If it’s a tower defense, do we know the types of towers you can build?
To me it’s a pretty distinct genre. There’s no traditional basebuilding, only tower variants.
Does that mean we’re getting more types of tower? Or are the existing architectural styles enough?
If we used the criteria people are using to describe this as a Tower Defense, then games like League of Legends would be seen that way too, right?
Defending a central location from waves of enemies, using player controlled units and spawned waves of your own. Towers that defend certain points of each lane. A ‘Wonder’ in your main base that causes the game to end if taken.
Not calling it a roguelite seems to be in defiance of the people making it, and it seems to be formed from disbelief. Like it’s too good to be true, or because they are being tricked and lied to.
It’s something that could be taken at face value. It’s not because they do not trust that they are being told the whole truth, or believe the devs are upselling their product. At least, that’s what I’m seeing here.
I look forward to people playing it, maybe the perspective will develop a little bit with personal experience.
Good grief. Just an observation.
You misunderstand me. I’m describing how The Crucible is definitively a roguelite based off of what we’ve been shown, but some would still choose to say it is not.
A reminder, the definition of “roguelite” is:
A roguelite is a video game that incorporates elements of the roguelike genre but also introduces features not found in traditional roguelikes, such as meta-progression (unlocking things between runs) and more accessible, often real-time gameplay. Unlike roguelikes, which typically reset all progress on death, roguelites allow players to carry over some progress (like upgrades or items) between runs, making them less punishing.
This is much more accurate than calling it a tower defense. That leads me to believe that the discussion of it not being a roguelike stems from something else, in this case: mistrust or disbelief.
Is there something off about my analysis that you would like to share?
I also don’t want to get between the two of you sharing a conversation, this is only meant to be me sharing my two cents.
I haven’t seen the demo of the game mode yet. When it was first announced, my first thought was tower defense and why they called it something else didn’t make any sense to me
The developer interview that they did at gamescom has a good 8ish minutes covering it, if you have the time I would recommend it:
It cleared a lot up for me. The Arena of the Gods gamemode in AoM Retold was kind of disappointing for me, but this looks like much closer to a roguelite. Perks gained through a currency you recieve at the end of each match, whether you succeded or not. Abilities gained at random. Random events experienced uniquely through each run.
It ticked all the boxes on my checklist, so I thought maybe the reason people were assuming it wasn’t this way was because their confidence in the dev team had been shaken.
I have seen the interview. Do you have a link to an actual gameplay video?
The closest I have on hand is from someone who played it during gamescom. Attendees were allowed a 25 minute session to play it using either Tughlaq Dynasty or Macedonian Dynasty:
It’s covered in the first 5 minutes of the video.
Another person has shared their opinions on reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe4/comments/1n0f9uf/gamescom_2025_my_impressions_on_the_crucible_and/
It doesn’t look like a tower defense at all though…
Not one thing they’ve said or shown suggested building different types of towers, much less mostly or exclusively towers as the vast majority of tower defense games do.
The closest to that is they said you have a wonder that you’re defending.
My frame of reference is the Defense of Crete from Age of Empires Online which is similar to a tower defense with waves and waves of enemies and you have to protect your town center as long as possible. The players use regular towers, walls and a forts (castle-like) for defenses. I understand it’s not a true tower defense game but if you had to make one for an Age of Empires game mode without any new tower types, this is what it would be.
Looking at it closely, it looks like an improved version of AoE2’s "Defend the Wonder" mode.
How i love that game mode in AoE2. I used to play it a lot to get points in Events (back when the DE still had events), since it was fast-paced, fun, and you could amass a ton of post-Imperial units and kill a lot of enemy units.
That said, this Crucible Mode seems to have more RPG elements, like the coliseum, resource crates, balanced waves, various bonuses, etc.
Would be a good addition for AoE4, also,It might be a good game to pass the time while I wait for my pals to play in multiplayer.
