Relic Guardian Review

Kingdom Rush's clever, occasionally clumsy heir

Relic Guardian is a pixel-art tower defense game from developer Mystrigger, published alongside XD, that openly wears its Kingdom Rush influence while trying to carve out its own identity. Players take on the role of Fran, a summoned hero guardian who doesn't just command towers from a menu but physically walks the battlefield to place, upgrade, and reposition them in real time. Following more than a year of public demo development beginning in August 2024, including a well-received Next Fest showing in early 2025 and a short delay from an original September launch window, the game released on 22 October 2025 at NZ$28.99. Its review sample, a substantial 967 reviews at the time of writing, sits at Very Positive -- a strong score built on real affection for its presentation and ambition, but with a large, vocal minority pushing back specifically on the mechanic that sets it apart from its genre forebears.

Praise across the sample is overwhelmingly consistent on presentation and tactical variety. One reviewer calls it simply "officially better than Kingdom Rush," specifically highlighting unlockable tower variants tied to challenge-mode completion as "actual rewards for optional content" the genre's most famous entry never offered. Another describes coming "for the art style, stayed for the solid TD design," praising how the game manages to be "light but substantial" without leaning on artificial difficulty to stay engaging. A third, more detailed review breaks down the tower system specifically: despite having only five core tower types, each has three distinct forms and four upgrades per form, creating what that reviewer calls meaningful build variety "even though it feels like a modest roster on paper." Several reviewers frame themselves explicitly as burned-out Kingdom Rush veterans who found this game reignited their interest in the genre, with one calling it "kingdom rush but like 10x better" after being unable to get hooked on the games that inspired it.

Where the sample splits sharply is over the hero-movement mechanic itself -- the single biggest departure from genre convention, and the thing nearly every review, positive or negative, spends real time discussing. Several reviewers frame it as the game's standout innovation: one calls it "a unique touch and added some more depth to gameplay," dismissing complaints about it as missing the point, while another highlights two ostensibly minor hero interactions -- dancing and grabbing -- as unexpectedly some of their favourite parts of the whole experience. But an equally substantial group of reviewers describes the same mechanic as actively working against the genre's core appeal. One writes plainly that the gimmick "isn't used almost ever as an actual mechanic, and its usually just annoying because of the way its implemented," while another states that having to walk a character across the map "makes the most basic tasks like building towers and upgrading them a time consuming chore," preferring the instant point-and-click placement genre veterans expect. A third reviewer who nonetheless rates the game highly overall still flags the hero system, alongside other rough edges, as the specific reason it falls short of a perfect score.

Beyond the central mechanic, a cluster of independent, more conventional complaints recurs through the negative side of the sample. Several reviewers report weak early-game pacing and money generation, with one calling a level's midsection "super casual" to the point where "not a lot happens... until the very end." Others want more transparency around tower stats and upgrade paths, describing the differences between towers as feeling "a bit flat" beyond basic speed and damage-type distinctions. A recurring technical complaint targets accessibility: no controller support and no keybinding options exist at launch, a gap more than one reviewer calls out as particularly strange in a game that already demands more manual on-screen interaction than most tower defense titles. Isolated but detailed reports also describe a completely unresponsive main menu on one setup and a level that a dedicated reviewer, after roughly a dozen different attempted strategies, suspected might be bugged rather than simply difficult.

The tutorial draws its own specific, if smaller, thread of criticism. One reviewer describes the onboarding as front-loaded and then abruptly abandoned, writing that it "falls off a cliff" partway through, leaving them "presented with everything" all at once with minimal further guidance right as the game's more complex systems come online -- a pattern that reviewer worried could cost the game players at exactly the moment its depth should be hooking them. Balanced against this, the developer's demo-driven, multi-year public development process, and a same-week post-launch patch cadence addressing early bugs, suggest a team actively listening to and iterating on exactly this kind of feedback.

Value and longevity round out the more measured end of the sample. At NZ$28.99, several reviewers frame the price as fair given the amount of distinct content across the game's chapters, each with its own mechanical twist, though at least one reviewer who found the early game underwhelming suggests the game would feel better suited to a lower price point, saying they'd consider buying again "for around $10" rather than at launch pricing. Others push back against that framing directly, arguing the escalating challenge-mode content and unlockable tower variants give the game meaningfully more replay value than a single Kingdom Rush-style campaign, particularly for players willing to revisit cleared stages under harder optional constraints. That divide over value largely tracks the same fault line as the hero-movement debate: reviewers who embraced the game's slower, more hands-on rhythm consistently rate its pacing and price as justified, while reviewers frustrated by that same rhythm read the same runtime as padded rather than generous.

Verdict

Relic Guardian earns its Very Positive rating honestly: gorgeous pixel art, genuine tactical variety within a tight tower roster, and enough fresh ideas to win over players who'd burned out on the Kingdom Rush formula it's openly building on. But its hero-movement mechanic is a real fault line running through the sample, turning what some reviewers call the game's smartest addition into what others call its most tedious flaw. If that single idea sounds appealing rather than grating, this is one of the best-looking tower defense games of the year; if not, the demo is worth trying before you commit.