The nation of Argoria is under attack by the airfleet of invading nation Demo, and it's up to the player and their defences to stop the Demon invasion. Defending Argoria's forts against an oncoming enemy, you must purchase and place turrets on the structure and keep them in good working order. As enemy waves fly in, the player has to select a turret —only one at a time— and start firing. It's an intriguing combination of game types that's both strategy-oriented and action-packed.
A sort-of sequel The Lost Campaigns, and a point-and-click Adventure Game The Mary Reed Chronicles were also produced as part of the series.
The game can be played here
, The Lost Campaigns can be played here and The Mary Reed Chronicles can be played here.
Tropes present in the series:
- Airborne Mook: Every single enemy in the series is a flying machine of the Demo Empire. Justified as the Demo Empire is attacking from over the ocean.
- Alpha Strike: The Radio Plasmid gun is the only gun that can fire simultaneously, with other Radio Plasmid Guns. Since all of them fire at the mouse cursor, a combined effort can really dish out the damage quickly.
- Asteroids Monster: Frozen Peaks' "boss" level in Lost Campaigns has a Giant Mook that releases four teleporting machine gun drones upon destruction. It later appears as a regular enemy later on.
- Attack Its Weak Point: Almost every enemy has a weak spot. If you see anything on the enemy vehicles that resembles parachutes, flotation balloons or exposed Steampunk machinery, attacking them in those spots will make them hurt, often causing extra or even double damage. Usually, around halfway through the first level of each game, a Heavily Armored Giant Mook hanging from a very obvious bunch of balloons is introduced, quickly teaching the player that they need to strike said balloons to end it effectively.
- Boring, but Practical: The Barrier Decoy. It doesn't attack or do anything flashy, but it is completely immune to most small arms fire, draws enemy fire away and has loads of HP against other attacks. They are pretty much essential for helping your squishy attack turrets survive.
- Brutal Bonus Level: "The Twenty-Five" in Lost Campaigns. 25 waves of increasingly harder enemies including Degraded Bosses and Giant Mooks.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: The second game's Final Boss is immune to the Apocalypse Cannon which is otherwise a One-Hit Kill on all non-boss units. Even the "boss" units at the end of all the other levels are not immune to the Apocalypse Cannon.
- Degraded Boss: The very first boss in Lost Campaigns shows up in later levels as a Giant Mook. By then, you've got enough firepower to be able to deal with them. The final wave enemy of the second level (a carrier blimp carrying three mooks) also shows up as a regular enemy... in the first wave of the third stage.
- Difficult, but Awesome: The starting weapon, the Heavy Cannon. It has a good amount of health and a great amount of attacking power, but like the Bazooka in the Worms series, you need to aim it and charge and hold it to make its gravity-affected projectile fly further. Mastering this weapon, however, can and will decimate enemies in short order thanks to its incredibly high damage when upgraded.
- Downer Ending: In Lost Campaigns, despite the player's best efforts, the Empire of Demo manages to reach the capital kingdom of Argoria despite being crippled and raze it to the ground. All hope is not lost, however, as the princess and a few civilians manage to escape in time.
- Experience Points: Killing enemies causes your active turrets in battle to gain experience points, which allows them to level up and gain two skill points. Skill Points can then be used to upgrade turrets to be better suited at facing the invading forces.
- Fake Ultimate Mook: The first zone in each game tends to introduce a huge, durable, armored enemy battleship with heavy weaponry. It also has a bunch of very obvious balloons that it's hanging from, and once the player learns to Attack Its Weak Point, said enemy tends to pose far less of a threat.
- Final-Exam Boss: The Final Boss of Lost Campaigns, which has three forms:
- The first form is a huge, armored behemoth with a weakpoint in the underbelly, you need to position a weapon there and quickly attack it while enduring its salvos of huge, but destructible missiles, somewhat akin to the first boss.
- The second form has three vulnerable balloons as minions, all of which project Deflector Shields onto the boss. The player needs to attack the balloons and destroy them before hitting the boss in its exposed machinery, all the while the boss charges up a Wave-Motion Gun to attack the player's turrets in a similar manner to a Giant Mook.
- The final form has the boss become a fast, flying helicopter, essentially a King Mook version of the brown, teleporting helicopter enemies (themselves a King Mook version of another enemy) you faced in the level. Over here, speed and accuracy is key, as while the boss itself doesn't have too much HP, it puts out a lot of damage and flies and teleports past your defences in an erratic manner.
- Foregone Victory: Inverted in Lost Campaigns. Despite your efforts, the Empire of Demo will get to the city of Argoria in the end and raze it. In fact, the player's job isn't to destroy their forces, but to whittle them down and buy time for the inner defenders to get more preparations.
- Fragile Speedster: Drone enemies have low health, but they fly all over the place and are hard to hit due to small size. Later variants come with machine guns and even Teleport Spam.
- Genre Shift: The Mary Reed Chronicles is a point-and-click adventure game than a Tower Defense/Shoot 'Em Up hybrid.
- Giant Mook: Several of them. These range from a huge armored battleship carried by a bunch of flimsy balloons, to a Mook Maker carrying attack helicopters, to a strange contraption housing teleporting drones, to a huge L-shaped craft that provides enemies with Deflector Shields, to a dolphin-looking thing with a Wave-Motion Gun, to an irritatingly durable golden teleporting helicopter. Later on even the first boss becomes a Degraded Boss. All of them have a good amount of health, but a weak spot that makes them take incredible damage if attacked.
- Gold-Colored Superiority: In Lost Campaigns, almost all the boss-level enemies are made of shiny metal with golden highlights, including the Final Boss.
- The Goomba: Small helicopter drones have low health and have no weaponry at all. They are quite hard to hit without fast projectiles, however.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Several mooks have armored, gray metal spots on them. Attacking them there deals reduced damage or even none at all. Thankfully, all of these mooks have a weak point that the player can take advantage of.
- Hold the Line: All the games are like this, where the player needs to keep the enemy forces at bay until all waves are over. The sequel is even like this, where the player's efforts are to delay the inevitable invasion of Demo, not stop it.
- Immune to Bullets: The Barrier Decoy is immune to enemy small arms fire. This is very useful as enemies with said weaponry fire immediately as soon as they enter the screen, and opposing small arms fire is an Always Accurate Attack since your turrets cannot dodge.
- King Mook: In Lost Campaigns, the golden helicopter enemies are souped-up, armored versions of the teleporting drones. The final form of the Final Boss is an even stronger version of these golden helicopter enemies with armor-piercing rapid fire attacks and even more health.
- Logical Weakness: Enemies take far more damage than normal if they're shot in the balloons keeping them afloat, since they're useless if they cannot fly. Likewise, enemies with exposed machinery are vulnerable to damage on those sections.
- Mook Maker: The final wave of the second stage in Lost Campaigns features a blimp carrying three machine gun helicopters on its underside. It will release them one by one while also providing covering mortar fire.
- One-Hit Kill: The Apocalypse Cannon will destroy any non-boss enemy in the game, regardless of health/armor. This even includes the supposed bosses at the end of each stage that isn't the final one.
- Shoot the Medic First: In Lost Campaigns, one of the mooks is a gray helicopter that doesn't attack, but projects Deflector Shields onto another enemy causing said enemy to enjoy Damage Reduction. Naturally, shooting down these gray helicopters is a top priority.
- Smart Bomb: The Apocalypse Cannon destroys all enemies on the screen as long as they aren't the Final Boss.
- Spread Shot: The Spread Machine Gun fires a 3-way spread shot at rapid intervals. With enough attack boosts, it becomes one of the best weapons in the game, even becoming able to do Death of a Thousand Cuts to Heavily Armored Mooks.
- Steampunk: The game's aesthetic boils down to this, especially in the designs of Demo's airships.
- Stone Wall:
- On the Argorian side, we have the Barrier Decoy. It's a decoy turret that has no offense and cannot even deal any damage. However, it has a very good amount of health, and placing one in front attracts enemy machinegun fire to it, which the Barrier Decoy is immune to.
- On the Demo side, we have an enemy that appears to be a huge metal chain wall that rises from the bottom of the screen. It doesn't attack at all, but attacks to the chain wall itself deal no damage, and its sole purpose is to block the player's shots from the enemies. Fortunately for the player, said chain wall is carried by very vulnerable balloons.
- We Cannot Go On Without You: Lose all your offense turrets and you lose the level, even if you had defensive turrets. This is justifed since you would not have any means to destroy the invading air fleet.
- Zerg Rush: Drone enemies appear in great numbers but have very low health individually. The Frozen Peaks stage features mainly weak but numerous units, and the boss is even a unit that releases a swarm of drones when destroyed. That is not to say that all the enemies in the particular level are weak, since it also features a Heavily Armored Mook enemy as well as a Deflector Shield generating helicopter.
