Shape the battlefield yourself
Axon TD: Uprising - Tower Defense puts a brush in your hands and treats the map as a canvas. Instead of only placing towers along a fixed route, you place tiles to extend the path, hold more towers, and bridge over to islands that open up fresh ground to maze with. On some maps you can even drop a new destination point, which changes where the enemies are heading. The core loop is simple: build towers against waves of robotic enemies called Axons, spend resources on a tech upgrade tree, and survive the bosses that show up. There are 40 towers and traps to work with, each with three upgrade paths that add effects or alter what the tower already does, plus 10 abilities you can cast during a fight.
Play with your group
Online co-op supports up to 4 players, and the co-op maps are built for 2, 3, or 4 players, so you can match the session to whoever is around. The Campaign and the roguelite Survival mode both support 2 players if you want a smaller run. Leaderboards cover Quickplay, co-op, and Survival, so your team can see where it lands against other groups. There is also a PvP mode with 4 procedurally generated maps if your group wants to play against each other instead of the robots.
What to know before starting
The roguelite Survival mode throws randomized maps, towers, and techs at you, and the map area expands quickly while tower progression runs at an accelerated pace, so expect to adapt on the fly. The Campaign runs 40 levels and tells the story of a defense contractor whose ship is shot down by the Axons, with epic bosses along the way. Enemy variety matters: some Axons move faster around corners, others teleport nearby enemies forward, so a maze that works on one wave can fall apart on the next. The map editor ships with Steam Workshop support and includes the same tools the developers use, which means your group can build and share its own singleplayer or co-op maps. The map pool includes 21 Quickplay, 18 co-op, and 4 Survival maps, and towers accept cosmetic customizations if you want to dress them up.