I love a good tower defence game. I live for the strategy, the methodical trial and error, the satisfying crunch of carefully selecting upgrades, and the tense triumph of a well-executed maze. Naturally, Shardwatch Dominion, a fresh entry into the genre from developer grishkogameplay, caught my eye.

I normally embed a trailer right about here, but despite scouring the internet, I couldn’t actually find one. So instead, here is the official pitch straight from the store page:

“Defend your crystal in 360-degree tower defense arenas. Place towers, manage resources, and unlock permanent upgrades between waves.”

Even the blurb gets it wrong. You defend a caslte, not a crystal. Anyway, I completed the entire game in 45 minutes. There are four stages in total. Nothing changes between them except for a quick swap of the background artwork and enemies getting infinitesimally tougher. 45 minutes… and I cleared every single level relying exclusively on the basic archer tower and the resource-generating crystals. 45 minutes.

Levels are split into rounds, and between waves, you get to select two upgrades. 45 minutes. Enemies swarm at your castle from all 360 degrees, which sounds dynamic until you realise there is zero strategy required. You simply plonk a tower down in whatever direction the red icons are coming from. 45 minutes.

You might be wondering why I keep repeating “45 minutes”. It’s not solely because the game is stupidly short, it’s because I’m desperately trying to hit a minimum word count for this review and I have literally nothing else to say about it. 45 minutes. I finished the entire game in less time than it takes to bake a potato, using only the starter tower. Four stages, zero depth, game over. 45 minutes.

For reasons that defy all logic, Shardwatch Dominion is listed on Steam for an eye-watering £20. 45 minutes. The console version sits closer to £6, but honestly, it isn’t even worth that. 45 minutes to unlock every single achievement, endure practically zero meaningful gameplay, and lay down a handful of basic archers. I got a review code for free, and I think I deserve a refund. It’s a bit shit. Don’t bother.