Protect the world's last tree from humanity in free tower defense From Ashes, Bloom

Tower defense game From Ashes Bloom, a blobby black spirit monster stands inside a ring of trees — (Image credit: Screenshakes)

Amidst a desert wasteland stands the last big proper tree, Gaia, and you are a weird blobby spirit who walks around on odd tentacles and may or may not have a weird little hat. Your job is to plant other, smaller trees—very aggressive ones—to protect the last tree itself from marauding hordes of attacking human beings who I can only assume want to finish the job of turning the whole world into a desert.

From Ashes, Bloom has a pretty nice cel-shaded art style that lends itself well to the procedurally generated blob character, who serves as your invincible juggernaut of person mowing down in the classic style of an action tower defense. Depending on skin and starting setup that then leaves your trees to slow down humans or to do the majority of the work.

There's pretty good upgrade stuff to play with in here: From buying tree types between rounds to picking up new weapons, getting bonus income if you perfect an attack wave, or even adding ever-more mobility tentacles to your blob guy so it can move even faster.

I'm not sure how much build variety there is here, but there are a half-dozen tree types to plant (read: towers) and characters to play as, so there's that much at least. Also, again, it's free and I had fun for an hour so that really does count for a lot in my book. You can find From Ashes, Bloom on Steam.

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.