Prime World Defenders

[Jonathan]

The good
-Fixed challenges (earn stars, XP, & silver) AND randomly generated challenges (earn XP & silver only). Good balance between grind and cockblock. If I tire of throwing my head against a particular wall I can level up. If I tire of grinding, I can problem solve.
-Once you get to the first easy/medium/hard/fixed challenge, the difficulty is pitched well. Some of the fixed challenges I can solve on the first try or three with no grinding. Some I need to sleep on because I need to be smarter. Some I play a few times, realize I could win with a specific evolution, and then grind that evolution. The hard levels are usually winnable on the first try (maybe 80%, though decaying slowly as I progress through the levels).
-no pay-to-win
-the limited number of tower slots/card slots/magic slots means a good balance between "lots of toys" and "no meaningful strategic decision-making". I have maybe four towers I use constantly and swap out one or two for each new level, with occasionally my fusion/evolution antics producing a new winner to swap out in the good four.
-High cooldowns on magic powers. I love Kingdom Rush to death, but one of the most common personal challenges I run is to complete a given level/difficulty with no magic, or the pubbie magic only, or magic without XP, or pubbie magic without XP, because the action skill of using magic is a zero-sum game with the tactical skill of tower placement/selection/upgrades. Magic is very very powerful in Kingdom Rush due to the low cooldowns (which are reduced by bringing in the next wave). In Prime World, the cooldowns are long enough that magic is a 'oh-shit' solution, not a key part of your strategy. If you want a more actiony tower defense, then Prime World Defenders ain't it, but it's a good thinking man's tower defense. I like that.
-some juggle levels, some fixed path levels, some there & back again levels, some boss levels, some horde levels. I like the map variety.

The bad
-stealth units must die. it's a shitty mechanic.
-online only, for a single player game?
-the CCG mechanic makes me want to shoot puppies. Just let me buy cards with no randomness please. And for fuck's sake make the complete card list available to view in the game.
-wtf does 'unique' mean when I have two versions of the same card?
-evolution is straightforward, but fusion makes no damn mathematical sense. I have no idea if it is optimal to fuse in a big bunch with larger "efficiency" or not or if it does not matter. I also am completely mystified by the rules of what is allowed to fuse with what.
-runs poorly at 1080p on my Sandy Bridge igfx. Maybe this is a negative for Intel, not the developer.

[Jonathan]

They added offline support. Hallelujah!

I have been stuck in the same fixed challenge for a couple weeks. It has 80+ waves, the fuckers. I can get to near the last wave. I have made slow progress grinding up towers and learning the level.

I spent my stars on wastes of time. 20 stars for 20% damage? So good.

The chuckling game has developed a transient error where sometimes my lightning towers do no damage and I can't call the next wave. The only workaround is to restart.