Game review
Terror Defense
5.5 / 10
- Developer
- Adrien Guéret
- Publisher
- Adrien Guéret
- Released
- 1 January 2022
- Platforms
- Web browser (desktop only — see controls section)
- Genre
- Tower defense
- Monetisation
- Free, no ads and no in-game purchases
- Players
- Single-player only
The short version
Terror Defense flips the tower-defense formula into something gentler and stranger: instead of killing invaders, you plant tombstones, dead trees, bats and ghosts around a graveyard to scare ordinary humans into running away before they cross it, tracked by a "scary-o-meter" the game explicitly tells you to watch. js13k's own 2022 competition comments describe it warmly — "the game I've replayed the most," one judge wrote — and reaching a score of 1690 was reported by another. None of that reception is in question here. What is: this review found a severe, directly measured layout bug that leaves the game's entire interface, including that same scary-o-meter the tutorial calls out by name, rendered at a fixed 961-pixel width with no responsive scaling and no way to scroll to see the rest, on a phone screen that is 390 pixels wide. The core stat the game is built around is not reachable at all on the device class this shelf serves.
Biggest strengths
- The theme swap is genuinely well-liked rather than just a novelty: multiple js13k 2022 judges independently called it a "nice twist" on tower defense, and one wrote it was the entry they'd replayed the most out of that year's whole field
- A real, citable competition result: js13kgames.com's archived 2022 data confirms this placed, with individual category scores available for theme, gameplay, graphics, audio and controls across that year's complete field
- Reading the shop contents directly in the page confirms genuine mechanical depth for a 13-kilobyte entry — multiple tiers of gravestones, dead trees, bats, ghosts and a one-shot lightning effect, each with a distinct scare value and lock/unlock gating
Biggest weaknesses
- Directly measured and confirmed, not inferred — the page declares a fixed `initial-scale=0.86` in its viewport meta rather than scaling to device width, and its content is 961 CSS pixels wide with horizontal scrolling disabled; on a 390-pixel phone screen this means roughly 60% of the interface, including the scary-o-meter the tutorial specifically tells the player to watch on "the bottom right of the screen," is permanently off-screen and unreachable by any means tested
- The opening tutorial text itself is cut off mid-sentence on a phone screen as a direct result, which is about as unambiguous a first-impression failure as a mobile layout can produce
- This review could not get past the tutorial into the placement mechanic on desktop despite genuine attempts — clicking the graveyard directly and clicking the resource counters did not open a shop or place an item, so the core interaction loop is reported here as unconfirmed by this review's own testing rather than as a second bug, since the community reception makes clear the mechanic does work for real players
Who it's for: Fans of gentle, mechanically inventive tower-defense variants — played at a desk, not on a phone
Our recommendation: A good desktop game let down badly on mobile; wait for a fix before trying it on a phone
5.5 / 10
A note on how this review was built: the developer has not published a licence for this particular entry (no LICENSE file, no README, and an empty license field in package.json) — a gap in this developer's own older work, since their more recent js13k entries (Number Knight, Brewing Disaster) are consistently Apache-2.0 licensed. It's published here credited to Adrien Guéret by name with a link to their own GitHub repository, and with a same-day takedown offer standing if they'd prefer it not be hosted here.
Terror Defense's pitch is genuinely charming: you're not defending a base from monsters, you're trying to make your own graveyard scary enough that ordinary people passing through it turn around and flee, tracked by an on-screen "scary-o-meter" that starts unimpressively negative. Multiple js13k 2022 judges responded to that pitch warmly and specifically — Raf Mertens called it "a nice twist for the tower defense genre," and Ben Clark named it "probably the game I've replayed the most." That reception is real and this review has no reason to doubt it as a description of the desktop experience.
A layout bug this review could measure directly
This is the section that matters most for a shelf built around phone playability, and it's worth being precise rather than vague about what was actually found. Reading the page's own viewport meta tag shows initial-scale=0.86 — a fixed zoom level, not the responsive width=device-width scaling nearly every other game reviewed this cycle uses. Measuring the page directly confirms its content is 961 CSS pixels wide, and attempting to scroll it horizontally on the phone profile did nothing at all — the page simply does not support scrolling past its fixed layout. On a 390-pixel phone screen, that means only about 40% of the interface is ever visible, and it isn't a random 40%: the tutorial's own opening line is cut off mid-sentence ("The scar[y-o-meter], on the bottom right of the screen, is cur[rently negative]...") because the sentence itself describes a stat sitting in the exact portion of the screen that a phone user can never reach. This isn't a minor cosmetic issue or an edge case triggered by unusual input — it's the very first thing a phone visitor sees, confirmed directly by loading the page and measuring it, not by guessing.
Presentation and structure
Reading the shop contents directly in the page (rather than trying to reach them through play) confirms real structural depth: a tiered set of decorations from a "classic and not so scary tomb stone" up through pricier, purpose-built scares, several of them locked behind in-game unlocks, plus a one-shot lightning effect for emergencies. That matches the community's description of a game with "lots of content to pick from," in Matt Hackett's words, and the Kenney-sourced pixel art earned specific praise from several separate judges for its "cute but scary" tone.
One honest limitation of this review's own testing: despite trying to click directly on the graveyard and on both resource counters, this review could not get past the tutorial into the placement mechanic on the desktop profile. Given how consistently and specifically the community describes actually playing and replaying this game, that's reported here as a limit of this review's testing time rather than a second confirmed bug — but it does mean this review can't independently vouch for how the core loop feels moment to moment, only for what the shop and tutorial content show it's built from.
Final verdict
The desktop game underneath this appears to be exactly what js13k's 2022 community described: an inventive, well-liked, high-replay-value take on tower defense. But this shelf's job is to check whether a web game actually works on the phone it's opened on, and here it demonstrably does not — not narrowly, but from the very first screen, with the game's own headline stat rendered permanently unreachable. That's a severe enough, directly measured failure to keep this off the shelf regardless of how good the desktop experience clearly is to the people who've actually played it there.
Pros and cons
Pros
- The theme swap is genuinely well-liked rather than just a novelty: multiple js13k 2022 judges independently called it a "nice twist" on tower defense, and one wrote it was the entry they'd replayed the most out of that year's whole field
- A real, citable competition result: js13kgames.com's archived 2022 data confirms this placed, with individual category scores available for theme, gameplay, graphics, audio and controls across that year's complete field
- Reading the shop contents directly in the page confirms genuine mechanical depth for a 13-kilobyte entry — multiple tiers of gravestones, dead trees, bats, ghosts and a one-shot lightning effect, each with a distinct scare value and lock/unlock gating
- Kenney's asset pack, credited directly in the game's own description, gives the graveyard a consistent, appealing "cute but scary" look that several judges praised by name
- No console or page errors in any test run beyond a single harmless missing favicon request
Cons
- Directly measured and confirmed, not inferred — the page declares a fixed `initial-scale=0.86` in its viewport meta rather than scaling to device width, and its content is 961 CSS pixels wide with horizontal scrolling disabled; on a 390-pixel phone screen this means roughly 60% of the interface, including the scary-o-meter the tutorial specifically tells the player to watch on "the bottom right of the screen," is permanently off-screen and unreachable by any means tested
- The opening tutorial text itself is cut off mid-sentence on a phone screen as a direct result, which is about as unambiguous a first-impression failure as a mobile layout can produce
- This review could not get past the tutorial into the placement mechanic on desktop despite genuine attempts — clicking the graveyard directly and clicking the resource counters did not open a shop or place an item, so the core interaction loop is reported here as unconfirmed by this review's own testing rather than as a second bug, since the community reception makes clear the mechanic does work for real players
- None of the fourteen public competition comments mention playing on a phone or tablet, so this review has no independent community confirmation either way for the specific problem found here