JARS is a tower defence/puzzle hybrid that takes place in a spooky basement, filled with all sorts of creepy crawlies.
As the name implies, JARS is all about it’s jars. The setup of each stage is fairly simple. You will be faced with a set of shelves, each containing a number of jars. You can click on these jars to break them, which will release whatever is hiding inside.
Inside a jar, can be a number of things. It may be a minion, which you can then redeploy at your leisure to defend the chests. It may be an item or a weapon which you can use directly, or it can even be a nasty, a bad little critter that is trying to destroy your chests. Using what you have found, you have to try and stop them, and that’s the crux of the tower defence side of the game.
Really though, it is more of a puzzler. The puzzle elements come from the fact that the game does not tell you what is inside every jar. Whilst it does point out a few of them, most remain a mystery, so opening them in the right order, or reacting quickly when a jar reveals something that goes against you, is key. I found it quite fun to just blast through and open up a load of jars, then deal with the maelstrom afterwards, trying to quickly adapt with whatever I could. It doesn’t have to be played this way though, and a slower approach could be just as fun.
The strategy elements appear mostly in how you choose to use the minions that you have uncovered via the jars. There are several different types, and all have strengths and weaknesses. Some are able to move between shelves, some are extremely slow, so placement is key. It can be quite manic, if the first couple of jars to open are enemies, meaning that you have to make quick decisions on where to place the minions that you manage to uncover. It ends up becoming a lot more fast paced than I would usually expect for this kind of game, and a lot of fun.
There are also things that can be done between levels. These include buying new upgrades for your minions, or even new minions entirely. Whilst you can usually only have a maximum of three on any level, picking which three ends up becoming more important as the game gets more difficult, and upgrading them correctly is important too. It adds a nice additional layer to the experience.
JARS also features a fairly interesting Burtonesque graphical style, which fits the tone of the game really well. It’s spooky, and would be a perfect fit for a Halloween game. Ultimately though, I found JARS to be a charming, fun hybrid of the puzzle and tower defence genres. The nature of chance adds a layer of excitement to the genre, and I think most gamers could find something to enjoy here.
You can purchase JARS on Steam here. If you’re after a less spooky tower defence game, check out The Last Friend.
