Tower Defense ruled my free time (and some of my work time) for months. Now someone has taken that game and twisted it into something new. I fear for my productivity levels if it is as engaging as the original was.

Defense Grid: The Awakening, due to release in November 2008, is a unique spin on tower defense gameplay that will appeal to players of all skill levels. This PC game, built on Emergent’s Gamebryo engine, features beautiful environments, spectacular effects, and a dynamic, engaging soundtrack. The controls are intuitive and the gameplay is deep - the special attacks and properties of each tower work together to provide many ways to succeed.

A horde of enemies is invading, and it’s up to the player to stop them by strategically building fortification towers around their base. This highly replayable game features more than 8 hours of storyline gameplay and many hours of challenge modes that give players unique starting conditions and objectives. There are many different ways to solve each level with increasing rewards for improved efficiency.

Defense Grid: The Awakening has 20 unique environments, each with a different placement of roads, tower build locations, and open areas to plan a strategy around. Each level encourages a different strategy, such as trying to find an optimal path to redirect enemies, making the best use of limited space, and breaking up individual enemy waves to avoid being overwhelmed, all while planning ahead for future waves.

There are 10 different tower types with 3 levels of upgrade for each. Each tower has unique tradeoffs that affect ideal placement, such as line-of-sight attack or ballistic trajectory fire; a large area of effect or damage over time; and minimum and maximum ranges. Over the course of the game, players battle 15 different types of enemies, each with their own unique capabilities and strategies.

Yes, tons of towers, hordes of enemies, I can feel my productivity plunging already. Someone keep me away from this game!