Although I’ve had a long-running love of both turn-based and real-time strategy games, the burgeoning tower-defense genre got no immediate interest from me. Perhaps it’s because I initially perceived them as “the lazy man’s strategy game.” After giving some a try, though, I started warming up to the notion of building only defenses to stop ever increasing hoards of bad guys. Still, you’d think that with the somewhat formulaic nature of the gameplay new games wouldn’t be coming out so regularly, but that definitely isn’t the case.

Announced today at PAX, Defense Grid: The Awakening is the latest contender that will be trying to capitalize on your tower building urges. The Hidden Path Entertainment developed PC title appears to be placed in a Sci-fi setting of some sort, and has a promised eight hour long campaign with several additional challenge modes to keep you occupied long after completing the main storyline.

"We have spent a lot of time studying the emotional curve of the game and worked to ensure that the challenge of each enemy wave creates an enjoyable pace and progression throughout the campaign," said Mark Terrano, Design Director and co-founder of Hidden Path Entertainment.  "We added a number of game mechanics in each level to create a large dynamic range of emotion and strategy so that we can engage both the hardcore gamer and the novice through one shared emotional experience."

Twenty different environments, ten different tower types, and fifteen different enemies will also be included to help compliment the “large dynamic range of emotion,” that you’ll apparently be experiencing. Is being set in the future enough of a hook to get you to try another tower-defense game?