Trench Defender

Trench Defender is an actionpacked firstperson shooter that puts you in the boots of a conscripted Slavic soldier defending a single trench against relentless waves of enemy soldiers and vehicles. You are not a special forces operative or a hero. You are a factory worker who was called into action to defend your country from a much larger neighbor, and your only goal is to survive twelve days of successive attacks and maybe, just maybe, go home a hero instead of in a body bag.

The Core Gameplay

The entire experience is built around holding one trench across twelve rounds, each lasting six minutes. You can move freely within the trench and take any position you like. The trench has two slopes: a taller one for shooting at attackers and a lower one for taking cover. Enemies approach on foot and in vehicles, and they are not mindless targets. Soldiers will drop to the ground and crawl to make themselves harder to hit, and if they reach the trench, you are almost certainly dead. They will either enter or throw grenades. Your job is to pick them off before they get that close, manage your ammunition, and survive until the next wave begins.

The game features 12 days of successive attacks with different enemies and an expanding weapon arsenal. There are 20 different enemy types, both infantry and vehicles, and 18 different weapons for you to use, plus trench upgrades that include two other heavy weapons. You start with an old Mosin rifle, which is slow and not very precise, and you have to make every shot count until better gear arrives. New weapons and equipment are delivered by a comrade in the trench who whistles when he has something for you, and the gear is random each time, which means sometimes you get something useful and sometimes you get stuck with a shotgun that feels worthless.

Progression and Upgrades

Between rounds, you earn upgrade points that can be spent on the weapons you want or on improving specific areas of your trench. You can unlock a medical kit, ammo packs, a machinegun nest, and drones. However, progress is not as straightforward as it might sound. If you leave the upgrade screen without spending a point, you lose it. And when you return to a previous round from the main menu, you start with the same health, gear, and ammunition you had at the end of the last round, which means a bad run can leave you stuck in a difficult position. Difficulty ramps up quickly, and getting lucky with a good weapon early is often the difference between making progress and hitting a wall.

Coop and Multiplayer

The game supports both singleplayer and twoplayer coop, with LAN and online play through a peertopeer connection. Playing alone can feel a little lonesome, but bringing a friend transforms the experience entirely. You defend the trench together, split the loot, and commiserate when you both get stuck with a useless weapon. It is the kind of game that is far more enjoyable with a partner, and the developers clearly designed it with that in mind. One important note: to host an online game beyond a LAN, you will need to enable portforwarding in your router, and if you are behind a CGNAT, you will need something like Hamachi for online multiplayer to work.

Presentation and Atmosphere

Trench Defender does not try to be a polished AAA shooter. It is a scrappy, lowbudget indie FPS that knows exactly what it is. The levelselection and intro/outro artwork are AIgenerated with minor manual touchups, which the developer discloses openly on the store page. The game includes scenes of warlike violence: explosions, blood spurts when bullets hit a body, and dead bodies. It is not gratuitous, but it does not shy away from the grim reality of its setting.

Reception and Community

The game has a small but dedicated community. On Steam, it holds a 100% positive rating based on a handful of user reviews, though the sample is far too small to draw any broad conclusions from. One player with 140 hours logged described it as "quite nice" when played with a friend, praising the coop experience and the escalating waves of enemies. Another with 30 hours asked, "Is it supposed to be this hard or am I just that bad??" and concluded, "Love it." A more critical review with 15 hours noted that the inability to properly aim the guns and the builtin inaccuracy make the game difficult to enjoy, but still recommended it "for the price" and looked forward to possible updates and fixes. The most common criticisms are the lack of a proper aimdownsights mechanic and the wide angular mouse movement that can make precision shooting frustrating, but the coop experience and the core loop of surviving wave after wave keep players coming back.

System Requirements

The system requirements are mercifully low. Minimum: Windows 7, 8.1, 10, or 11, an Intel Core i5 processor, 8 GB RAM, and Intel Iris Xe graphics. You will only need 300 MB of storage space, and any sound card will do. This is a game that will run on virtually any laptop or desktop made in the last decade. It is singleplayer and coop only, with no VR support, and the Steam client requires Windows 10 or newer as of January 1, 2024.
Who Is This Game For?

If you enjoy wavebased shooters that are genuinely challenging and do not waste your time with filler, this is exactly your kind of game. If you have a friend who enjoys coop survival games and you want something cheap to sink a weekend into, the multiplayer is where Trench Defender truly shines. It is also for players who appreciate scrappy indie FPS games that swing for the fences even when they do not have a AAA budget. And if you just want a short, brutal, nononsense shooter about holding a trench against impossible odds while the odds keep getting worse, this one has your name on it.

If the game happens to get you curious, good luck coming out on top!