Nightfall: Kingdom Frontier TD Review
A specific subgenre of tower defense games where you prepare before battles by buying buildings in specific orders and managing your units and yourself. A rather good take on PC's Thronefall.
Last evening, I spent some time looking for a mobile game similar to Thronefall, since I’m not a fan of playing that type of games on PC (I prefer those with an intriguing story, robust quests etc.), and because I usually game on my smartphone while commuting to and from work, I prefer something “non-committal.” Unfortunately, Grizzly Games never decided to bring their game to any other platform besides Windows and Switch, so I was left searching for clones or games with very similar gameplay. While digging through Reddit, I came across a suggestion — Nightfall: Kingdom Frontier TD, which, aside from the rather obvious name similarity, also shares similar gameplay mechanics. The suggestion turned out to be a good one, because Nightfall is indeed a solid game, though it does suffer from a few flaws that prevent me from giving it a full 5 grade.
0. TL;DR
Developer: Easygoing Studio (published by Fansipan Ltd)
Release date: 18 Sept 2024
Genre: RPG, Dungeon Crawler, Singleplayer, Offline
Price: Free w/ MTX
Pros: Lots of equipment and characters to choose from (+ upgradeability, skill tree etc.), requires a bit of strategy thinking, cute and readable graphics
Cons: Music and audio sucks, RNG may not always be on your side, sometimes can be choppy
Download: Google Play
1. Gameplay
Nightfall offers the player access to three worlds (plus a fourth marked as "coming soon"), each divided into 12 maps, and each map can have several levels (the first world, Abandoned Castle, only has one, but Swamp City already has four). The differences between them are mostly cosmetic — general map layout, building placement, and enemy spawn points — but the gameplay remains the same: as the “king,” you expand your city during the day to defend against increasingly powerful waves of evil at night. There is no story, and the maps or worlds aren’t connected in any way, but that much can be inferred from the gameplay. The enemy armies’ goal is to destroy the castle you build at the start of the round. It should also be noted that each start of a fight takes 5 stamina and you have a total pool of 30, so it grants about 6 concurrent tries. Stamina regenerates by one point per five minutes or can be fully regenerated by watching an ad.
The king can place buildings around it in predefined spots — huts generating gold, barracks for soldiers and archers, guard towers, or walls. Buildings can be upgraded, and each new castle level unlocks additional construction slots as well as new building types and their higher tiers — for example, guard towers can be upgraded into fortresses that attack up to three enemies at once, and farms produce much more silver than basic houses.
The infantry and archer barracks can create specific troop types — for example, infantry can be shield-bearing knights who take reduced ranged damage, or spearmen who have less health but deal significantly more damage. Of course, this choice can only be made when placing the building and cannot be changed afterward. Some other structures work similarly.
The king himself can also be upgraded — you can change his gear, such as weapons with different attack styles, artifacts with passive effects, mounts, and even the hero character. These items are obtained by opening loot boxes, with different rarity levels, and you can combine multiple lower-tier duplicates to craft a rarer one. The player also has access to a massive Research tree, which progresses as you earn stars by completing maps and spend gold. Bonuses in the tree affect the hero, troops, and buildings alike. A similar system applies to cards — after completing Map 4, you unlock five slots for passive-boost cards of varying rarities, often with effects identical to those found in the Research tree.
As for the enemy army, with each level you encounter new types of opponents, and there's no fixed or finite roster. You start by fighting goblin swordsmen and archers, but eventually face siege trolls, flying imps that target income-generating buildings, and catapults that tear through your fortifications. The challenge lies not only in their variety but also in their sheer numbers, so careful planning is required — both in choosing where and what to build first and in placing your soldiers strategically.
Once combat begins, you can control your troops using the Rally mechanic — when activated, nearby soldiers will follow the leader. The player also has access to a special weapon-based ability, which, if used correctly, can shift the tide of battle. However, it has a cooldown, so using it at the wrong time can mean a certain defeat.
Generally speaking, combat in Nightfall is easy to understand, but the deeper you go, the more strategic thinking it requires. Sometimes winning a level may take a few defeats — either until you unlock an item with effects that match the threat you're facing, or when the RNG gods bless you with a much better modifier at the start than the one you had before. The overall formula is simple, but the number of modifiers adds a solid layer of depth.
2. Visuals, Audio & Performance
Nightfall: Kingdom Frontier TD features a fairly simple, cartoony graphic style, but it's clear enough that even during large-scale battles you can still tell where each unit is. The maps are highly detailed and filled with small touches, the buildings are stylistically consistent, and the special effects are easy to read. The interface is clear — while the main menu offers quite a few options, it takes less than a few minutes to remember where to click to get things done.
The downside, however, is the audio. For some reason I can’t quite understand, the sound has been compressed so heavily it reminds me of the earliest YouTube videos — there are three music tracks in the game, and even if they were originally well composed, in their current form they're unlistenable. I quickly ended up playing with the sound off. I also noticed there are no attack sound effects — only building placement sounds. I’m not sure what went wrong here, but it’s one of the reasons I chose not to give this game a 5/5.
Performance-wise, it’s pretty good for a Unity-based game. The menu is locked to 60 fps, while gameplay runs at 120 fps on my phone. That said, when the map fills up with units all doing something at once, noticeable frame drops do occur.
3. Ads & Microtransactions
Throughout my entire playthrough before writing this review, I didn't encounter a single advertisement that I hadn’t triggered myself — which is rare among free games on the Play Store. The microtransaction system, on the other hand, is quite extensive: most items can either be purchased or earned by watching ads.
Every time the game launches, it promotes the purchase of one of several item bundles by offering a few extra items for free. There are three such bundles, each offering specific items over the course of three days. New Commander, featuring a purple spear, costs £2.39; Mighty Ally, with a purple boar, is £3.99; and A King Crown, featuring a purple hero, is a hefty £15.99. Removing ads (with a bonus of 1,000 gems) also costs £15.99 — although I’m not sure it’s worth it, given how non-intrusive the ads already are.
Gems — used to open chests — range in price from £1.59 for 160 to £80.99 for 14,000. There are also a few other packs and monthly passes, but they aren’t worth discussing unless you’re planning to really dive into Nightfall — in which case, you’ll see all of it for yourself.
4. Verdict
Nightfall: Kingdom Frontier TD is a pretty decent Thronefall clone and a well-crafted mobile game. The Vietnamese team at Easygoing Studios has demonstrated their experience — and although I haven’t played any of their other titles, I doubt they would provide a worse experience than this one.
The biggest drawback is definitely the botched audio. Personally, I usually play mobile games with the sound off, but when I’m at home, I’d prefer to actually hear what’s going on — and in its current state, that’s not really possible. The performance drops are also concerning and I believe the game could be better optimized.
As for monetization — while it’s not aggressive — the pricing is pretty steep for a single-player game, especially one that can be played offline. Because of that, I’d say Nightfall is a good game, but “only” good. If you're a fan of this particular flavor of tower defense, I think downloading Thronefall on a laptop or PC would ultimately be the better choice.