Circuit Defender

Circuit Defender — hold an expanding mineral frontier

Your crystal core sits at the centre of a carved mineral field. Hostile traffic attacks from every active direction at once, so you cannot solve the board by stacking one choke point. Build a layered defense, survive the wave, then decide how much more territory you can afford to expose.

Version 0.3.1 is the current public build. This polish update improves browser performance, makes blocked build clicks snap to nearby valid mineral blocks, clarifies tower unlocks and EXTEND risks, speeds up wave-end tower growth, and strengthens core-damage feedback. Play free in your browser or download the Windows build.

The frontier keeps moving

After each cleared wave, draft one of three cards: open a new attack lane, extend an existing entrance outward, break into a generated outer chunk ring, deepen late-run pressure, or strengthen your current build. Extending a lane now preserves previous enemy mouths as supplemental spawn points, so an over-developed front can become more dangerous instead of merely longer.

Build freely across revealed terrain

Towers are not limited to predefined sockets. Fog of war recedes around the core, active lanes, and deployed defenses. Revealed buildable mineral blocks now glow during the build phase, while invalid cells explain whether they are blocked by fog, lanes, entrances, or existing towers. Clicking near a blocked lane cell can also snap the build wheel to the closest valid mineral block, reducing friction around diagonal lanes and newly opened fronts.

Towers grow through combat

Eight tower classes fill distinct roles: Pulse, Slow, Arc, Mortar, Beam, Amp, Toxin, and Flak. Each deployed tower earns its own combat XP and can level automatically at wave end. Shared energy still unlocks new tower classes and buys immediate upgrades. Level 3 and level 5 specialization choices push individual towers toward different builds.

Enemies push back

Twelve hostile designs pressure different weaknesses: drones, darts, shielded bulwarks, armored crawlers, swarming mites, splitting spores, healing menders, suppressing jammers, evasive phase traffic, screening wardens, juggernaut mini-bosses, and crystalline bosses. Every fifth wave announces a boss breach before launch, while a red focus alert highlights enemies closing in on the core.

Lane modifiers add route-level pressure identities such as armored, swarm, jammer, and phase breaches. Buying Signal Intel unlocks battlefield heat tinting on the mineral blocks associated with each lane: calm fronts stay transparent, while stressed fronts deepen toward red.

Clearer first-run ramp

The map still starts with a three-lane frontier, and the tutorial asks you to cover each starting lane with at least one Pulse tower before launching. The first wave then attacks through one training lane and the second wave through two lanes before the full board comes online. Tutorial text and locked tower hints have been rewritten around that ramp, and the first single-option build wheel now acts as a clear Pulse confirmation instead of a sparse radial menu.

Runtime-drawn mineral battlefield

The board, towers, enemies, weapon effects, fog, and fading wreck debris are drawn at runtime. Weapons use distinct visual signatures, from forked arc lightning and mortar shells to corrosion trails and twin-rail beams. Role-matched synthesized sound effects give towers, enemies, leaks, upgrades, and boss warnings their own audio identity.

Systems implemented

• Large mouse-pannable battlefield with fullscreen support that reveals more territory without shrinking the HUD.
• Chunk-generated frontier breaks that add new mineral-field rings when active entrances reach the current edge.
• Clickable frontier minimap, off-screen threat focus pings, and lane-pressure heat tinting tied directly to lane-owned mineral blocks.
• Freeform revealed-terrain construction through a single radial tower-wheel flow with visible buildable cells, blocked-cell reasons, nearest valid-block snapping, hover range previews, and clear cancel controls.
• Lightweight first-run onboarding for panning, lane coverage, terrain placement, range previews, wave launch, tower XP, and frontier drafts, tuned around a one-lane training wave.
• Eight towers, independent combat XP, two specialization tiers, selling, range previews, and energy-based unlocks.
• Between-wave draft cards with impact summaries, clearer EXTEND entry-point warnings, build-defining global upgrades, escalating enemy modifiers, retained spawn mouths, and boss breaches.
• Persistent icon-first Frontier Codex with click-through details, shared-renderer combat previews, subtly animated upgrade-detail icons, encrypted silhouettes, and saved cross-run shard progression.
• Pause menu, Settings, fullscreen, fog-of-war toggle, FPS overlay, and synthesized sound toggle.

Controls

• Click — choose menus, open the radial tower wheel, place defenses, launch waves, inspect the Codex, and choose upgrades
• Left-drag, middle-drag, or right-drag — pan the camera across the map
• Right-click — close the tower wheel
• Minimap click — focus the camera on a distant front
• Pause, Codex, and Settings — available through on-screen buttons

Requirements

Play in a modern desktop browser or on 64-bit Windows.

Built with

Made with the Godot Engine.

License

The game is distributed for personal, non-commercial play. Please share the official itch.io page rather than mirroring the download files.