GridLocust

Swarm the maze in this reverse tower defense game.

Reclaim your alien planet by breaking the Grid's automated defenses. You are the Kith, creatures that learn to live together, humans and beasts, held together by the tendrils.

Download the build →
The Kith surge a turret line; a Repulsor wave flings minions and projectiles back.

GridLocust is a reverse tower defense game. You lead the Kith through an intricate maze: pick your hero, your beasts, and push through corridors full of automated turrets and droids. Reach the hub for a final boss fight.

Every level is a puzzle with more than one answer. The turrets own the sight lines, so you learn what to take out first: the gun, or the relay that powers it. Storm the front and trade lives for tempo, or take the quiet road: walls can be leapt, and the alarm beams sweep on a rhythm you can wait out, or trip on purpose with your cheapest beast while the rest of the team slips through.

Action-packed real-time strategy, with you in it. The camera follows your hero and your team, and the fight is wherever you are standing. No base to build, no build order to memorize, no second screen to manage.

The planet was supposed to be ready for them. Instead, the colonists survived by adapting to the local fauna, generation by generation, until there was no line left between the two. They are one people now, the Kith: humans and beasts, sheltered by the tendrils, plant roots that reach all of this world.

Then the terraforming fleet arrived, centuries late, set to prepare the planet for colonization. Its machines ran their protocol without hesitation: clear hostile wildlife, prepare for human habitation. The fleet no longer recognizes you. The Kith fight to survive.

A mech boss advances on the swarm, its flamethrower sweeping; minions scatter and flank.

How it plays

The gauntlet is the level, and you are the wave.

  • No base to build. Capture the maze instead. Stand by a vent and your gateway rises out of the ground. It pays for your beasts and heals whatever stands beside it. Hold it: a Grid droid left in the ring can raise the Grid's flag on it again.
  • Several teams, one budget. One team is on the field at a time. Call the other and it climbs out of your nearest gateway, paid for from the same pool as every body you lose.
  • Do not be fooled by the Grid's patience. Trip an alarm and droids drop from orbit. Cut the power first, or walk around.
Vael's beasts go over a sheer wall the ground team would have to walk around, and take the turret nest behind it.

The mazes

The three maps in the build: turret lines, destructible walls, mined lanes, caches off the route.

The Ribcage: a spiral corridor winding through six rings, each stretch holding one turret behind a wall with its power hub out on the corridor, plus a mined lane and caches off the line.
The Ribcage: the wall protects them more than it protects you.
The First Drip: a four ring map with two entries, a gun post on each approach passage, and the caches and the hub cluster the attack has to take to keep earning.
The First Drip: you stop spending and start earning.
The Three Mouths: three lanes converging on the core, every way inward a destructible wall, with the caches and relays in side pockets that have to be breached too.
The Three Mouths: change the tool, not the effort.