them offer unique bonuses to either energy - used for the aforementioned energy abilities - or metal, which is used for towers. These upgrades require quite a bit of currency so using them at the correct moment is very important. If used incorrectly, the upgrades could result in an overwhelming enemy force with no towers to stop them.
One of the most persistent problems with Siege of Centauri is the number of times the game would crash. Even with powerful hardware, the game would consistently crash in the middle of hectic levels or when booting up. This definitely will cause a ton of frustration for players but it's hard to pinpoint exactly why the game has this issue, and whether or not it's an isolated incident. Other than that though, the game is smooth sailing from start to finish when it's on. Unfortunately, this one issue is constant enough to ultimately take away from what otherwise is a really solid tower defense game.
Siege of Centauri offers up some other modes outside of the main campaign. There is an endless survival mode where players can compete for high scores and try and survive for as long as possible. A mode like this allows for players to flex their strategic muscles and try out a variety of different strategies. For those that are really into the tower defense genre, this mode alone provides plenty of reason to consistently come back to Siege of Centauri.
Siege of Centauri also has a map creator. While this mode is much appreciated and allows for endless amounts of content to come to Siege of Centauri, it's ultimately not as user-friendly as it should be. Players looking for something more simplistic in terms of level design, like Super Mario Maker 2 for instance, won't find that here. Nevertheless, that hasn't stopped a handful of players from publishing various levels to the game already. It is worth mentioning that there's a lengthy guide included in the game, so if players want to learn how to create levels, it's certainly possible.
While Siege of Centauri isn't a groundbreaking game by any means, it'll be appealing to fans of the tower defense genre. It does its job in doing justice to that niche despite a lackluster story and some technical issues. These things are fairly easy to overlook since the gameplay itself is fun.
Siege of Centauri is available now on PC for $14.99. Screen Rant was provided with a digital download code for review.