When the Unreal Development Kit first was released it gave indie developers access to the power of the Unreal Engine and opened the way for tons of indie game developers looking to make the next big thing. One of the first games to come out of the UDK was Dungeon Defenders, a small but cool indie game that fused tower defense and action RPG gameplay to give gamers something really fun. Since then, the small free version of Dungeon Defenders is being expanded into a fully fledged digital release by the game's developer Trendy Entertainment and has already been released on iOS and the Android App Store, but is coming to XBLA, PSN and PC in the near future.
The core gameplay of Dungeon Defenders involves you and several of your friends defending your Crystal at the core of your base from advancing hordes of monsters. Rather than this playing out from the top-down view that many tower defense games use, you play from a third-person perspective. This makes the tower defense gameplay much closer to Monday Night Combat than Desktop Tower Defense.
The other side of Dungeon Defenders gameplay is the RPG elements that set the game apart from other tower defense games. In Dungeon Defenders you gain experience and gold as you slay monsters and just like most RPG's, as you level up you gain stat and skill points which the game allows you to spend on customizing your character's skills. While the game does feature vendors who will sell you items, monsters you slay will also drop weapons and equipment which you can choose to either use or sell for more gold.
In Dungeon Defenders you can choose to play as one of four different classes, with each class having access to different skills and is also able to build different defenses. The Apprentice is the spell casting-focused class and is able to build a variety of elementally charged defensive towers as well as fight monsters from afar using fire and arcane bolt spells which can be charged up to deal extra damage. While the Apprentice is a damage dealer, the Monk is much more of a support class. The Monk can stand on his own with some powerful melee attacks but can also be a valuable asset thanks to his powerful auras which can provide healing bonuses for his allies and slow and damage his foes. The Huntress is a ranged damage-dealing class similar to the Apprentice, but unlike the Apprentice, she utilizes either a bow or a gun weapon to blast her foes away and can deploy various traps to destroy monsters. The last class is the Squire and he is able to build up barricades as well as turrets and he focuses on dealing damage in melee combat with a powerful 360 degree spinning attack as well as normal sword combos.
Tying all this unique fusion of tower defense and action RPG gameplay together is the game's graphical style which gives the game a cartoony stylized look similar to games like League of Legends and Torchlight.
Dungeon Defenders is already out on iOS and Android but is coming out very soon for PC, XBLA and PSN.
