Lumencraft has mining, shooting, swarming and hits 1.0 next week
Crafty tower defence
I often think about Infested Planet, a nearly 10-year-old topdown tactical shooter about holding off hordes of alien critters with turrets and careful expansion. I thought of it again while watching the trailer for Lumencraft, which seems to marry all of the above to a fully destructible world and lots more resource gathering. It'll leave early access on February 28th.
Here's the release date trailer:
Lumencraft has been in early access since April last year, and it's got 579 reviews and a 'very positive' rating on Steam at the time of writing, which bodes well. There are major new features coming in 1.0 though, including a story mode and "meta-progression." The story mode feeatures 27 missions and a hub at which you upgrade skills and technology to take into each new challenge.
If you don't want to wait a week to try this in 1.0, you can join the early access release's beta branch to mess with it immediately. This post explains how.
I like basebuilding and turrets and mining and swarms of insectoids. The only thing about Lumencraft's trailers and screenshots that I don't like is its art, which employs high resolution textures and coloured lighting and looks like an accidental collage in which every element competes equally for your attention. Art without art direction.
It's not enough to stop me from wanting to blast holes in crystal walls and alien carapaces in a week's time, mind you.