Developer: MinMax Games
Publisher: MinMax Games
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
No Creeps Were Harmed TD – Review
If you’re a fan of the tower defense genre, there is a good chance that No Creeps Were Harmed TD has been on your radar for quite a while now. The game spent a lot of time in Early Access, as developer MinMax Games kept tweaking and fine-tuning the game based on player feedback. Last month, No Creeps saw full release, which seemed like a good opportunity to get stuck in the game ourselves. Should you rush to No Creeps or is it better to stay out of harm’s way?
Story
For as atmospheric of a setting that No Creeps conjures up, it doesn’t put a whole lot of effort into actually fleshing out a narrative. Our protagonist is the aptly named Brian Jar, a literal brain in a jar. How Brian came to be a brain in a jar? That’s not important. What is important is that there are alien creeps headed Brian’s way, and they need to be destroyed. In between the levels, there are short narrative elements, but ultimately, the story feels like more of an afterthought than something you’d want to pay attention to. No Creeps’ focus is definitely more on delivering engaging gameplay instead. That’s not to say the writing itself should be dismissed, because one thing No Creeps does rather well is deliver jokes. Granted, No Creeps’ brand of humor is of a very specific nature, but if you like the kind of brain-splattering humor that’s also present in games like Destroy All Humans! or Oddworld, this should be right up your alley.
Graphics
The fast pace of No Creeps doesn’t really help when it comes to absorbing the game’s visuals. At first glance, things look simplistic and dated, but the game’s seemingly crude appearance is by design. If you pause the game and take the time to actually look at things, you’ll find that there is plenty of detail to discover here. No Creeps’ aesthetics appear to pay homage to the PC strategy titles of the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and if you’re anything like us and grew up in that era, then this is something you’ll appreciate. The game does require you to constantly look at the levels from different angles. Luckily, the visual performance is more than adequate, even in the middle of an explosion-riddled situation, but props should also be given to just how “readable” everything is. A lot of information is being relayed to the player at any given time, but once you’re in the flow of it all, you can understand things at a glance, which is something very important for a game such as this.
Sound
One thing we absolutely didn’t expect in a game like No Creeps was honest-to-goodness voice acting. Decent voice acting too, with Brian’s deadpan line delivery being an absolute highlight. The dramatic soundtrack is great too, adding a sense of urgency and upping the pressure to the already frantic levels. And then there are the sound effects. Hearing the sounds of your turrets firing endless shells into the squelching bodies of your victims is fantastically satisfying. No Creeps absolutely nails its soundscape.
Gameplay
Unsurprisingly, the TD in No Creeps’ full title stands for Tower Defense, and the prospect of yet another tower defense game left us whelmed. There is only so much you can do with the genre after all. That is, until we actually got to grips with the game. While No Creeps doesn’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to the tower defense formula, it does what it needs to do exceedingly well. If you’ve already played a tower defense game, then you should have a good idea of what to expect here. You’ll have to defend your base from waves of enemies by placing and upgrading defensive units such as walls and turrets. Your ace in the hole is Brian Jar, who acts as your only mobile unit. He’s an essential addition, able to deal with enemy units that can make it past your carefully crafted lines of defense. Brian is tough but not unbeatable, and you’ll need to strategically deploy him, in concert with your defensive infrastructure. He can hold his own, and you don’t need to constantly babysit him, and you’ll be able to upgrade him down the line too, just like the rest of your infrastructure.
The pace of the levels is faster than that of most other tower defense games, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed without a solid strategy. The strategy aspect is where No Creeps shines compared to many of its competitors. Whereas other tower defense games’ levels typically only have one optimal strategy, No Creeps allows you to tackle levels in different ways. When a level starts, you’ll get a visual indication of the paths enemies will take, and you’re able to divert and change these, allowing you to create your own chokepoints, for example. You can set your turrets to only target specific types of enemies, which also adds a layer of strategy. There is plenty of enemy variety here, and dealing with the different kinds is a surprisingly elegant affair. One of our favorite elements was that we could get specific information about enemies while the game was paused, allowing us to optimize our defenses on the fly and change strategies where necessary.
While No Creeps gets a lot right, there is one major gameplay aspect where the game somewhat drops the ball, and that is controller support. In theory, the game recognizes and works with these, but in practice, navigating the various menus is tedious. There simply aren’t enough buttons present on a typical controller to comfortably play like this. The game’s control scheme doesn’t lend itself to playing with anything other than a mouse and keyboard. If you were hoping for Brian Jar to make the jump over to PS5 or Xbox One, you might need to adjust your expectations, unless a major overhaul happens. That might seem like a minor blip in the grand scheme of things, and it is, but it also means that No Creeps isn’t going to be a title you’ll want to play on your Steam Deck. Still, with a high replay value and a surprisingly reasonable RRP of €19.50, if our only real complaint is the lack of controller support, then that should tell you plenty about No Creeps’ merits as a tower defense game.
Conclusion
We were more than pleasantly surprised by No Creeps. While it doesn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of gameplay, the late ‘90s & early 2000s humor and aesthetic, in combination with streamlined mechanics and a high replay factor turned out to be a winning one. The story could have been fleshed out a bit more, and the lack of fleshed-out controller support means that this one probably won’t be coming to other platforms soon. Nonetheless, if you’re looking for a new tower defense title on PC, you shouldn’t overlook No Creeps Were Harmed TD.
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