To our community,
We’ve come to realize that the demo may not provide enough time or context to fully experience and understand this new system. That’s why we wanted to share more insight into the design decisions behind it.
You've been with us long enough to know that we don't make changes lightly. Every mechanic in Kingdom Rush exists for a reason, and the Level System is no exception. We want to be honest with you about what it is, why we built it the way we did, and what we hope it gives you.
What the Level System gives you
Before we get into the details, here’s the heart of it: the Level System exists to let you build each tower the way you want it. In past Kingdom Rush games, a tower’s in-game upgrade path could only hold so much, there simply wasn’t room to keep adding new abilities. The Level System opens that space back up.
Every tower now has more powers to unlock than we could ever fit on the battlefield at once, including a brand-new ultimate that has never existed in Kingdom Rush before. On top of that, passive upgrades are tailored tower by tower: some passives are shared across towers, but many are specific to a single one. The result is that the way you grow a tower becomes a real part of your strategy, each one ends up feeling like yours.
The trade-off, and how we handled it
We’ll be upfront: a system like this has a trade-off. Done wrong, it could push you to replay old levels just to grind a tower back up to speed, and grinding isn’t fun. We agree. So before this ever shipped, we put a lot of effort into design decisions built specifically to keep the grind out:
Towers / Powers don’t grind for stats. Unlike heroes, which improve their base stats as they level up, towers only change when you choose to buy a power. There’s no hidden stat creep to chase, so being a level or two behind doesn’t make a tower weaker.
Towers start where they should. Every new tower arrives with an expected starting level, and its two tower active skills sit right near the beginning. One of them is an either/or choice, so from the moment you unlock a tower you’re making a real decision about the playstyle you want.
The ultimate is the reward at the top. The final unlock is aspirational by design, a brand-new kind of ability that has never existed in Kingdom Rush before. It’s something to aim for, not a tax you have to pay.
Catch-Up keeps your roster together. If a tower falls behind from the rest of your army, it earns experience twice as fast (2x) until it catches up, so a unit you unlock late never stays the weak link.
New modes level you up through fresh play. We’ve added new game modes where parts of your army earn XP boosts, so you grow your towers through fresh, fun gameplay instead of replaying the same stages. We’re exploring even more content like this to keep leveling up your troops feeling new.
More to play than ever. KR6 has more campaign stages than any Kingdom Rush, with 18 stages, so there’s plenty of natural play to level up across, with no need to repeat content you’ve already cleared.
And we’ve tested it, a lot. We’ve played the game through many times, and it feels right. You don’t feel like you’re losing because a tower is one or two levels behind.
Put together, these decisions are meant to give you the best of a per-tower system, full customization over how each tower plays, while keeping the downside, the grind, off your plate.
We genuinely appreciate all your support. It means a lot to us!