Game Preview: Kingdom Rush Elemental Uprising

Heroes, welcome back! You have found a way to beat the Time Mage and successfully saved the Kingdom by closing all the rifts in Time. Success and fun was had in the game Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time. But wait…the elemental gods are very unhappy about the mess we caused doing so! Volcanoes, earthquakes and monsters are coming from all corners of the jungle towards us and our wonderful Kingdom! It’s time to call on new heroes and fight!

Today we are going to take an early look at Kingdom Rush: Elemental Uprising, a new stand-alone game coming from Lucky Duck Games in the same universe and system as their hit game Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time. It plays 1-4 players for 45-90 mins. It is designed by Helana Hope, Jessy Wright and Sen-Foong Lim.

For a look at the original game and our impressions on it you can see that here:

Gaming with Sidekicks Reviews: Kingdom Rush-Rift in Time

This new stand-alone game brings some familiar aspects and new features as well from the original. There 12 unique scenarios driven through a story campaign that can be played individually or sequentially. There are 5 new heroes and some epic new towers in the game. There are also tower mod stickers that allow you to customize your defenses to suit your style of play style.

Another awesome part of this game is the new huge bosses represented by some big miniatures in the game! One of the fun parts of this one is that you can take heroes from the original game Rift in Time and add them to this game or take these heroes and add them to that original game as well!

Another fun part of this is that there are ways to modify the challenge and customize the game. These include changing the star difficulty from 1, 2 or 3 to make the game tougher. Heroic mode makes the game tougher on the hero characters and the Iron Challenge makes it difficult for a specific scenario for all players.

Gameplay

Let’s talk about the gameplay. We played through the scenario “Blossoms and Foes” as two players and found some new and returning aspects that we enjoyed. First, there are no portal cards in this game so your towers can no longer be destroyed for attacking a portal. Events came in and changed the game mid-scenario throughout. These event cards are mixed in the horde stacks randomly and come up throughout the game.

With no portals, victory conditions are changed also. Players will go until the game end condition is met, telling players when the last round is up. The different difficulty levels change the tokens and additional rules as well, making the game more challenging for players.

There are new towers with new mechanics as well. These include Splash Damage which give secondary damage, Farshot which can reduce damage but increase range, Time-lapse Damage to stop enemy abilities and Blast that deals extra damage.

Tower Modification Stickers!

This is one of the cool new additions in the game, stickers that you can use and purchaser to make modification upgrades to your towers. You can come up with some cool combos with them as well. These are available for purchase and you make the modifications for the duration of that scenario.

These mods can let you attain perfect range, change the damage type, add attacks and add a soldier meeple attack. Personally we really liked the one that added one soldier to the attack of the tower, giving a little more punch to the damage.

There are also environmental features like Blossoms and Lava Pools that will change the attack allowing another hit with the Magic Blossoms and the Lava Pools give extra crystals to the players.

New Monsters and Heroes!

The new monsters introduce some new features that really changed the game mechanics as well. Shaman Barriers block certain types of attacks and Tough Enemies can only take one small square of damage.

The game will also include five new heroes, we had the chance to check out two of them in the scenarios we played. Each has a unique ability that is specific to them. We got to check out Bruxa, who is a powerful voodoo woman who uses the spirits of the fallen to help in the fight. Alric is the last of the desert warriors who uses sand warriors to help in the fight. These heroes look great and played very smoothly through our experience.

Overall we really enjoyed the scenarios, the modifications are a fun part of the way the game differs from the first one. Setting up and using the Spawn Stacks really add to the game as well, giving you a cascade of the hordes as they work they way down the line.