Fangstorm Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
A first-person wave defense game where goblins ignore your carefully placed traps because you forgot there are three rou
Wave one. Goblins incoming. I had spent everything I had on traps, carefully placed, covering what I thought was the main approach. The goblins came from a completely different direction, walked straight past all of it, and I had to fight the whole first wave with just a sword and a gun. No traps. No backup. Just me panicking in first person while a horde of goblins tried to kick my castle door in.
Fangstorm is a first-person wave defense game from solo dev Jamie Janas. You are an orc resurrected as a demigod, defending your castle from goblin hordes across six demo waves. My verdict is Play.
Fangstorm is a play if you want Tower Defense planning with first-person combat when the plan fails. Read the route preview, trap the lane the goblins actually use, and expect to swap to the sword when the gun cools down. The demo is short, violent, and much smarter after wave one stops lying to you. Wishlist it if the playtest is still open; if not, keep an eye on Jamie Janas for the full release pass.
Pros
- Three-route previews reward paying attention before you spend gold on traps
- Gun cooldown forces you into melee instead of back-line sniping every wave
- Clean sword and gun switching keeps first-person fights readable under pressure
- Escalating goblin types change how much your traps can carry alone
- Demo run length fits repeated experimentation without overstaying
Cons
- Easy to waste an entire wave-one budget on the wrong approach
- Some wall and ceiling traps fight the castle layout for mounting spots
- Difficulty ceiling in the six-wave slice flattens once you find a working pattern
- Time-gated playtest access may already be gone for new players
- Armoured enemies can make earlier trap investments feel irrelevant
Three routes and the trap lesson
Wave one is forgiving enough that I had time to figure out what I had missed. There are three separate routes into the castle. I had been reading the pre-wave route preview wrong for longer than I would like to admit.
Once that clicked, the game opened up. Between waves you spend gold on defenses: flame towers, floor spikes, spinning saw dummies set to goblin. The game tells you which routes enemies are taking before each wave, which is generous. Fangstorm is Tower Defense at the planning layer and a brawl when the plan slips. The Strategy is in believing the preview and building for the right lane instead of the one that feels obvious.
My favourite setup was a heavily trapped kill zone. Spikes on the floor, saw dummies spinning at chest height, then I would stand back and pick off stragglers with a gun.
Gun, sword, and escalation you cannot outsource
The gun has a cooldown, which stops you hiding at the back and sniping the whole run. When it runs dry you close the distance with the sword. Switching between the two felt clean. No fumbling, no awkward transitions. You are just suddenly in the fight.
That matters because the goblins escalate properly. Wave one panic, where you are using pure Action combat to cover for a bad plan, feels different from wave five, where a goblin in full armour walks through your spike trap like it is not there and you have to deal with it personally.
Layout limits and demo ceiling
Wall and ceiling traps were where I hit a snag. Some options need the right surface to attach to, and the castle layout does not always give you one where you want it. A few runs in I started wishing I could build a temporary wall just to mount something on. That feeling is probably more of a full release question than a demo flaw, but it showed up repeatedly.
After a few runs I stopped fearing death, not because it got easier, but because I had worked out a pattern that held. The demo's six waves take about ten to fifteen minutes, which is the right length for a playtest, but it leaves you wanting a higher difficulty ceiling once your trap layout stops breaking.
Playtest access and first-impression gap
This was a time-gated playtest when I played it, so it might not be available anymore. Full release was still to be confirmed. What stuck with me is the gap between the first bloody thirty seconds, where your plan collapses, and the runs where Fangstorm feels chaotic, energetic, and smarter than those opening seconds suggest.
Developer: Jamie Janas
View on Steam
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Tower Defense, Action, Strategy, Indie, Hack and Slash, Base Builder, PvE
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