Sanctum – Review
Follow Genre: FPS, Tower Defense
Developer: Coffee Stain Studios
Publisher: Lace Mamba Global
Platform: PC

Sanctum – Review

Site Score
8.5
Good: Really good combination of tower defense and FPS
Bad: I don't think there is one.
User Score
8.0
(1 votes)
Click to vote
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 8.0/10 (1 vote cast)

Coffee Stain Studios and Lace Mamba Global bring us Sanctum, a first person shooter – tower defense game set in a beautiful science fiction world. It’s an Indie game developed for PC. What to expect from this game? Let’s find out below.

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Story:

You are Skye, an elite soldier sent out to protect her hometown, Elysion One, from attacking hordes of mysterious aliens. To succeed you’ll have to build blocks and upgrade them to defensive weapons to defeat the aliens and preventing them from getting to your core. If your core is destroyed, it’s game over. Bye bye beautiful world.

Another tower defense game you say? Well, what makes this one different from the others is that when it starts, you jump right into the actions and start shooting together with your turrets at the aliens instead of just watching at your turrets while they do all the work.

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Graphics:

For an Indie game, the graphic quality of the game really amazed me. The worlds are designed very detailed, even the backgrounds look marvelous. Everything looks futuristic but at the same time it also looks very realistic. It’s the same for  the weapons, they are very well animated and  look really outstanding. I hope weapons like this really are the future.

Sound:

While you’re playing, there’s always music playing. With most games the music becomes repetitive and even annoying after a while. But with Sanctum I never had this problem as the music is really enjoyable, so I’m glad that the soundtrack cd came with the game.

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Gameplay:

As stated before, you start as Skye, an elite soldier, tasked with protecting her hometown from invading aliens. This is all possible in 2 modes, singleplayer and an online co-op mode.

You first start with the tutorial, which you can also choose in the menu so you can play it whenever you want. This can be handy if you haven’t played the game in a while. I think this is a nice addition as in the most games you cannot replay the tutorial unless you start a new game. After the tutorial I got the feeling that I did not learn enough, I didn’t feel ready to start the game. It was too short a tutorial I thought, maybe I did something wrong. So I tried it again but the result was the same. But then when I started playing, I found that the tutorial learned me everything I needed to know to play the game.

In singleplayer you have 6 levels to complete. But only the first is available in the beginning, you have to unlock the other five by completing the levels.
Completing the level is done by building blocks to make a path that the aliens have to follow, so they have to take the longest route possible to delay them. Then you can upgrade your blocks to weapons, there are all sorts of weapons, ones that are only effective against enemies on the ground, ones that are effective against enemies in the air and ones that are effective against both of them. If you’ve built enough weapons, you can upgrade them so they can deal more damage or have a faster fire rate.
Of course you have a limited amount of money and you can’t build everything from the start. You have to strategically plan on what you spent your money. This is made a little bit easier because of the fact you can view which enemies come in which wave. This means you know when to buy which kind of weapon. After a wave is completed you will have a new budget to buy new weapons or upgrade existing ones. This is needed because every wave is harder to get through. It’s also possible to upgrade your own weapons, as you also play along in first person mode when the waves are coming. If all waves are completed the level is finished and you can start the next one.

Multiplayer is actually the co-op mode of the game. Here you can play with up to four people and work together to get through the waves and complete the level. You can choose to play with friends or with people you have never heard about. This makes it more fun as playing alone is never as amusing as playing with other people.

Conclusion:

Sanctum really was a surprise to me. I’ve played Indie games before but this is one of the few that really amazed me. It’s got everything that a non-independent game has. It’s really well made and I will certainly look forward to Sanctum 2. Sanctum has a little message board in the game menu that keeps you updated on what they are doing, and currently they are working on the sequel. So count me in for Sanctum 2!

VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: 8.0/10 (1 vote cast)
VN:F [1.9.22_1171]
Rating: +1 (from 1 vote)
Sanctum - Review, 8.0 out of 10 based on 1 rating

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