Wax Ward

Emberward is the tower defense where the map does not come with a path on it. You are handed blocks in awkward shapes, you drop them on an open field, and whatever gap you leave between them is the road the enemy walks — so the maze and the guns are the same decision made twice. It came out in 2024 and it is the best argument in years that this genre still had a move left in it.

This is that shape, one screen and one sitting, with the other thing that game got right folded in: its characters are not loadouts, they are different rules about what a block is and where a gun may stand. Here you do not pick one — a new warden takes the meadow every five waves, your board stays exactly where it is, and the maze you have is the maze you have to make work under whoever turned up.

It is an homage and it says so. Nothing is lifted — every block, tower, wasp, warden and noise here was written from scratch — and it is not connected to that game or its studio in any way.

The wax is the map#

Nothing on the board is a road. The wasps come out of a gate and walk to the hive by the shortest way there is, and the only thing that makes that walk long is wax you paid for.

• Lay a block. Three of them sit in the bar at a time, in shapes you did not choose, and `R` turns the one you picked. Each costs one wax a cell, so the single is not a worse domino — it is the cheapest way to close the last gap in a wall.
• The dotted line is the answer. It runs from every open gate to the hive and it re-draws itself the moment anything changes, with the number of steps written at the gate. That number is the entire point of the cabinet: a block that adds thirty steps is worth ten that add none.
• You may never seal the hive off. A placement that would leave a gate with nowhere to go is refused before it happens, and so is one that would wall a wasp already on the board into a pocket. The ghost goes red and nothing is spent.
• Towers only stand on your own wax. Rock is scenery, the floor is the road, and a firing position has to be paid for twice — once in wax to make it, once in honey to arm it.

The four towers#

Click a tower already standing to upgrade it, or hover it and press `U`. Three tiers, and each one is more damage, more range and a shorter cooldown for a price that climbs — unless the warden holding the meadow says otherwise.

Five waves, and then somebody else's rules#

The thing Emberward does that nothing else in the genre was doing is that the character you pick is not a loadout — it is a different set of rules about what a block is and where a gun may stand. Here the character is not picked at the door. A run is levels of five waves, and each level is held by a different warden who bends two of the rules above and no more. The fifth wave of a level is the boss, and when it falls the meadow changes hands.

Nothing on the board moves when it does. Not your wax, not your towers, not the rock. A warden's rules govern what you build from there and what already stands, stands: a tower the new warden would never have let you put there is grandfathered, a third tier bought under one warden survives a warden who caps at the second, and the Swarmward's two extra gates open into whatever maze you happen to have. That is the whole game of it — a warden is a new option and a new tax on a board you are already committed to, and adapting a maze you are attached to is a better problem than laying a fresh one.

The Combwright always holds the first level, so a first run is the game as described above and the second level is where the cabinet says what it actually is. The rest arrive in a shuffled order that is different every run.

What comes through the gates#

One gate from the first wave, a second from above on wave eight, a third from below on wave fifteen — so the wax that was doing all the work suddenly only covers a third of the problem. Unless the Swarmward has the meadow, in which case all three are open the moment you arrive.

• Wasps and darters are the wave. Darters are quick and thin and arrive from wave two. Both get rarer as the run goes on, which is what makes wave twenty a different wave rather than a bigger one.
• Mites arrive on wave three in threes. Nine health each and nearly twice a wasp's speed — too cheap to be worth a stinger's attention one at a time, which is the first argument for the resin pot.
• Borers arrive on wave four, and they are the reason the first good maze is not the last decision of the run. A borer stops at whatever wall stands between it and the hive and eats through it, tower and all. Thick wax buys time; nothing buys permanence.
• Carapaces arrive on wave six and split into two darters when they die, so killing one at the gate and killing one at the hive are two different mistakes.
• Drifters arrive on wave seven and ignore every block on the board. They fly straight at the hive. A run with no answer to them ends on wave nine however good the maze is, which is what the mortar's one weakness is actually for.
• Brutes arrive on wave nine wearing armour, which is subtracted from every single hit rather than from the total. A stinger doing nine loses a third of it and a brute's three points cost it a third. A mortar doing twenty-six barely notices, which is the whole reason there are four towers.
• Skimmers arrive on wave ten: a darter that flies. The first thing on the board that punishes a run built entirely out of mortars.
• Censers arrive on wave twelve and are the only thing here that makes other wasps harder — everything inside the haze they carry gets two more armour, and two censers stack. The ring is drawn on the board so you can see who is inside it.
• Wax moths arrive on wave fourteen with a brute's plate and a drifter's disregard for the maze.
• A boss ends every level. A queen on the odd levels and a broodmother on the even ones — the queen takes a moment to come through the gate and does not care how long the walk is; the broodmother lays as she walks, and eight more wasps come out of her before she is done.

The economy is one wave behind#

A cleared wave pays honey and wax out of the same purse, and never quite enough of either. Sending the next wave early pays three honey a second for whatever you gave up — which is how a player who has already built everything they can afford buys the next tower with time instead of patience. Some wardens pay half again or double, which is the other half of what they cost you.

Every third wave the hive owes you a ward: three of them are offered, the build clock stops until one is taken, and they are all the same kind of thing — a number somewhere else in the game, multiplied. Barbed tips, longer sight, faster wings, fatter comb, thicker wax. Nothing there adds a rule, because a rule you picked up on wave twelve is a rule nobody read.

Posting a run#

Sign in with Discord and the run posts itself when the hive falls; play as a guest and it is kept as a personal best on this device instead. The board ranks on score and shows the level and wave you reached beside it, because that is the number people quote. Clearing wave N pays N × 120, so the run is worth almost exactly how deep it got. The arcade page has the longer version of how the boards work, and the other cabinets.