Most tower defense games hand you gold and let you shop; Pixel Defense makes you earn it. This pixelated real-time strategy hybrid has you raising farms, lumberyards and other production buildings, hiring workers to run them, and only then converting that economy into archer towers, walls and trained soldiers before the enemy waves roll in. Defense here is downstream of logistics, and a starved treasury loses battles long before the first arrow misses.

The command layer is genuine RTS. You pan the view with WASD and zoom with the mouse wheel, left-click to select, build or box-select soldiers, and right-click to issue movement and attack orders. Hotkeys keep your hands on the economy — R for the resource bar, B for the build panel — and a built-in newbie guide walks first-timers through the opening moves without hovering over the rest of the campaign.

Multiple levels, save support and 1x/2x/3x speed controls round it out; the faster speeds are a blessing once your defenses are humming and you just want the next wave to hurry up. One tip from the developer worth heeding: play it in full screen (O toggles it). Keyboard-and-mouse players who like their strategy games with a production chain attached should feel right at home.