Artisan TD
Artisan TD
Game
Game2025
Nordhold
Developer StunForge
Enemies are coming! Every decision matters: build your city, grow the economy, and prepare for enemy waves. Strengthen your defenses, adapt your strategy, and unleash your hero’s full potential. This unique Tower Defense will test your skills – are you worthy to claim a place at Valhalla? From the Steam store page
310 reactions from 4 sources (Steam reviews, Bluesky, Mastodon, Lemmy) · newest Nov 3, 2026 · last updated Nov 5, 2026 · How this works
Audience score
65
Fresh
168 positive · 91 negative
95% range 59–70%
| Source | + | − | = |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steam reviews | 168 | 91 | 0 |
| Bluesky * | 17 | 0 | 30 |
| Mastodon * | 1 | 0 | 2 |
| Lemmy * | 0 | 0 | 1 |
* shown, not counted in the score (label accuracy below our 85% bar or not yet audited).
Steam's own rating
Very Positive
1,470 of 1,756 reviews positive (all languages, per Valve)
What players are saying
64% recommend · 152 yes, 84 no
Counted from the reviewers’ own thumbs up/down on the 236 English Steam reviews we collected, not by the AI. Valve’s all-language rating: Very Positive (2,946 of 3,409 positive).
Players praise the unique blend of tower defense, roguelite, and city-building elements. [1][2][3] Many find the game rewarding but note a steep learning curve and early difficulty. [4][5][6] Some reviewers criticize poor balance, excessive RNG, and lack of replayability. [7][8][9]
Liked
Representative posts
- [7]
Man i really REALLY tried to like this game because the randomly generated map is a cool concept, however it has MAJOR issues: 1. The balancing is non existent. Nothing does damage. Waves get exponentially stronger and towers become useless by the time you reach the first boss. 2. It's impossible to build the economy. There is ONE way and ONE way alone to build the city over and over and over again until you get …
- [8]
I want to like this game a lot, there are many good concepts here, but the complete lack of balancing towers to provide diverse experiences just kills replayability. It is the perfect example of the illusion of choice. Each tower should have a good build that can be done with it, otherwise why do they exist? There should be no objective best choice like there is right now. Hopefully the devs decide to make more …
- [4]
Extremely well designed game, tons of replayability. I would caution the casual gamer on this one though. It’s casual in the sense that it’s a tower defense, but it is by far the most complex classic tower defense I’ve played, and I’ve played quite a few of them.
- [1]
✅ Recommended I’m really glad I found this hidden gem on Steam. I’m not an expert in the tower defense genre, but I still remember playing Kingdom Rush as a kid, and Nordhold definitely brought back some of that feeling. What really pulled me in, though, is the mix of roguelite elements with tower defense. It actually reminded me a lot of Against the Storm, especially with the strategic progression and long-term …
- [2]
There's a lot to love and a lot to question on this one. Got this as part of humble choice and wasn't really in my radar before downloading. What to love: - It is as presented: a rogue lite tower defense, could even consider a roguelite-ish city builder. - Basics are straight forward: create towers, generate resources, upgrade your resources, upgrade your towers, towers (and/or your hero) kill enemies, then …
Summarised from 34 of the 287 public posts collected about this game; every point cites the posts behind it ([n] opens the post) and the split is counted from the posts’ own ratings. Updated Oct 12, 2026. How summaries are made
RottenBot@rottenbot · automated account
Players who liked Nordhold talk about unique mix of tower defense and roguelite mechanics; those who didn't talk about poor balance and exponential enemy scaling. Which matters more to you?
Reactions
60 of 310 · most liked firstMan i really REALLY tried to like this game because the randomly generated map is a cool concept, however it has MAJOR issues: 1. The balancing is non existent. Nothing does damage. Waves get exponentially stronger and towers become useless by the time you reach the first boss. 2. It's impossible to build the economy. There is ONE way and ONE way alone to build the city over and over and over again until you get lucky enough to roll actual decent stuff so you can play 1 round. 3. The…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Once you literally beat it once, there's no real point in playing it again. Game play is... extremely repetitive. Sure, you have a few different tower types to pick from but some towers are significantly better than the rest. You get one 'build' that works for you through trial and error, like I did, and... that's it. Because other combinations just aren't as good as certain ones. And it's not always good to diversify your towers in this game. In fact, I had my best runs specializing in 2-3…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is an interesting game. But it has too many little quirks and lack-of-polish things for me to fully recommend it to everyone. TL:DR - If you're experienced at TD's and like grinding out perfect build orders over multiple failed runs to eventally squeeze out a win, this game is for you. For players new to Tower Defence - This game is hard to finish (30 rounds). - It's got a very involved economy which involves a lot of juggling of resources to min-max what you need just in time for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Interesting bones of a game, but it's an absolute hot mess of missing documentation, unintentionally hidden information, and askew balance. You end up making most decisions blind, because the game hasn't sufficiently documented what the banners and spells and enemy abilities do or how they interact, so you just end up guessing at every other decision from the sheer opaqueness of the game's missing info. Which is not great, so unfortunately, can't recommend this game in it's current state.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is balanced up to wave 30. You will have fun getting there , and can make up your own stratigies and play casual and still win. After wave 30 all the fun goes away and it becomes simply too hard. There are 100 waves and only 1% of the player base will ever get that high by mostly outright cheating or finding a glitch in the matrix. Right now if you buy this , you are getting about half a usable game.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I want to like this game a lot, there are many good concepts here, but the complete lack of balancing towers to provide diverse experiences just kills replayability. It is the perfect example of the illusion of choice. Each tower should have a good build that can be done with it, otherwise why do they exist? There should be no objective best choice like there is right now. Hopefully the devs decide to make more towers viable, right now it feels like there is no reason to test tower builds,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I'm quite disappointed with this game. It had the potential to be amazing; The graphics are incredible, the music is really good, and the game concept is very unique, but all that is overshadowed by the fact that it's terribly balanced, so I can't recommend it at this time. Too much of the game is locked behind the meta progression including some of the core structures. It's incredibly grindy for no reason. Why should we grind points to unlock base towers and core game mechanics? It's really…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is fun, but you quickly run into the issue of needing highly concentrated damage as soon as the regenerating enemies start to spawn. This is not a long run game, it is a 30 minute run at most before you need to start over. There is no sense of building up for a good strategy. You will also NEED to get specific RNG events in your run to even start to deal with certain enemies. Less of a strategy and more of a lottery. The game could be much better, but the development/publisher…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →In its core, I think Nordhold is a competent TD game. But I severely dislike the early game (which you play a lot because it's a rogue-lite), especially the base management part and slow tower upgrade progression. It is always the same the first few waves, you always reroll until you get one certain buff in the start (if you allow free rerolls, you should just remove that choice altogether). And then you upgrade the same buildings the same way every time. And you place the same basic towers…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Extremely well designed game, tons of replayability. I would caution the casual gamer on this one though. It’s casual in the sense that it’s a tower defense, but it is by far the most complex classic tower defense I’ve played, and I’ve played quite a few of them.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game feels like a developers first project. The balancing is very poor and difficulty spikes quickly. Managing the worker economy sucks and you never have enough workers. It just doesn't feel good. The game has and explore button that really doesn't do anything, you have no choice how the map plays out regardless of what you choose. I've played a lot of TDs in my day (starting in Warcraft 3 mods) and this one is very mid.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →One of the core tenets of a roguelike is that every run is different. Except in this game you can just build the same OP towers every time and it will "roll" you the same OP upgrades every time. One of the core tenets of a tower defense game is that each map is different and you have to come up with a creative solution to solve the map. Except in this game the randomly generated tiles are always pretty uninteresting and the solution is always to put a big pile of your best towers at a…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Completely RNG dependent. Its tiring trying to get a good combination of banners to get a good run going
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You know ... this game would really work well if it weren't a rogue-lite. That single fact takes it from a game in which you could expand continuously with an economy behind you to a very uninspired low-economy snooze fest in the first 20 or so waves ... What I mean by that is that even with some upgrades to get more starting resources, the game is just SOOOOO slow to get started, but then ramps up the difficulty immensely fast, which somehow means I can now often not even get past the first…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I have to put a "Do not recommend this game". Don't get me wrong, I love it. I love the economy building, the different tower types, the layout of the defense zone can get really fun to navigate and strategize around. BUT! Since almost everything is completely useless, except a few towers and banner combinations, and even the economy side is really unbalanced, to the point you mainly reroll your starting relics to get a specific one, the game becomes a chore. You have no idea how much I'd…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →One day, after 30 hours of progress, after pressing the save and exit button, all meta progress was lost and there is no longer a save file
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →✅ Recommended I’m really glad I found this hidden gem on Steam. I’m not an expert in the tower defense genre, but I still remember playing Kingdom Rush as a kid, and Nordhold definitely brought back some of that feeling. What really pulled me in, though, is the mix of roguelite elements with tower defense. It actually reminded me a lot of Against the Storm, especially with the strategic progression and long-term unlocks. The medieval fantasy style also fits the gameplay perfectly. What I…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game isnt bad, but it isnt balanced you will see it at many points but becomes more and more unbalanced as you go, at first you will likly be stuck at passing 37 or 38 - u need the bot 2 upgrades to do so on your towers not barrier, once you do thaat you be stuck around the 40s, and once you get a bit more exp you can make it to the 50s-55s before you get crushed, and then game balence just take a head nose dive in the toilet hard to say if the creators care that the game isnt well balanced,…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This is quite a unique Tower Defense game. It tries to do a lot, and does it surprisingly well. I am generally speaking not a huge fan of Tower Defense games, because they become either stale or overwhelming very quickly and mostly seem to have only one way to beat the game. With Nordhold I feel that, while there may at first glance be some better and worse towers, you can combine them in many different ways (also depending on which banners you gather - more on that below) and be successful.…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →If you want to have to seemingly play days at a time to get a slight amount of progress, this is the game for you. 2/10
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game is not bad but it's not fun for me. Why the heck there're hevy limitations in casual strategy aka Tower defense genre. For example, You must repeat your run. You MUST lose several times and repeat whole process again and again because tower can't be unlocked without that. Your strategy doesn't have any meaning for the first few runs. All towers you build increases costs to build for its type. This means your choice is very limited since you can't build the same tower without penalty…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Alright this is going to be a different review compared to how I usually review games, in this review I'm going to put this game against another tower defense game that I like a lot more, the other game is named Axon TD Uprising. Due to that, I'm deliberately giving this game a not recommended rating, not because this is a bad tower defense game but because the other game is so much superior, at least to me. So what is Nordhold? It's a fantasy medieval themed roguelike tower defense game with…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The game is fun and has tons of depth and replayability. If you're planning to play it casually, you can get quite a few hours of enjoyment out of it. Graphics feel sort of unfinished and all over the place, but they're alright. However! When you start looking deeper and try to actually optimise your builds and whatnot, you realize just how much nonsensethis game has! -you will be getting about 1 frame per second if you make too many towers that shoot crazy effects (this is not so bad…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Really don't dig the meta upgrades progression. Having to rebuild everything in your village every time is boring, and the actual TD aspect of the game is not really impressive.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →meh. too expensive. not that impressive. Under $10 might be suitable. Learning curve exists but not that enjoyable. <번역> 걍 그렇다. 넘 비쌈. 인상적이진 않음. 대충 만원 언저리면 적당할듯. 배우면서 뭐 알아가는게 있는거같은데 그닥 즐겁진 않음.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Over complicating a proven schematic based on simplicity very simply just plainly gets wrong what makes the genre great. Why would you ever make a micro managing economy thing slapped onto a tower defense game? This is so absurdly backwards that i cannot wrap my head around what the devs were thinking.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Been on a real tower defence game kick lately, with Tower Dominion, Nordhold and Emberward. Know they’re not a particularly “big popular” genre, but if anyone has any suggestions for other cute, quirky ones do let me know! :>
neutral · AI labelView post →The game concept is great, it also does a lot of things really well. The problem I have is twofold, the price, its more like a $10-15 game IMO, and the lack of a goal. You just start a run and go till it stops, no story or anything substantial after each run besides stat boosts. This game reminds me of Shapez but for TD games, its just...boring. Maybe in the future itll be worth it but right now IMO its not.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great tower defence. Lots of options for main dificulty, and very high hard caps for endless mode, wich at first feels punishing, but overal shortens the runs, and make you try again and again for the most meta combinations to push each extra wave. 10/10 would recomend
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Game is unplayable on my setup due to Text and UI sizes being too small, so i cant play it. There is a lot of small text and buttons in the game, and if you dont have a setup that makes the text and buttons big enough you wont know what things do or even where you can click. I have tried to play the demo 12 months ago, and asked on the forums if Resolution sizes could be added. But they set the game to autoscale so no matter what resolution you select, the UI and Text sizes get rescaled back…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →The Question is what do you value more... hours of game time vs satisfcation of playing? I see it on many games that hours played = value for money, which is what you can get with this game, you can easily sink many hours into it. However, will you feel satisfied is the real question? If you achieve a new personal score then yes, maybe. But the chance you achieve a new rank/score, highest wave, not promising once you hit 39/40 Whilst the rng can make it interesting, you pretty much start every…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Lots of potential wasted with choose 1 out of 3 roguelite model and insane enemy hp scaling. Its a fun ride for a few ascension runs and the normal mode but then it becomes a slog, 6/10.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A trend I've noticed with a number of recent Roguelites is the increasing dependence on meta-progression. You play your first round, and you die abysmally. Rinse and repeat until you've earnt enough currency to upgrade to the point at which you're able to beat the level. Often you can accelerate this through strategic and tactical decision-making, but if you fail, it's fine as you will still get a bit of currency for the failed run and next time it'll be a bit easier, which negates the need for…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →First 20 waves are fun, but numbers get very high very quickly and it's not fun to figure out anymore. Way too much calculation when you gain thousands of resources, manage hundreds of towers, millions of hitpoints... it becomes a slog and a nightmare to do any sort of calculation. If the game was balanced towards 30 waves and played more like a rogue-like, it would be way better.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Hey guys! I'm taking an early look at a game called Nordhold, which comes out tomorrow! I'm not normally into Tower Defense Roguelites, but I actually really enjoyed the demo of this one, so I'm excited to get to show it off! > www.twitch.tv/writesout < #Vtuber #Vsky #PNGtuber
positive · AI labelView post →Tower defense fans should try Nordhold: Origins, a free prologue for a much bigger upcoming game
neutral · AI labelView post →This is the worst game development team I've ever seen when it comes to managing a game. Bugs go unfixed, responses to feedback are half-assed and dismissive, countless relics are completely useless and never get buffed, and whenever a build turns out to be strong, it gets nerfed. You're making a SINGLE-PLAYER GAME, yet you still go out of your way to make the experience miserable for your players with your ridiculous balancing decisions. The talent tree is one of the worst changes you've…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →[Fanatical] Bundlefest: Build Your Own Killer Bundle (5/10/15/25 for $5.99/$9.99/$14.69/$23.69 - Choose from RoboCop: Rogue City / Rain World / Nobody Wants to Die / Tavern Master / Wall World 2.... About this Bundle Lock ‘n’ load in this stellar killer line-up. Check out the all-new Build your own Killer Bundle. Choose from a truly exceptional selection of must-have games and genres. It’s packed full of highlights, here are just some of the headlines in this edition: - RoboCop: Rogue City -…
neutral · AI labelView post →This game reminds me of NovaDrift, but a much worse one. Running the town A great idea, except economy is king like every strategy game and if you don't take the optimal route you easily die. The optimal setup requires convoluted order of operations which gets tedious and boring very fast. Fusion Towers Extremely poorly executed. NovaDrift usually make the "fusion" perks very impactful because they completely change how certain mechanics work, but this game most of them are just "now this…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →It does a really lousy job at helping you determine how to play. I went through a dozen or so games trying different strategies but can't even put barely a scratch on the first boss on wave 10. I realize there is stuff to unlock, but it's so demoralizing and not fun to play the same first waves over and over again feeling like there is no progress.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Join me with a first look at the #indiegame Nordhold by StunForge. It's a #towerdefense game which includes light basebuilding and #roguelike elements. youtu.be/TZ56-G5Rock
neutral · AI labelView post →♠️LIVE SOON🩸 At 6 PM GMT-ish, we're having an early look of #Nordhold a tower defense rogue-lite which releases tomorrow! twitch.tv/adreancard ~♠️ #VSky | #VTuber | #IndieVTuber | #IndieGame 🩸~
neutral · AI labelView post →5,000 to 1,000 players in the first 3 months, 1000 to less than 100 players on avg at 1.5 years. The Dev was active and responding to like every single post and review on reddit, trying to save the game, super respectable, but the balance has never been right. A couple of my friends played as well, we're huge warcraft custom mode players, thought it would just be a fun tower defense game. They had the same issues and surprise it's not that fun or replayable after about 20-40 hours, I think…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A very repetitive TD game
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's definitely some enjoyment to be had with this title, but the balancing and progression is just so poorly executed. The roguelike aspects are in opposition with the consistent level of difficulty you will face in the early phases of the game - you have to draw the exact pieces you need to make whichever strategy you're trying, and even then it may come down to a dice roll on one of your tower's abilities triggering when you need it to, or the enemy path building out in a way that is…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →I want to give this game a thumbs up, but in all honesty I cannot. The game locks you out of 60% of endless mode, every single time. Without absolutely abusing a very niche specific build (that you have to land while RNG is your enemy), you are doomed. I have just done a run with 60% of a perfect build that I researched. Carefully designed things, made choices.... nope, doesn't matter. Game spikes at level 40 of endless mode so much it doesn't matter how hard you try, you will fail. I attempted…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Nordhold looks really good visually, and I genuinely liked the whole Valhalla/Norse atmosphere. The art direction gives the game a strong identity, and at first glance it has a lot of potential. The problem is that the game only really became fun for me once I had unlocked almost everything. Getting to that point felt exhausting. Any meaningful progression is very time-intensive and honestly taxing, because the enemies scale extremely fast while the game does not give you enough meaningful…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This review is specially made for those who like to get all the achievements in games. Minor spoilers ahead. Nordhold is an indie roguelite Tower defense game with a slight nordic theme mixed with medieval age fantasy. You have to manage a walled town and protect it from hordes of orcs that will move through specific paths. Along these paths you’ll need to put towers to attack those enemies and consider their range but also the characteristics of the available tiles before placing them to…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →There's a lot to love and a lot to question on this one. Got this as part of humble choice and wasn't really in my radar before downloading. What to love: - It is as presented: a rogue lite tower defense, could even consider a roguelite-ish city builder. - Basics are straight forward: create towers, generate resources, upgrade your resources, upgrade your towers, towers (and/or your hero) kill enemies, then eventually you win or enemy kills you. - Tower variety is cute, paired with…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →This game has a good amount going for it, good graphics, consistent theme, a mix of base development and tower defense ... but it is marred by it's heavy emphasis on Random Number Generation (RNG) and the overemphasis on shared rather than exclusive resources. RNG hits you from both sides, both from where the enemy will attack from (will the map expand out in a single direction, making it nearly impossible for you to get overlapping attack zones, so towers can only fight the stream…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Level 40 is the end point for nominal players due to significant difficulty jump.
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →8/10 - Really solid tower defense game. Very much recommended. I'm not into city builders and Nordhold's city building element still won me over. Below is a complaint that shouldn't deter anyone interested in the game because its optional 'post-game' stuff. I wish the 2nd meta progression mode capped out at 500 honor per node so it would be more chill and fun to complete. The fact that its basically a 1000 hour grind is what keeps me from playing this anymore.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →You'll see all the content in the game in like 7 hours and a lot of the stuff in the game is terrible to invest into; random freezes when you purchase certain upgrades as it chugs to apply it to your towers. There is a build you have to do if you want to make it far every time and it gets extremely repetitive unless you roll lucky on a chest or something to get ahead. Apparently there are 100 waves you could maybe see but basically no one makes it past 40 because of terrible balancing. I…
negative · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Great tower defense game! Has a great system that lets you build up "honor" points and then after you die you level up your castle stats ranging from economy to defense. I'd recommend this game 100% - great replayability.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Very difficult (if not impossible) in the beginning. Each run, you unlock more of the necessary tools to win. Getting the right upgrades is always a big part of the game plan, but you still have to plan a lot to get your economy rolling.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →Tower defense games have always interested me, but I rarely see one I might enjoy. This one is pretty good. It takes awhile to get a feel for it and also unlock everything you need to make good runs. Once you do then you'll understand how easy and how hard the game is all at the same time. Banner selection is probably the hardest thing to master so that you unlock combos but also have the strongest towers possible while it is all random. Don't get stuck on reviews about the impossibility beyond…
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A game with seasons in it without a season pass! This alone deserves an upvote. Great game too by the way.
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →A great roguelike tower defense game with city building elements
positive · reviewer's own thumbsView post →🔴LIVE!🔴 We're defending our Nordic home from the incoming relentless hordes! twitch.tv/adreancard ~♠️ #VSky | #VTuber | #IndieVTuber | #IndieGame | #Nordhold 🩸~
neutral · AI labelView post →Nordhold is a roguelite, tower defense, city management game that manages to effortlessly combine these three genres into an addicting experience that you'll want to check out yourself - and one I'm incredibly excited for. Be sure to wishlist it if you like what you see! youtu.be/J5hyXyx-0pI
positive · AI labelView post →
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