Build the maze. Break the wave.
Most tower defense games hand you a fixed track and ask where to drop your towers.
Maul Tactics hands you an open field. The path does not exist until you build it. Every wall and tower you place reshapes the route creeps are forced to walk, and a great maze turns a straight sprint into a long, winding gauntlet that funnels enemies past every gun you own.
That single idea,
the maze is the mechanic, is the whole game. Towers are how you deal damage. The maze is how you decide who takes it, for how long, and in what order.
BUILD THE MAZE
You are not picking spots on a lane. You are drawing the lane. Wall off a corridor, double it back on itself, bait the horde the long way around, and stack every tower along the route. The longer the path, the more damage it eats before it reaches your core.
15 RACES, 15 WAYS TO THINK
Every race is a different puzzle, not a different paint job. Each brings seven towers and a signature passive that rewires how you build:
- Order: the forgiving generalist, a clean damage edge with no gimmick to manage.
- Frostborn: chill-on-hit slows that overlap across a dense maze into a near constant freeze.
- Warhost: relentless cheap spam and siege, winning by sheer volume.
- Bulwark: true short-range melee that demands a tight, body-blocking maze.
- Ember: premium long-range artillery.
- Plague: splash that dissolves swarms.
- Gale: dedicated anti-air.
- Reaver: execute damage that punishes the wounded.
- Concord: towers that buff their neighbours, rewarding clustered layouts.
- Mire: stacking venom that melts tanks over time.
- Arclight: chain lightning that bounces between packed creeps.
- Gambit: high-variance crits for the gambler.
- Devourer: towers that feast on kills and grow permanently stronger.
- Phalanx: paired towers that form tripwire corridors across a row.
- Nomad: towers that relocate mid-wave, so your maze adapts on the fly.
50+ TOWERS, 150+ UPGRADE PATHS
Over fifty tower families, each climbing three tiers. At tier II every tower forks three ways: pick branch
A,
B, or
C and specialize. Raw damage, wide splash, armor shred, a hard freeze, an execute. There is no taking it back, so the maze you have built and the branches you choose lock in your plan for the wave.
THE GAUNTLET
Climb a ladder of ten named rivals. Each is a faction champion with its own deterministic play style, its own maze, and its own pressure. Pick your race, pick your difficulty, and out-build minds that fight back. This is the heart of the solo game.
WAVE SURVIVOR
You and a rival defend identical, escalating waves from the same deterministic director. Same horde, same clock, last one standing. A long-haul test of an economy and a maze that has to hold for the long game.
DUEL ONLINE
When you are ready, take your maze to a real opponent. Challenge a friend to a 1v1, build in parallel, and send your own creeps at their board while you defend yours. Matches run on real-time lockstep and are verified server-side, so results are fair and cheat-resistant. Cross-play between the web build and the desktop build.
MADE BY ONE PERSON
Maul Tactics is a solo-developed labor of love. Wishlist it to follow along, and play the free demo to forge your first maze. Your wishlist is the single biggest thing that helps a one-person game get seen.
