Ahead of the Game - Wittle Defender is Habby's tower defence roguelike that rewards laziness, and it's glorious
Idle away to keep the grind at bay
- Randomised skills and compelling auto-battles
- Adorable "wittle" heroes with varied skills
- Casual fun that's truly mobile
Hello and welcome to Ahead of the Game, a series where we tell you all about an upcoming game that, despite not being out yet, is available for you to play at the time of publishing. Through this series, you can grab a chance to play games well ahead of their release date, be that through Soft Launch, Open Beta, Demos, or more.
Habby seems to know exactly how to whip up the perfect combination of casual fun and a satisfying challenge, as they've now soft-launched Wittle Defender - and my life is all the better for it.
There's really not much to do here except set up your squad of heroes and watch them do all the work for you - all you have to do is pick the right procedurally generated skill and witness the carnage your team can unleash in a frenzy.
It's as idle as idle games go, but really, that doesn't mean it's any less exciting - every hit resounds, every defeat hurts, and every takedown is more satisfying than the last. The feeling of glee when the big boss goes down in slow-mo is unmatched - it just made me want to keep going and repeating each run because the loop is just that compelling.
I can't, for the life of me, understand how something so seemingly simple can be so darn enjoyable. Maybe it's the lazy adult in me who can't be bothered by the daily grind as I grow older, or it's simply that the characters here - much like Capybara Go - are just too adorable to resist.
Whether you're playing as a ranged priest with lightning orbs that bounce around from foe to foe or an ice witch (named Anna, by the way) with icicles that surround your team to sweep enemies getting too close for comfort, it's always a thrill to pick the right skill combos and team synergies to deal maximum damage.
As expected, you can upgrade them using idle resources, summon more heroes with different rarities from the gacha, send your team out on patrol for more loot, and unlock card-based skills to boost your team's stats. But at the end of the day, it's basically just going through the cycle of starting a dungeon crawl, picking skills, killing enemies, and dying - a loop that I'm all too willing to do over and over again.
So, how do you play Wittle Defender?
It's currently on soft-launch in select regions on Android at the moment, but if it's not available in your app store just yet, you can pre-register to get first dibs as soon as it's officially launched. The App Store does say it's set for release on June 12th, although that might still change without further notice.
