Emberward

Roguelite tower defense with card-drawn blocks for building mazes

Refic Games · Released Sep 17, 2026

Reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive; 97% of 4,080
Recent reviews: Overwhelmingly Positive; 95% of 257 in 30 days
Playing now: 1,342; right now
Steam Deck: Playable
Last update: 5 months ago; Apr 16, 2026

Free demo available, 62 playing it now: get the demo.

What is Emberward?

Emberward is a single-player roguelite tower defense game where you place wall blocks drawn from a deck to route monsters, then position towers around the resulting maze. Runs span changing maps and tower selections, with new block cards, towers, runes, relics, and talents shaping each defense.

For you if...

+you like building your own mazes in tower defense
+you enjoy randomized runs and deckbuilding decisions
+you want several single-player challenge formats

Not for you if...

−you prefer fixed maps over rebuilding defenses each run
−you dislike randomness affecting towers, cards, and relics
−you expect a smooth, predictable difficulty curve

What players say

97% of 4,080 reviews are positive · 95% of 257 in the last 30 days

Players most often praise the block-based maze building, range of towers and relics, and variety of possible combinations. Common complaints are that runs can become repetitive, difficulty can jump abruptly, and later waves sometimes reduce careful planning to extending the maze and adding more towers.

Screenshots and trailer

Emberward system requirements

As published by the developer.

Minimum

OS: Windows 7/10/11
Processor: 4GHz
Graphics: 2GB GPU Memory, capable of OpenGL 3.0+ support
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Storage: 3 GB available space

PC version details

DRM, required accounts, controller support and Steam features.

DRM: None declared on Steam
Controller: Full controller support
Platforms: Windows
Achievements: 100
Steam features: Cloud saves, Family Sharing, Trading cards

Steam Deck: Playable

Sometimes shows mouse, keyboard or non-Deck controller icons
Some in-game text is small and may be hard to read
The native resolution is not the default one
All functionality is accessible with the default controller configuration
Default graphics settings perform well on Steam Deck

Multiplayer and co-op

Single-player

Languages

Text only: English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, Traditional Chinese, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Russian, Spanish - Latin America.