Short runs, permanent upgrades, and endless waves
- Outhold launches on iOS and Android after a successful PC run
- Roguelike tower defence built around short survival runs
- Permanent upgrades and flexible build experimentation drive progression
I feel like strategy games have been getting a bit leaner lately. Fewer distractions, cleaner interfaces, and the basic systems end up doing most of the talking. That’s more or less the idea behind Outhold, which is heading to iOS and Android on March 9th after already finding success on PC.
The core idea is simple enough. Each run begins with a fragile defence around the fading fires of Outhold. Enemies arrive in waves, and towers fire back. Your goal is to survive as long as possible. And when the run inevitably collapses, which it will, you take the resources you earned and invest them in permanent upgrades before trying again.
It’s that familiar incremental loop. Start a run. Push a little further. Upgrade. Repeat. Slowly become strong enough to wipe out things that previously flattened you.
Build variety is where you can expect a little bit of flavour. You can double down on a single tower type, stack upgrades into something wildly overpowered, or experiment with synergies between multiple towers. The upgrade tree is deep, but flexible. Everything can be refunded freely, so experimenting won’t punish you.
The mobile version keeps the same structure that made the Steam release popular, just adjusted for shorter sessions and touchscreen controls.
On a loosely related note, and I’m stretching the definition of “related” here, Pocket Gamer has just turned 20. To celebrate, we’ve been publishing retrospective features looking back at each year of the site’s history, highlighting the biggest mobile games and the broader gaming culture around them. It all started in 2006, which is a pretty wild trip through mobile gaming’s early days.
If incremental defence puzzles are your thing, you might also want to browse our list of the top tower defence games on Android for a few more bases to defend.
Tanish is a freelance writer who’s an absolute Marvel nerd. If he’s not writing, he’s probably rewatching anything related to Marvel so that he can spam his friends with theories. And if not that, he can be found gaming on his trusty PS4. While gaming is a passion for him, he also loves science and hopes to become a neuroscientist one day.
