The Tower Defense genre has been given new life thanks to mobile games, and the resurgence has of course found its way to PC.
Games like Kingdom Rush, Bloons TD, and more have established themselves and thanks to their popularity have encouraged indie devs to try their hand at creating their own TD games. Game Dev has similarly, never been easier. We know what works and we have the tools to try different things, but for that reason it’s all the more important for games to be polished to stand out.
Farm TD is as simple as its name implies. You’re playing Tower Defense… on a farm; and you actually do some farming too.
Farm TD
Developer: R.J. Brontsema
Publisher: R.J. Brontsema
Platforms: Windows PC (Reviewed)
Release Date: March 2025
Price: $14.99
The first thing that strikes you when you boot up Farm TD is the AI-generated art. Windmills with too many details, the soulless eyes in the animals, and even the crops are too smooth or have strangely detailed leaves, as if the AI decided half-way through it was creating the most garish autumn decoration to ever grace the shelves of a craft store.
Maybe the unnecessary detail is meant to compensate for the utter lack of visual clarity in the game. You can barely tell when your towers are attacking, and even when they do the particle effects are minimal, translucent, or just not even there.
Then there’s the target priority. It’s pretty standard on TD games for towers to target the enemy furthest along the path, hell, it’s standard to have the option to assign target priority (First, Last, Most HP, etc.). Instead I think Farm TD just does the closest in-range? I was playing on a map with a lot of overlap, so when a big enemy started getting through I panic laid some towers. Instead they focused smaller enemies that were further back on the track but physically closer to the tower. It was frustrating.
To the game’s credit, it’s at least an interesting idea conceptually. A farm based tower defense with a minigame where you grow crops. It demands you split your attention between the actual Tower Defense and the farming minigame, making it feel a little more frantic and fast-paced.
There’s also roguelite elements wherein you collect emblems which you can spend to unlock additional animals and crops, as well as upgrades you can pick up between rounds.
Overall, Farm TD feels more like a proof of concept or student project than an actualized game. Between the AI assets, janky gameplay, and lack of ability to really strategize. The developer clearly has an idea of what they’re doing, but in Farm TD the execution just didn’t land. I have higher hopes for their upcoming game The Little Pixel That Could.
Farm TD was reviewed on a Nintendo Switch using a code provided by R.J. Brontsema. You can find additional information about Niche Gamer’s review/ethics policy here.
