Games like Dungeon Keeper and Evil Genius cast you as the villain repelling heroes as they break on your defences like waves on the shore. Grove Keeper is different. You play a noble god of the forest protecting trees from old-timey woodcutters and hunters who have come to cut down Old Man Willow and shoot all the wildlife. Fortunately, you can build an army of mythical creatures including satyrs and half-naked giants who rend and stomp loggers with abandon. Maybe you are a bit villain-adjacent.
The demo I played at PAX Australia gave me a home tree and a single hut to protect, but let me grow more trees each night to produce the resources I needed to summon defenders. Willows are expensive and finicky about being planted near water, while the spruce don't give a damn where they grow, but produce less of the magic juice I need to cast spells and summon goblins and vodyanoy.
Once I'm done with a night's planting and summoning I press the button to begin the day, and waves of humans with axes and bows start marching in. As well as just selecting a blob of monsters and right-clicking on them, I have access to a handful of spells. Meteors crush enemies, runes heal my guys, and kelpies come out of the water to demolish units crossing the river, or would if I remembered to use them more than once.
At the end of each day, as the final human falls, Grove Keeper zooms in from a godlike birdseye view to give you an up-close shot of some poor sucker being gored by a satyr or kicked into the sky by a giant. They ragdoll deliciously, and land on their heads often enough to make me cackle like an idiot. Grove Keeper may be a tactical game of population-limit balancing and resource management, but it understands the reason we like Skyrim's giants is because they can launch you into orbit.
At the end of each day I was offered a couple of options for a power-up. Did I want to boost the population limit, or increase my damage? Gain some free magic points, or increase production? It's just enough strategic decision-making to make you think, even if it is largely a game of clicking your blobs on the enemy and watching those damn humans get what they deserve. The jerks.
Grove Keeper is currently in development at indie studio Steep Summit, and you can check it out on Steam.
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