ArcWright

Your towers are blank. The cards decide what they become.

Arcwright is a wand-building tower defense game. Every tower you place starts as an empty shell — it does nothing at all until you slot cards into it. Drop in a Weak Bolt and it shoots. Drop in a generator and it powers your grid. Drop in a mint and it earns you gold.

Then it gets interesting. Modifiers, amplifiers and elements stack on top of whatever that tower already is. Double Shot fires an extra projectile — or makes your mint pay out twice. A Duplicator copies the card before it, and stacking two of them is as absurd as it sounds.

Build a power grid, not a pile of turrets

Guns burn energy, and generators do not power the tiles around them. You run pylons onto the corners between tiles and wire them together into a grid. Anything on that grid shares its stored energy with everything else on it.

Nothing recharges between waves, so a Battery Bank holding your surplus is often worth more than another gun. And because towers grow stronger the further they sit from your Core, stacking everything in one corner is exactly the wrong instinct.

Every card is a trade

• Scattergun — five extra pellets, 30% slower to fire.
• Glass Cannon — triple damage, half the tower's HP.
• Death Ray — a hitscan beam that refuses extra-bullet and fire-rate cards, because it's already instant.
• Chain Coil — lightning arcs to three more enemies, for slightly less damage.

Casts have classes, and classes have rules. A beam won't take a shotgun card. A flamethrower won't let you swap its fire. Your build is shaped as much by what a tower can't accept as by what it can.

Hold the line

One arena, one continuous run. Waves escalate forever, with a boss every 20. Ranged Lancers outrange your short guns. Brutes ride in fast, then slow once you knock them off their cart — and burst into Mites when they die. Hatcheries park and spew a brood until you focus them down; kill one early and the rest of its brood never arrives.

Shoot enemies yourself with Core rockets. Sweep your mouse over dropped coins and little drones fly out from the Core to fetch them.

Controls

• Left click — claim tile / build / inspect, or click an enemy to fire a Core rocket
• Shift + click — demolish (targets highlight red, half refund, cards returned)
• E — energy view, for placing pylons and running wires
• Scroll / two-finger drag — zoom · WASD / middle-drag — pan · Home — recentre
• P — pause · Build phase is untimed; waves start only when you say so

Notes

This is an early build and balance is still moving. Feedback very welcome.

macOS: the build isn't code-signed, so macOS will say the developer can't be verified. Right-click the app → Open → Open to get past it.