Jarred Defense Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Play
One misplaced tower rerouted my entire maze past my guns in Jarred Defense, and I still put three hours into this brutal
I dropped one tower expecting a bit more damage on the path the robots were already taking. Instead it rerouted the whole maze past almost every gun I had built, and I lost instantly midway through the wave.
Jarred Defense is from Jarred Cat Studios. Protect a cat in a jar from evil robots, force them through lava and poison, and endure unhelpful cat comments. No spells, no card modifiers. I played nearly three hours on mouse and keyboard. My verdict is Play, with the caveat that the learning curve is brutal.
Jarred Defense is a Play if you want hard old-school maze Tower Defense without card modifiers or FPS detours. Try the demo if watching your own maze betray you sounds fun rather than insulting. Skip it if you need a gentle onboarding ramp on the first session.
Pros
- True mazing with no predefined slots; routing enemies through lava and poison feels great when it works
- Dynamic maps where melting ice reshapes paths mid-run
- Tower upgrade branches and send-early scrap economy add real build decisions
- Frustration-to-fun ratio kept me playing for nearly three hours
- Endless mode leaderboard on Molten Hairball gives demo legs beyond the three maps
Cons
- Brutal learning curve; I nearly bounced off and suspect some players will before the maze clicks
- One bad tower placement can reroute the maze past your guns for an instant mid-wave loss
Cat in a jar, old-school TD
Jarred Cat Studios pitches a love letter to Warcraft III custom maps and Flash Tower Defense games. That landed for me. Robots spawn at an entrance and path toward a cat trapped in a jar. The cat has nine lives. Each robot that reaches it costs one. You place towers and walls on a grid to force the long way around.
As a Tower Defense game in the pure maze-building sense, there are no predefined tower slots. The maze is the weapon. Enemies always try to take the best route, which means one careless placement can reroute the whole path past your guns mid-wave. I did that more than once.
Hazards and shifting maps
Maps throw walls, lava, and corrosive poison tiles at you. Lava burns. Corrosion eats health. Sometimes lava is just a molten pool you cannot path through at all.
Maps are also dynamic. On one level ice blocks start as solid walls, then heat sources melt them and the route you planned is suddenly wrong. I have been cruising on a maze, ice melts, and I am just destroyed.
Towers, economy, and bosses
Three tower families at the start. Kinetic blasters always cost ten scrap. Pulse towers do AoE burst damage. Lasers stream continuous damage on one target. Pulse and laser get more expensive each time you build another. Walls are cheap. Send waves early for bonus scrap. Upgrade far enough and you pick a branch. Pulse can become frost that slows, or fire that adds damage over time.
Flying enemies turn up too. Bosses arrive on the ten-wave cadence. One boss splits into seven smaller bosses when you kill it. The whole loop runs on scrap from kills, placement, and upgrades.
Charger lesson and difficulty
The maze only works if you read enemy types. Charger robots accelerate on long straight paths and only slow down when they hit a corner. I built the longest straights I could because I thought more track meant more damage time. They hit stupid speeds. I went to Discord saying I was getting wrecked. The dev and a member called Aneadiel explained the corner thing. I started breaking up those lines and immediately did better.
The Steam page has difficult as the second word in the description. That is not fluff. I nearly bounced off multiple times. The frustration-to-fun ratio kept pulling me back anyway. Three maps in the demo. Molten Hairball has endless mode with a leaderboard. I got to wave thirty-five and landed on the board, even though I think it logged me as Netcat978 instead of my actual Steam name. My favourite moment was finally clearing Scratchpost Swamp after a pile of tries.
I do think the full game needs a smoother learning curve as more maps arrive. Right now it is brutal Strategy-grade punishment before the maze clicks. Once it clicks, the control you have over routing, hazards, and tower branches is really interesting.
Developer: Jarred Cat Studios
View on Steam
Watch the video review: YouTube
Tags: Tower Defense, Strategy, Indie, Cute, Base Builder, Score Attack, Cozy
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