Game Saturday: Dark Power (HTML5, Strategy)

Dark Power is a free browser strategy game that can best be described as a tower defense game. While you defend only your main castle against attacks, you do so by hiring troops and casting spells on the onrushing enemy hordes.

One interesting twist of the game is that you control an undead army and fight against humans, elves and dwarfs that attack the castle.

You switch between battles and upgrades in the game. Battles become increasingly difficult as the game progresses but your forces do get more powerful as well.

You fight against some archers and spearmen in the first battle but face wizards, armored fighters and elven archers later on.

Dark Power

Your main objective in each battle is to protect the castle from total destruction. You get other goals besides that, for instance, to defeat a powerful archmage, terrorize a number of enemies so that they flee from the battlefield, or cast a number of spells.

You control your army indirectly only. Buttons at the bottom of the screen let you recruit the various types of undead fighters that are at your disposal and cast spells. Most of these need to be researched before they become available though.

You may notice that you cannot beat a level on the first or even second attempt. That's normal and you may want to collect more skulls by replaying other battles before you try again.

Skulls can be invested in upgrades. Upgrades may unlock new unit types, make existing fighters faster or more powerful, or may unlock spells and other effects that assist you on the battlefield.

Units move and attack individually after they spawn. You may click on a unit multiple times to enrage it but that is the only option that you have that affects units on the battlefield.

Battles are still fairly strategic as you control the spawning of units and how fast they approach the enemy. Undead units deteriorate over time on top of that which means that your archers will wither away for instance if enemies don't come in range to attack them.

Enemies attack in waves and one of the most difficult situations in the game is to get to the ranged attacking units to beat them before they pulverize your units. Spells let you do so in the most effective way.

The strategic part of the game displays a map with locations that you unlock each time you defeat the enemy forces in a battle and the upgrade screen.

Upgrades are divided into castle, units and spells. Castle upgrades unlock new troop types, increase the number of units you can recruit, and reduce the spawn time of units. Unit upgrades make units stronger, faster and better in all regards, and spells, well, they let you cast spells during battle and have various effects on the enemy.

Closing Words

Dark Power is a light strategy game of army recruiting, researching upgrades and defending your castle against attacks that get more deadly with each battle that you survive. If you like strategy games and tower defense games in particular, you probably like this one as well.

I wish the game would you give more control over your units. Even basic commands, like wait or attack, would make battles more strategic than they are in Dark Power.

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