X-Morph: Defense stands out from the crowd with its stunning visuals and engaging gameplay. While at its heart it’s a tower defence game, the addition of top-down shoot ’em up elements adds a strategic twist to the tried and tested formula. Dispensing with tradition, X-Morph sees players take on the role of a hostile invading force from the stars, intent on siphoning off the planet’s resources for their own nefarious gain.

The game is broken down into a number of levels and waves, with each level focusing on a different country on Earth. Players first touch down in South Africa, which serves as the game’s tutorial. Each invasion site is marked by the appearance of a Core, a device that contains the required materials to begin relieving the planet of its valuable resources, as well as the technology required to achieve this feat. Players are taught how to build and place turrets – the game’s main defence against the advancing human military – as well as unit-blocking laser fences and other features the game has to offer.

As above, missions are represented by different countries to conquer, each with around six waves of increasingly tougher enemies to subdue. Each country has its own speciality, so upgrading between missions is important if you want to give yourself an edge. From the Canadians’ heavily armoured tanks to the British transport helicopters, each nation brings a slightly different threat. And while each mission essentially follows the same formula, it’s the addition of these different dangers that keeps the game appealing and fresh.

Through each wave, you’re kept up to speed by both your alien overlord and the General of the human forces – presumably through some form of alien-based transmission hijacking – which provides you with handy hints and tactical advice. Strangely, regardless of which country you’re attacking, the General is always the same. It would be nice to see some variety that more clearly defines each country’s military might, though I do appreciate I’m probably just nit-picking here.

Between waves, the number of advancing enemy units is shown, as well as their proposed attack routes, which players can choose to block with turrets or laser fences, forcing the helpless humans to take a longer route to the parasitic Core. As the game progresses, the military throws tougher enemies into the fray in a bid to halt the advancing takeover, which forces you to rethink your strategy from time to time, but with the ability to move turrets I found this to be of little consequence. The final wave switches things up a bit, varies from mission to mission and forces you to re-strategise.

And while this sounds like your average tower defence title so far, the real strategy lies with the player-controlled spaceship, which is also where the twin-stick shoot ’em up comes into play. You have two main modes available to you while piloting the futuristic craft. The first is pretty standard and allows you to fly around the map firing projectiles. As you upgrade, you gain different forms that can be cycled through using the ZR button. Hitting the X button shifts the ship into Ghost Mode, which increases movement speed and allows you to phase through buildings that would otherwise hinder your movement. It’s in this mode that you’re also able to build, move and upgrade your turrets.

Defeating enemy units with your ship allows you to build and upgrade more towers, giving you both an incentive to do so as well as relieving you from sitting with idle thumbs while events unfold before your eyes. Sometimes I find the tower defence genre to be too much of a waiting game, which often causes me to lose interest a few missions in. X-Morph, however, kept me interested hours into the main campaign. Not only is it enjoyable, but it also offers a decent challenge.

I think it’s important to note that X-Morph: Defense originally made its debut on PC back in the latter half of 2017 and was by no means a bad-looking game. Happily, the beauty and intricate details have been fully ported to the Switch. The game both looks and runs like a dream. Granted, I noticed a bit of pixelation while playing in docked mode, but I suffered no slowdown or frame rate issues – and the same is true in handheld mode. And while the Switch’s screen is fairly small, I didn’t find any difficulty reading text or keeping an eye on the action. I should probably mention, however, that there is no touchscreen support for the main bulk of the game. You can navigate the menu with the Switch’s touchscreen, but the main game is lacking in this department, which is a little disappointing, though not a game changer.

All in all, I’ve been thoroughly impressed by X-Morph: Defense and I’m somewhat ashamed that it wasn’t on my radar sooner. The blend of top-down shoot ’em up and tower defence works incredibly well and there’s enough here to keep you interested for a good few hours of gameplay. The missions are varied enough to stop you getting bored and the game simply looks fantastic. Playing as the invading force is also a refreshing twist. Personal niggles aside, you’d be a fool not to give it a go.