If there’s one type of genre that we love the most, it’s tower defence. There’s something insanely satisfying about placing towers in strategic places and watching them mow down wave after wave of enemies. If we had to pick one series out of the genre, though, that would be the Kingdom Rush games.
We remember playing the first game about 15 years ago as a Flash game. It was also one of the first games we supported back in the day on Kongregate by buying the full package. Whenever a new game came out, we tried to jump on the wagon as quickly as possible and then spent weeks and months playing it. We loved the cheery graphics, the humour and, most importantly, that addictive formula of placing towers, controlling heroes and upgrading everything until we felt almost unstoppable.
Kingdom Rush 6: Genesis TD takes us back to those beginnings.
PC review code generously provided by the publishers.
The Classic Formula Still Works
If you’ve been living under a rock and have somehow never played a Kingdom Rush game before, the idea is pretty simple. You need to defend the kingdom’s gates while waves of enemies come from different directions and follow paths towards your base. Ground and flying enemies have different strengths and weaknesses, and letting too many through means losing lives.
Your job is to place different types of towers along the paths and make sure each one is doing the job it’s best suited for. Some are better against armoured enemies, others are great for dealing with groups, while others can slow enemies down or provide the damage needed to finish them off. You earn gold by killing enemies, which you then spend on more towers and upgrades.
It sounds simple, and it is, but the fun comes from how quickly things can change. New paths can open, enemy types can force you to rethink your setup and bosses can completely change the rhythm of a battle. A defence that looked perfect moments ago can easily start falling apart.
That’s when the heroes and spells become important.
Two Heroes Are Better Than One
One of the bigger changes in Genesis is that you can take two heroes into each stage. While the towers stay in place, your heroes can move around the battlefield, giving you another way of dealing with enemies that are getting too close to the gates.
Each hero has their own abilities and strengths, and moving them to the right place at the right time can make a huge difference. Sometimes we found ourselves using a hero as an extra roadblock while the towers did the damage. Other times, moving them to another part of the map was enough to stop a wave that was about to break through.
You can also equip different spells and call them in when things get ugly, whether that’s bringing in reinforcements or dropping a massive rain of fire on a group of enemies. They aren’t something we wanted to waste, especially when a difficult wave was coming up.
With 15 towers, 12 heroes and 9 spells, there’s a lot of room for experimenting with different combinations and we enjoyed playing with everything that was at our disposal.
Always Something New to Try
After each mission, your performance determines how many stars you earn. Those rewards feed back into your progression, letting you unlock and improve the tools you’ll use in later battles.
This, we feel, is the best part. We would finish a stage, unlock something new and start thinking about where we could use it. Maybe a different tower combination would work better. Maybe one of the heroes we’d ignored suddenly had an ability that fit the next map perfectly.
The campain is not the only good thing about this sixth entry. Iron, Blitz, Hero Party and Spell Rush each put restrictions on your usual setup, while Classic Mode reacreates the original Kingdom Rush formula with its classic towers, a single hero and the original Reinforcements and Rain of Fire spells. The whole package is a doozy and we were grateful to be able to experience it in this new, modernized form.
A World Full of Little Details
The maps, animations and visual effects retain that recognizable Kingdom Rush style. A lot of time and effort has gone into the design of the maps, and while the overall look is hand-drawn, there are so many small animated details that give them plenty of life.
You’ll see villagers off in the distance shaping grass statues, masons working on a wall and animals peacefully grazing while you’re busy trying to stop an army from destroying everything. It’s the kind of stuff you can easily miss while focusing on the next enemy wave, but it gives every map a personality of its own.
The soundtrack fits just as well. Recognizable songs have been heavily modified for Genesis, but they still preserve the spirit of the originals, while the new tracks fit right alongside them.
Changing the Past
Kingdom Rush 6: Genesis TD is cheerful, addictive, and packed with that familiar tower defence magic that made us lose hours to the original Flash game all those years ago. If you’re a fan of tower defence games, then we hope you give this one a go, but keep in mind that it gets increasingly harder (and grindy) as you progress through the campaign.
Score: 8/10
Game: Kingdom Rush 6: Genesis TD
Developer: Ironhide Game Studio
Publisher: Ironhide Game Studio
Genre: Tower Defence / Strategy
Platforms: PC, iOS, Android
Release Date: September 24, 2026
Campaign: 18 stages
Towers: 15
Heroes: 12
Spells: 9
Enemies: 40+
Bosses: 6
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