Intro

GCFW is a Tower Defense game with mazing and a wide variety of factors (skills, traits, etc).

The Good

• Gemcraft really feels like its own thing - it's surprisingly atmospheric.
• 100+ fields with 3 modes each
• There are few basic monsters types but traits, beacons, etc. add lots of variety.
• Special creatures shake things up and keep you on your toes.
• You can build far more elaborate mazes than in other TDs.
• Player skills and the talisman give a great sense of progress and open up new options.
• Traits and enraging allow you to make the game as difficult as you want.
• A number of achievements require you to really change the way you play.
• Lots of other things that affect the game in some way (mana pools, buildings, shards, spawning pools, chests, spells, caches, etc.). There's an insane amount of depth.

The Bad

• Only six gem types and you always use them in the same way (late game).
• The map is fun to explore but the game could really use a simple list/overview.
• Income grinding through mana-leeching.
• A few minor flaws, e.g. non-buildable locations can be a bit vague sometimes.

Conclusion

I love Tower Defense games and GCFW is my #2 in the genre. It's just so much fun to force monsters to go through your crazy mazes, discover all the things the developer has added over the years (this is the 5th GemCraft game) and figure out how to beat each map. Some are quite the puzzle! If you like TDs you will almost certainly enjoy this game.

I'm generally quite stingy with high ratings but GCFW gets my first 10 since 2019:

10/10