The Case

Following in the footsteps of Sanctum, Coffee Stain Studios aims to deliver a new and improved tower defence game that is both better and bigger than the first game. According to the Coffee Stain Studios blog, they have learned a lot from player feedback on Sanctum and have changed not just the way Sanctum 2 was developed, but also the business strategy around the game’s future content. Are they able to deliver on the promise of bigger and better or does Sanctum 2 come with a broken Core?

The Trial

The first thing anyone will notice who has played the first Sanctum is the addition of a tutorial and campaign mode. This also means that unlike the previous title, Sanctum 2 actually features a story progression of sorts. As the player progresses, the game will naturally increase its difficulty and introduce new enemy types, larger waves and increases general mayhem. This is a nice addition as many players were put off by the missing story element and a lack of structure in the first game. The actual structure of the campaign is divided into four different regions, each with four levels, meaning there are 16 levels in total. There are two reasons for the levels to be divided up like this, the first has to do with the story, while the second and most interesting reason is the actual level design in both its layout and its visual theme. For example, the first area, Facility, features levels based in a more developed city-like environment. Thus expect structured levels surrounded by beautiful, well-developed, city environments. As a result these levels tend to be more straightforward and less chaotic. This is in stark contrast to the later levels in the last two areas, which are more out in the middle of nowhere and as such are much less structured, very difficult to navigate, chaotic and intense levels.

It is really impressive to see a game where the developers really went out of their way to make a linear level progression, which meant the level designers had quite some work building the world as they basically had to come up with new textures for each area. Some levels are so well designed that the texture work looks completely different from the ones before and after, making it seemingly unique. Additionally, they even managed to give the players a reason for the change of scenery and the rise of difficulty throughout the story. I keep mentioning the story, but have yet to say how the story is told. The story is only told through comic strips during the loading screen and an in-game ending cinematic of sorts. There are no voice-overs, no animations, and each strip is quite short (the longest comic strip is 3-screens long). This in a way is disappointing as compared to other storytelling methods is quite a bit simpler to make. That all being said, I am glad they invested more into the gameplay and level design and less into the storytelling, after all it is the gameplay that makes a game and not always its story. So the story does the job and does not detract from the experience. In fact it actually helps improve the experience as it gives the players more insight into why they are where they are, why the enemies are becoming tougher and why the levels are looking the way they look. The story even goes further than that and helps the player learn why these creatures are attacking the Cores that you must so carefully protect.

It is also important to note that one big strength continued on from Sanctum is that Sanctum 2 also supports 4-player co-op. The great thing here is that unlike the first game, Sanctum 2 boasts a matchmaking system and smoother integration with Steam. As a result, players can jump in and out from friends’ games and during the level select you can choose the game’s settings and mode. Here you can make it so it is a private single-player game, a public game that anyone can join, or a friends only game that your Steam friends can jump straight into. I can already smell your fear though - does this game really require you to play with other people? No, it does not! The great thing in Sanctum 2 is that as more players join and, depending on their level, the enemies scale up in strength. While the game did have some co-op issues at launch, all have since been fixed through updates and important features that were lacking have also been added for the co-op already within just the first 2 weeks that the game was out. For example, initially players could not send resources to each other and you could not see how much a tower upgrade costs. All of this was fixed through updates along with many other improvements and additions.

In addition to the scaling, the game also has three modes: Easy, Campaign and Survival. This means that if you are stuck on the regular Campaign mode and have no friends who can jump in and help you, you can just switch to Easy mode and try the level again. The survival mode is meant for after you have completed a level on Easy or Campaign modes and is an endless mode in which you must survive as many waves as possible.

In terms of gameplay, there is a lot to cover here so I shall do my best to keep it to the point. As I mentioned there is a level system, the game features a grand total of 7 unlockable weapons, 12 unlockable towers and 25 unlockable perks. These are all unlocked through a level progression system; as you complete a level on any mode, depending on your performance during that level, you will then gain experience. All players start at level 1 and then progress through to level 20 at which point they will have unlocked everything currently in the game. To add even more variety to the game, there are also four different characters you and your co-op partners can choose from. Each of these character has a unique primary weapon that only he can equip and is not included with the 7 other unlockable weapons and 2 unique abilities. For example, my favourite character called “Sweet Autumn” has a rocket launcher called Rex, and anything I shoot with my primary or secondary weapon puts enemies on fire while I have great air control while jumping. As you level up you also unlock slots to equip towers with and slots to equip perks with. These perks give you an additional ability; one of them does 4000 damage to enemies you jump on, while other perks boost your tower damage or weapon damage. All the stuff in Sanctum 2 just screams variety, everything from the levels, characters, weapons, towers and abilities are completely varied and allow for different tactics and are used best in conjunction with co-op partners who pick different weapons, towers and perks. The game fortunately features a UI indicator that shows what character, towers, weapons, and perks each player has selected so that no two players pick the same stuff unless they really intend to.

Once players have picked their character and load-out they want, the real fun begins. Each player will receive building blocks directly to them as well as resources. Blocks are used to create a maze to slow down or re-direct the enemies, while the resources are used to build towers, which can only be built on building blocks. One thing players will immediately notice here from the first Sanctum is that players can no longer upgrade their weapons nor do you have unlimited tower capacity. Players can only build a total of 15 towers regardless of how many co-op partners you are playing with. While this was off-putting at first it promotes more strategic planning tactics and it means that players are forced to be actively running and gunning to help the towers stop the incoming enemies. To make matters worse, eventually players will encounter waves in which bosses are sent who can destroy your building blocks and towers. This means that your entire maze and defences can be taken out and will have players scrambling to defend the broken maze. This is another reason why players simply cannot spam towers as otherwise the effect of this would be much less. Fortunately, enemies no longer take away a life by simply reaching the core; now the core has health and is damaged by enemies who must reach it and attack it to destroy it. Here again, there are perks that can help with the defence of the core itself as well as heal it between waves. One thing is certain, this game is not for those with high blood pressure as Sanctum 2 goes all out to ensure your blood boils when the defence goes bad. The best feature here is the large variety of enemy types the game has to offer, each with their unique strengths and weaknesses. If you thought there would only be one boss type, you are sorely wrong as there are in fact three, each of which behave entirely differently.

By now you are perhaps picking up on the trend here of variety, challenge, intensity and fun. This is further strengthened through the quality texture work the developers have done on this game. As I mentioned previously, each area and some levels feature their own unique textures that are not used anywhere else in the game. Large developers are well known for re-using textures to save on cost and development time but this is not the case for Coffee Stain Studios, whom have gone out of their way to develop the levels in the vision they imagined the game to be. This is impressive, especially when you see textures that were only used for one level in the entire game. Their work has not gone to waste as I for one really appreciated the fantastic job the developers have done. The textures of both, the enemies and levels, as well as the 4 playable characters looks fantastic. This is further strengthened through quality animation work on both those aspects as well as on the weapons and towers, both of which clearly received equal attention. The sound design is also done well, with the music being noticeable when it needs to be and relegated to the background when it should be. The weapon and tower sound effects are top notch and each has their own unique sound effect. The only thing that stands out here, perhaps not as a negative but as an area that could have been improved upon, is the enemy sound effects. While they make glorious marching sounds and have good quality attack sounds, they seem to lack any verbal sound effects. Some kind of noise when certain creatures spawn or attack you or the Core could have been nice. Obviously here the issue would be a spam of audio and as a result annoyance, but this can be controlled through limitation in how often those verbal sounds would be played. Again it does not lessen the experience but it would have been nice had the game had this.

As I’ve already touched upon, the developers have shown strong intent of continued post-launch support and, as it is, the game has received quite a few important updates, all of which have fixed, added or improved upon crucial gameplay elements. If not for these updates, my review would have in fact been much more negative towards this title. Fortunately, the developers were able to bring out these updates fast and without adding any new issues and as a result have shown their ability to listen and respond to community feedback. They have also already stated that their DLCs will be different from those in the first Sanctum due to the feedback provided by players. The game features a Season Pass which is available on Steam for £8.99/$11.99/12,99€ and will unlock 4 DLC-packs as they are released, each of which will include multiple maps, weapons, towers and perks.

The Verdict

There really is nothing bad to say about Sanctum 2. It features a campaign that lasts 13 hours on the first play-through and offers plenty of replay-ability and features a vast amount of variety in every aspect of the game and boasts a development team devoted to responding to community feedback by bringing out free updates with new features and fixes. This is how games should be developed and handled post-launch. It is really impressive to get a game of this quality for just £11.99/$14.99/13,99€. This is arguably the best tower defence game and still the only one of its kind that can say it truly is a merger between FPS and Tower Defence.

While it is fun to play alone, this is definitely an experience that only gets better when shared with friends. There is no reason not to get this game!

Case Review