I can remember getting into the custom Warcraft 3 map scene back in the day, churning through map after map just to see what people had created. This is where my love of DOTA came from but I also lost many an hour on the other, less strategic maps like the numerous variants of X-Hero Siege or Tower Defense. The latter spawned its own genre of games which, due to their relatively low barrier to entry (both in dev and player terms), have mostly remained squarely in the casual/mobile space ever since. That’s the main reason I haven’t played any of them in quite some time as they just don’t provide the kind of gaming experience that I’m usually looking for. Taur however looked to be an interesting blend of strategy and tower defense mechanics so I figured it was worth chucking a few dollars at. Whilst it’s certainly a competent enough game it’s longevity feels somewhat limited as the challenge/risk vs reward just isn’t there to keep you long term.
The setting of Taur is simple: you’re a high tech race focused on weapons development that, for some inexplicable reason, hasn’t invested anything into your own defenses. So when the Imperion comes knocking demanding that you surrender all your technology to them your only hope is to deploy it on your home soil to defend yourself from the incoming invasion. This is what sets up for the game’s main loop: you’re put in control of the Prime Canon and given free reign to build out the requisite defenses to ensure that you don’t lose territory. You’ll do this by building out towers (duh), various small units and upgrading your canon with different weaponry and special abilities to fend off the oncoming onslaught.
Taur’s graphics are simplistic by requirement as whilst initially you’ll only be fighting a handful of enemies at any one time it quickly ramps up to dozens, if not hundreds, of units on-screen. The devs have taken the typical low poly no texture route for the models, relying on the standard red vs blue colour palette to make enemies and friendlies visually distinct. There’s liberal use of advanced lighting effects and particle systems, all of which seem to be well optimised even when there’s a good number of things happening on-screen. The only downside is that your buildings are a little hard to distinguish visually, both when they’re built and even in the build screen itself. Other than that the graphics are wholly appropriate for a game like this.
Unlike other tower defense games where you’re either building a maze or attacking waves of enemies as they walk a defined path Taur instead places you right in the middle of the battle field and enemies will trudge their way towards you. You have control of the main canon which allows you to pick off enemies directly whilst your various buildings either provide support in some way (like units on the ground or a shield for instance) or attack the enemies directly. The blend of units does matter as the various different types of enemies have differing strengths and weaknesses, so you’ll have to have the right blend if you want to take on any situation. The mission structure takes one of a few different forms, most of them wave based but some with specific unit types (like all heavy tanks or just air units). Suffice to say there is a decent amount of variety in how each of the battles play out, even if it is slow going initially.
Progression is a mixed bag as it can come in a couple forms, one of which is gambling and the other is the more tried and true research system. Both of these rely on specific kinds of resources that will drop from the missions you choose. Whilst there’s some correlation between the difficulty of a particular mission and the rewards you get it’s honestly pretty weak and the lack of a system to trade one kind of resources for another often has you in a situation where you can’t make any meaningful progress for multiple turns because the key resource you need just simply doesn’t show up. Worse still should you attempt the gambling part (upgrading the damage of the Prime Canon) you can end up with something much, much worse than you currently have which can gimp your entire build. This is the kind of mechanic that makes me steer clear of Roguelikes as I much prefer having a steady path to progression rather than random chance dictating whether or not I’m able to get the next upgrade.
Which is why, after about 3 hours of play time, I gave up on playing any more of Taur. Once you reach level 50 you get the big bad bossman and he’s likely downright impossible to beat the first time around. However from there it was a steep step up in difficulty but no additional rewards to go along with it. This made continuing on a rather pointless affair as I didn’t feel like I could keep up with what was happening. Sure I could’ve started again but the amount of downtime between missions early on is phenomenal and I didn’t really feel motivated to try again with a more optimised build. For some though I can imagine this is part of the charm but for me I just wasn’t interested in trying again.
Taur certainly delivers on what it promises, giving you an interesting tower defense experience that can be played infinitely if you find yourself getting into it. The graphics are simplistic but well done, fitting both the game and the setting perfectly. The combat is varied enough to keep you going and with the deep customisation there’s obviously numerous strategies to explore for those who wish to. However progress is a haphazard beast, relying on resources that randomly drop and even including gambling mechanics that can set you back significantly if the roll doesn’t go your way. It’s why I’ll say that, whilst I enjoyed my time with Taur, it hit a hard wall once I saw how much influence RNG had on everything and I just wasn’t interested past that point.
Rating: 7.0/10
Taur is available on PC right now for $35.95. Total play time was 3 hours.
