Development on a sequel to splendid tower defense Defense Grid: The Awakening will indeed go ahead, Hidden Path Entertainment has announced. The developer tried to crowdfund Defense Grid 2 last summer and fell short, but has now landed an investor to shake out their pockets in its eager hands.

Read more: Competitive and co-op multiplayer »

Defense Grid: The Awakening developer Hidden Path may have fell short of its Kickstarter dream of funding a sequel to the tower defense, but it did raise enough money to make new DLC. That expansion, Containment, is out now on PC for $4.99, bringing eight new maps with a new story, including voicework from Firefly’s Alan Tudyk.

Read more: Base game on sale for $4.99 too »

The Indie Royale just keeps on rolling, and now an "April Fools" bundle has launched. As usual, it packs five indie gems together on the cheap, with a musical bonus for paying a little more than the minimum. Of course, given that it's themed after a holiday of deceit, you might open up your bundle only to get a pie in the face.

Read more: Included games and a bonus for going above and beyond »

Defense Grid: The Awakening is getting its first story expansion next week, December 7. Titled "Defense Grid: You Monster," the downloadable content will feature GLaDOS from the Portal series. It will cost $4.99 on Steam or 400 MSP on Xbox 360, and requires the original game to play.

Read more: DLC features, plus a free update »

Always the kidder, Valve launched a Potato Sack bundle on April Fool's Day, offering 13 indie games for 75% off. It didn't take long for fans to notice potato-themed easter eggs hidden in various games in the bundle, and they've been collected and detailed on the Valve ARG (Alternate Reality Game) Wiki.

Several components of the ARG have been discovered so far, but they don't seem to add up to a complete picture quite yet. Among the discoveries, we've seen a hidden adventure game and QR code in Defense Grid, hidden Razor peripherals messages in Kick It, a puzzle message in The Ball, and a hidden Aperture Science logo on the bit.trip Web site. Read more »

Defense Grid's 99¢ two-map DLC packs are just the sort of downloadable content I like to see. I picked up the first pack last night, gave one of the maps a bash and was happy with the entertainment I received for pocket change. Tonight I'll work on the other and have a jolly good time. Marvellous.

Of course, Defense Grid is able to do this because it's split into separate, unrelated levels. With games such as Fallout 3, Borderlands or Oblivion, more expansive--and expensive--DLC makes the most sense. However, I always find it offputting to know $30 of DLC will soon be released for my brand new $40 game. I waited for Game of the Year editions before buying Oblivion and Fallout 3, and plan to do the same for Borderlands. Read more »

Defense Grid developer Hidden Path has announced an "expansion" titled 'Resurgence' for its PC and Xbox 360 tower defense, to be released in June as four 99¢ map packs.

Each 99¢ (80 Microsoft Points) pack contains two "highly polished and balanced" new levels with a campaign mode, four challenge modes and new achievements. The first pack will be released on June 2, with the other three following weekly on Wednesdays. Read more »

Canalside's piratical action game Yo-Ho Kablammo and Hidden Path's strategy effort Defense Grid are this week's two Xbox Live Arcade releases, Microsoft has affirmed.

Yo-Ho Kablammo sees players blast foes with cannons and other power-ups across its single-player and multiplayer (both online and off) modes in an attempt to rule the seas.

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Hidden Path has announced that the Xbox Live Arcade release of its tower defence Defense Grid: The Awakening will arrive on September 2 for 800 MS Points ($10).

The XBLA version boasts four new levels and a dozen challenge modes over the fine PC original, in addition to the regular "12 hours of story play, 24 unique environments across the Awakening campaign... plus over 100 unlockable challenge modes."

Hidden Path today announced that its strategy title Defense Grid: The Awakening will hit Xbox Live Arcade in "late summer," which is extremely good news for Xbox 360 owners that can't wait until South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! for their fix of the genre.

Hidden Path Entertainment's tower defense Defense Grid: The Awakening is currently on special offer on Steam, massively reduced from $20 to a mere $5 until May 15.

Build and upgrade towers to fend of waves of robots over 20 lush levels, with Steamworks achievements and some quite marvellous explosions--it's a steal at $5.

Here's a demo that's worth a look. Tower defense fans may be towered-out after the recent glut in the genre, but developer Hidden Path has done just enough with Defense Grid: The Awakening to justify another 20 levels of spire building.

Sure, the towers are mostly rehashes of the standard cadre, but the "power cores" that players must defend put an interesting twist on the strategic side of things. The cores are carried off by enemy mechs in ones and twos, and if a core-carrying unit is destroyed, it floats back towards the base--until it's picked up by another unit. This domino effect can lead to some intense reactionary tower building--that can often make for some terrible long-term ramifications. Read more »

Hidden Path Entertainment, developer of the Xbox Live Arcade trivia game Wits & Wagers, is bringing the tower defense genre back to the PC with Defense Grid: The Awakening.

Tower defense started as a popular modification to Blizzard's Warcraft III. The gameplay--building and upgrading various towers that shoot at ever-stronger lines of enemies marching toward the player's base--proved addictive enough to pave way for the PlayStation 3 release of Q-Games's PixelJunk Monsters and an expansion pack earlier this year. Read more »