Ancient Islands

Ancient Islands

Avernus Software, Art Games Studio S.A. · 2022 · Difficult, Colorful, Tower Defense, Strategy, 2D

PC
Positive89% · 27 📉 Recent reviews down 79%
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$8.99
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About Ancient Islands

✦ AI summary

Ancient Islands is a hardcore tower defense game where you strategically place towers with unique properties and synergies while developing your village through resource management and construction to fend off waves of enemies. What sets it apart is its deep complexity: customize tower targeting by 14 enemy traits, trade resources dynamically between multiple production chains, unlock towers and abilities through branching skill trees, and adapt your tactics across multiple difficulty levels.

The islands may look colorful and peaceful at the first glance, don't let It fool you though, the truth is quite different...

Ancient Islands is a hardcore, old-school tower defense game with complex mechanics unusual for the genre!
Many towers are at your disposal, each one with unique properties. Set your buildings wisely to maximize their combat potential and take advantage of the synergies between them.


Develop the village you're defending. Build not only the defense towers but also other facilities inside your settlement. Place woodcutter's huts near the forest to gather wood, then build a marketplace to exchange it for stone. Develop your magic schools to get more mana and unlock more powerful spells. Upgrade your gate to damage enemies attacking it and so on...


Exchange resources to get the ones you need. You want to build a specific tower and you lack wood while sleeping on the stone and gold? - no problem! (if you're willing to pay the price). The map you're on is rich in one supply while lacking the presence of others? - Trade! You're not a mage type? - Turn your mana into gold!



Set the plan of an attack for each individual tower. Order your forces to attack a specific enemy based on 14 unique traits. You can make mage towers target the flying enemies with low health first, and your archers the fastest ones with the strongest magic resistance. It's all in your hands. Figure out what works for you once or change your tactic according to the map!


Develop your abilities in a way you like, there are tons of available combinations, you can specialize yourself in getting gold and archery, woodcutting, and melee fighters, or go full resource gathering. The choice is yours. Each branch of the skill tree has new buildings and towers ready to be unlocked!

Upgrading equipment for your towers in the blacksmith, multiple difficulty levels, troops formations, and powerful spells await...

What Steam players say

Recent verbatim reviews from Steam — separate from playze.io community reviews below.

Not recommended Feb 10, 2026
The game is half-baked. Interesting ideas but poorly used. The game has a pretty bad balance. The beginning and end are easier, the middle is even on an easy level. You can't upgrade half the things in the game, they don't give you enough points, you need at least twice as many levels. Everything is very expensive and the levels are too small. Achievements give you bonuses but they are either too few or only for certain things. You can't see the upgrades well from the description pile, you can't exit the game without using the keyboard when everything is done with the mouse, sometimes there are bugs like when you pause it stops in one place and you have to turn off the pause to fix it, building construction is slow and stops the production of the building or tower and has to be done in pause, otherwise it gets pretty bad during the game. The game has potential but it seems unfinished and unlikely to be finished or repaired. I wouldn't recommend it in this condition.
2 found this helpful
Recommended Jun 29, 2025
I have only played a few minutes, but it seems solid, far more of a TD game than many I pick up. There are four types of towers, the basic infantry, which you use to hold foes in place why either archers or mage towers attack them, and a forth tower called a support tower, with slow and a minor area attack. Each seems to upgrade three times (?), and then one split into two types I think. haven't gotten that far yet. There is also a town where you can work to build the resources needed to build tower, buildings like woodcutter and stone mason, as well as a few more. There are tactical options, in the form of spells, and a rich looking strategic upgrade tree. You can also strengthen your position by completing achievements. There does not seem to be any way to control the enemies path. First correction, there is a very robust targeting system, with several pre-sets where you can pick the first five preferences, which you can then assign to the towers individually. It comes into the tutorial after the second map. It seems fluff light as well, but that may change as I am still playing around with the tutorial. All in all, it looks pretty solid, going to give it two thumbs up for…
2 found this helpful
Not recommended Mar 31, 2024
It freezes, so it does not matter how good the gameplay is (and it is good).
2 found this helpful
Recommended Sep 29, 2023
honestly mixed feelings just because it feels like a rushed release where more adding content and bug fixing / polishing was planned. what you get is a decent TD with some original ideas, but it's rather short and could do with a bit more development time.
1 found this helpful
Not recommended Jan 12, 2025
It's okay but you really shoudnt pay for a flash game
Recommended Aug 25, 2023
It's a decent TD game with a few resource management/city builder type elements. It's a little too short; finished in 6.4hrs. Feels like the developer had more planned but decided to just release as is. Came to this conclusion due to the fact I finished the last mission, yet most of the upgrade trees have yet to be completed, like less than half. All there is now is to go back and complete the missions perfectly, which I expect to be too easy with the upgrades.

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