TIGSource Forums

http://www.defendersquest.com/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/

I bought this on Steam a few days ago and I've really enjoyed it so far. It mixes the RPG and Tower Defense genres quite well. I've also noticed that the developers are very open to feedback on their forums, which is lovely.

Pros (+) and cons (-) in my opinion:
+Excellent writing. The characters in your party deliver memorable lines early and often, and there are plenty of conflicts among them.
+Addictive gameplay with frequent player rewards
+Lots of endgame content and new game plus with hidden levels.
+Nice production values (sprites, music)
-Predictable, cliché plot
-Cutscenes are a bit ugly, especially compared to the nice sprites inside the levels.
-Grinding can make a lot of the challenges in the game trivial.
-Skill trees could be more interesting.

After I completed the game for the first time, I decided to try out "Hero Mode", which is a self-imposed challenge where you don't recruit any new characters during the game. The only way you can get through it is to set exp gains to 300% in the menu, and even then, it becomes incredibly hard once you start going into New Game Plus. I'm not sure if I'll even be able to finish it.

Tried demo.
100% agree here, writing is good, but cutscenes look like some sort of random amateur webcomic, which is weird compared to nice sprites.

Quite good. One of the best TD games I've played, next to Immortal Defense and Defense Grid. A+

Oh hey guys!

Thanks for the nice words, glad you liked the game! Did you hear about it first on Steam then?

@Cobralad: We originally released the game in January, and then after we'd sold a little bit we had enough money to hire some contractors to punch up the sprite and background art. Unfortunately, we had soooo many cutscene character poses that we didn't have enough money to hire an artist for that part of it, so we just touched them up a little bit with some basic shading and just hoped for the best. So yeah, that's probably the weakest part of the game production-values wise.

Why couldn't I find your original announcement thread when I searched for "Defender's Quest"?  ???

Anyway, I actually knew about the game before; I remember playing it on Kongregate when it was just a free flash game. It was unfinished back then and I had no idea it would ever move to Steam. I hope there will be more updates in the future!

We'll keep supporting it for as long as we can afford to and/or until my brain explodes and I need a fresh project. I'm talking with my team today about where we want to go with it next.

If we do any DLC updates in the future, we'll do it under my "FreeLC (http://www.fortressofdoors.com/2012/07/freeloadable-content-alternative-to.html)" model.

Hey everyone! Just wanted to mention that we're the daily deal today on Steam! Now's your chance to get DefQ for just $5!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/218410/?dailydeal

Or about $6 if you live in Europe, heh... we always get the slightly-worse deals over here :P

Quick update: we're on a bundle sale on GOG.com right now. If you get everything in the "Defend and Conquer" bundle you can nab it for 75% off, otherwise 50%:

http://www.gog.com/promo/defend___conquer_bundle

I'll post full sales stats in January. Spoiler: GOG is becoming a serious competitor to Steam. Still substantially less, but it's nice to know there's more than one game in town now.