Ridge Hold Steam Demo Review
Verdict: Skip
A cute 2D tower defence with warm art, derpy little villagers, and a castle to hold. The controls fight you and the loop
Ridge Hold is a Cute 2D Tower Defense about building a Cozy fantasy village on a cliff, gathering wood and gold between waves, and holding the stairs to your castle. Steam lists Thronefall as a similar game, and I have three hours in Thronefall and enjoyed it, so I was hoping for something in that shape. The demo is five waves. I cleared it twice. It is still a Skip.
My verdict is a Skip. Shame, because the art is really good and the general idea of holding the high ground works. The controls need a lot of work, the strategy needs more depth, and even a cosy fantasy village needs something to do between waves. Right now the challenge is fighting your mouse to keep the villagers in line rather than the enemies climbing the stairs. If the art has already got you, this is one to keep an eye on for later. Current build is not the one to spend an evening with.
Pros
- The warm art and the derpy little villagers still made me smile a run later
- The high-ground layout with cliffs, stairs, and choke points is a solid core idea
- Towers only fire with an archer inside, and archers can also perch on top of barracks: neither is explained, and working it out is where the map starts to make sense
Cons
- No multi-select, no camera keys, and a mouse that slips off the screen turn a two-minute wave into an unnecessary fight with the interface
- No tooltips, and three houses at three costs with no hint of what any of them do differently
- Villagers get stuck on the same overlapping trees run after run for reasons the game does not explain, and wood collection stalls at random
- Archers and towers carry the defence outright, so warriors and monks feel like buildings you unlock for completeness
Art and Pitch
The little villagers look slightly derpy, and I am hoping that is intentional. If the studio was going for stoic and cool, this would read as insulting. That is what made me click the page.
Steam files it under Strategy and Tower Defense and points at Thronefall as the reference. The pitch is build a Cozy village, train warriors and archers, and hold the high ground. You pick a team colour, and a two-minute timer starts counting down to the first wave.
Missing Information
A light tutorial pinned to the top asks for a tower, a barracks, two warriors, then a house for more troops. Nothing else tells you what any building does. I dropped a tower with no idea of its range, the first purple wave arrived, and the tower did not reach them.
We won and lost one troop, so I got away with it. Later I worked out the tower does not shoot on its own. You put an archer inside, and the same archer can also sit on top of a barracks, so a barracks doubles as another overlook. The game does not tell you either of those things.
Resource Problems
Between waves the villagers chop wood and dig gold. Trees do regrow, though it seems to be on a timer rather than per wave, and the game does not spell it out. Gold pays for units and buildings, and once my archer stack was full I mostly stopped needing more of it.
Wood was the recurring headache. Some trees overlap each other and refuse to be chopped, and villagers get stuck on the same ones run after run with no explanation. I kept wanting a bell to call every villager home before the next wave. Instead you click them one at a time. The mouse keeps getting lost off the edge of the screen. You cannot select more than one unit. WASD to move the camera would help a lot. Rocks can apparently be dug up, and nothing happened when I did it. Houses come in three sizes at three costs, and the only difference I could see was which direction they face.
Balance and Verdict
I trained the two warriors the tutorial asked for and never built another one. By wave three of my second run I had every archer I needed on the castle, in the towers, and on top of the barracks. After that I only repaired damage between waves. Archers on towers do enough that you do not need warriors.
Monks unlock through the monastery and heal, but with no warriors on the map they have no one to heal. It strips two-thirds of the military side out of the game. It says Cozy on the box, and I still wanted a speed-up button.
When a wave did hit, I could repair damage in real time as long as I had wood in the bank. Enough wood in the bank means there is no risk. Maybe the wood budget is meant to be the challenge and I just had too much of it. The end screen promised more maps, difficulty options, new units, and further updates, so this is one to keep an eye on down the line.
Developer: Pixel Camel Studios / Pixel Camel Studios
View on Steam
Tags: Strategy, Tower Defense, Cute, Cozy, Indie
Related Reviews
- Jarred Defense: One misplaced tower rerouted my entire maze past my guns in Jarred Defense, and I still put three hours into this brutal
- Teeko: Teeko is a cute sloth Tower Defense platformer where defending Granny's food stand with coconut trees worked better than
- NO ENTRY: OUR BURROW: Cute animals, rubber ducks, and a linking system that sets it apart from the tower defense crowd.
- A Little Age: A cozy village builder where your workers walk supplies home on little legs, the temple drains what you send, and the la
- Goblins of Elderstone: A goblin tribe city builder with burrow tunnels worth building and skeleton raids you can mostly ignore. I am glad I tri
- PARADICE: A dice-racing Board Game ported from mobile to PC. The mobile UI came with it, and so did the energy systems, the loot b
Browse all Steam demo reviews