Shard Defender Game Review

Shard Defender Game Background

Shard Defender is a wave-based survival game where you help a wizard power up and defend a magical crystal shard from various enemies.

How to Play Shard Defender

Press the green and gray START button on the welcome screen to start playing. After games players can press the UPGRADES button to go to the upgrade menu to upgrade their character.

Move the wizard around the playing field using the WASD keys or the arrow keys on your keyboard. The wizard automatically shoots at nearby enemies, with a preference toward the direction you are facing.

Try to avoid getting hit by the enemies, as they stun you after hitting you, and you can not shoot while stunned.

Basic Gameplay Advice

Waves

The goal of the game is to protect the magical shard to survive through all 20 waves.

The first wave starts off with 10 enemies you must defeat. The second wave has 20 enemies. The enemy count typically grows as you advance through subsequent waves (10, 20, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 105, 120, 140, 160, and 200). Enemies come at you with increasing speeds, more strengths, and higher quantities as you advance. The final stage also contains a ridiculously strong boss at the end.

If the shard takes damage during any wave that damage is carried over to the next wave. Whenever you die you start off at the first wave on your next game.

Enemies

The enemies are all drawn in a straight line toward the magical energy shard. If they hit you they will stun you, and you can not shoot at them while stunned. When you are not stunned you automatically shoot at nearby enemies.

Indicators

The upper left corner shows how many total enemies you have killed and how much gold you have earned on this play. The top center shows the current wave number and how many enemies remain. The upper right corner has a white flag you can press to give up, in order to collect your coins and go to the upgrades menu to shop.

Upgrades

Defeated enemies may drop coins. Walk over the coins to pick them up, so you can use them to purchase power ups.

You can upgrade the following features 3 times each in the upgrades menu which is linked to from the welcome page.

• Fire Rate: shoot more rapidly, starting at $50. Further upgrades cost $100 and $200, for a total of $350 to fully upgrade.
• Damage: shots do more damage, starting at $70. Further upgrades cost $150 and $250, for a total of $470 to fully upgrade.
• Shot Distance: shots go further, starting at $40. Further upgrades cost $80 and $160, for a total of $280 to fully upgrade.
• Spread Shot: fire multiple shots, starting at $100. Further upgrades cost $200 and $300, for a total of $600 to fully upgrade.
• Piercing Shots: shots pierce through enemies, starting at $90. Further upgrades cost $180 and $270, for a total of $640 to fully upgrade.
• Shard HP: the shard is more resistant to attacks, starting at $60. Further upgrades cost $120 and $240, for a total of $420 to fully upgrade.
• Speed: move faster, starting at $50. Further upgrades cost $100 and $200, for a total of $350 to fully upgrade.
• Resistance: recover from stuns faster, starting at $40. Further upgrades cost $80 and $160, for a total of $280 to fully upgrade.
• Gold Hopper: increases coin drop rate, starting at $100. Further upgrades cost $200 and $300, for a total of $600 to fully upgrade.

It costs a total of $3,990 to upgrade all attributes 3 times. After everything has been fully upgraded there is no point in going out of your way to collect gold coins as they have no other use

Advanced Playing Tips & Strategy

No matter how well you play your character is too weak and slow to beat the game until you purchase many upgrades, thus your early play should focus more on maximizing picking up gold instead of trying to win the game. This means to upgrade your fire rate, shot damage, spread shot, and gold hopper before worrying much about things like resistance, movement speed, or shard HP. When gold hopper is upgraded you can earn an average of over 2 gold per enemy defeated, enabling you to purchase other power ups much more quickly.

It is only worth considering trying to beat the game after all attributes have been fully upgraded.

Standing close to the shard means you do not have to move far to pick up gold and you can see the shard’s health at all times. If the shard’s health is so low that you do not think you will survive through the end of the wave you can rush to pick up gold before dying. Otherwise it makes sense to stand in a position near the shard where you won’t get hit (moving as needed to avoid enemies) and collect the gold at the end of each stage.

While you are in gold collecting mode it helps to be rather stationary near the shard outside of collecting gold. When you are playing the game to beat it then it helps to move around and take out a lot of the enemies early in the wave so that you are meeting fewer of them near the magical shard.

On the final level the big boss comes from the top, so it is best to take a lot of the weaker enemies from the bottom out first and then come back up. Be cautious on early and easy stages when playing to win as you need to have the shard close to full energy coming into the final stage to beat it.

Educational Aspects

This is an idle game which ultimately requires a lot of patience.

Player Age Recommendations

This game is fun for players of all ages.