Hidden Path Entertainment today revealed that its critically acclaimed Defense Grid: The Awakening, soon to be released on Xbox LIVE Arcade, will be unveiled July 24 at the Microsoft booth at San Diego Comic-Con International. Defense Grid: The Awakening’s unique spin on tower defense gameplay appeals to gamers of all skill levels. Defense Grid features beautiful environments, spectacular effects, and a dynamic, engaging soundtrack.  The controls are intuitive and the gameplay is deep - the special attacks and properties of each tower work together to provide many ways to succeed. Defense Grid: The Awakening will be available on Xbox LIVE Arcade later this summer.

Defense Grid: The Awakening for Xbox LIVE Arcade is built on Emergent’s Gamebryo engine (Oblivion, Warhammer Online, Civilization IV) and features 12 hours of story play, 24 unique environments across the Awakening campaign and four bonus Borderlands maps, plus over 100 unlockable challenge modes. Critics have repeatedly lauded Defense Grid’s excellent game balance, pace and progression. With each level, players encounter different placement of roads, tower build locations, and open areas to plan a strategy around. Each map, whether open plan or fixed route, encourages a different strategy, such as trying to find an optimal path to redirect enemies, making the best use of limited space, and breaking up individual enemy waves to avoid being overwhelmed, all while planning ahead for future waves.

There are 10 different tower types that can each be upgraded twice. These towers all have unique tradeoffs that affect ideal placement, such as line-of-sight attack or ballistic trajectory fire; a large area of effect or damage over time; and minimum and maximum ranges. Over the course of the game, players battle 15 different types of enemies, each with unique capabilities and strategies.