Jarred Defense

Jarred Defense is a tower defence game built around mazing. There are no predefined tower locations, so players decide where to place towers in order to lengthen enemy paths, create choke points and steer enemies over hazard tiles such as lava. The game deliberately omits spells, first-person shooting sections and random card modifiers, focusing instead on planning, placement and upgrades. The premise involves a cat trapped in a jar that comments on events during play.

Levels are hand-crafted and change as a match progresses. Heat sources cause ice blocks to melt and crack, altering the layout of the map and forcing players to adapt their defences. Towers have upgrade trees with branching specialisations, and an early send mechanic allows players to call the next wave ahead of time in exchange for a bonus that scales with the risk involved. A boss enemy arrives every ten waves.

The developer describes the game as difficult and states that it was designed in the style of older browser-based tower defence games that offered little guidance, with the expectation that players will lose runs on the way to learning each level. Jarred Defense was made by a single developer and runs on the open-source Godot engine.