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It's nice sometimes to go into a game knowing nothing about it. Okay, not quite nothing: the name, the price, and the most basic hint of what it might involve moment-to-moment. This is how I approached ROD: Revolt of Defense, which I just picked up on Steam for 79p. Looks tactical, I thought. Signs of a grid. Less than a (large) Twix. IN.Turns out I love it, too. Although, having only played about twenty minutes, what I'm loving the most at present is that strange, tentative process of feeling your way into a game, of reaching out for a sense of what it is and what it's trying to do. ROD has been unusually accommodating in terms of mystery, too. It loaded in Russian language mode at first, and even when I got that sorted the icons didn't initially look like anything I understood so I whacked it back to Russian for full immersion.
Steadily, though, it's coming into focus. You start with a little gridded territory inside a sort of bubble. There are plenty of numbers scattered around suggesting different types of resources, and sure enough you can spend these resources on buildings that you place on the grid. Warehouses, walls, trees - these make oxygen, which is one of the resources! An early cognitive victory - and various defensive towers with little guns inside.
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