Thank you Funcom for sending us this game to review!

Conan Unconquered provides an interesting take on the real-time strategy genre. In this title, you must stand your ground against increasingly stronger hordes of enemies that arrive every few minutes. Between the enemy waves, you must build up your army, defenses, and explore your surroundings for caches of resources that will come in handy.

There’s not much of a story other than traveling to different areas and protecting your fortress from attack. If you survive the ordeal, some princess will congratulate you on your bravery. If not, your blood will become the foundation of your enemy’s empire. No matter how good or bad you do, you’ll be given a game code that you can share (with friends who own the game) and they can see if they can survive and/or beat your ending score.

If you’re looking for multiplayer, you’ll have to rely on your friends since there are not many active games to join. The Steam community forums are disabled and the one existing topic points users to Funcom’s forums. There are some matchmaking topics so you may have some luck there.

Thankfully, there’s plenty to do by yourself. A recent free DLC called Belit’s Fury added a new campaign hero and some more single-player scenarios. In total, there are ten scenarios of escalating difficulty that unlock once you complete the previous level. You can adjust the difficulty if you’re struggling a bit. There’s also an unconquered mode in which you can customize your own scenarios to your liking. You can adjust the number of waves, map size, choke points, resource availability and more.

There’s a wide variety of enemies ranging from nomad spearmen to necromancer wizards summoning the undead. There’s plenty of creepy crawlies to slaughter as well, including killer ostriches, scorpions, and spiders. The spiders can be as big as your fortress and the scorpions can poison your units. Some maps have boss-like guardians roaming about that drop helpful artifacts that make defeating them worthwhile. The artifacts I’ve acquired granted healing abilities or caused the enemies to leave behind gold upon their demise. You can only equip two artifacts at a time.

Each scenario will start you off with different structures. Having a healing shrine from the get-go is quite helpful, but uncommon. You’ll also need to quickly build a training center if you want to build up your army. The only units you need to micro-manage are your warriors. Resources are automatically gathered after you build the proper structures for them.

Like many RTS games, you’ll have to gather enough wood, food, gold, stone, and animals to build up your empire. To use magic, you’ll also have to collect the life essence of your defeated foes. At first you’ll only have two warrior classes available: a swordsman and a spear wielder. Each unit has their own strengths and weaknesses when it comes to close combat against ground or mounted units.

As you meet the requirements and unlock different guilds, you can perform research and learn new technologies that can give you an edge against the incoming hordes of enemies. Learning how to increase production, make traps, and unlock new warrior classes will give you a fighting chance against the next wave of bad guys coming your way in a few minutes.

If you’re getting overwhelmed, you can actively pause the game and issue orders to units or start building and researching things without worrying about the armies marching toward your compound. Though the game doesn't directly punish you for pausing, it does encourage you not to do so-- I did earn a Steam achievement for not using the active pause feature. In total, there are one hundred and eleven achievements.

Outside of the intro cutscene, Conan Unconquered is not very impressive visually. There’s a limit on how pretty you can make scorched desert maps. The abandoned ruins throughout them are a nice touch though. When you defeat waves of enemies, they will leave puddles of blood behind along with their rotting corpses.

The background music is good when it’s not drowned out by battle cries, weapons clanking, and dying noises. The voice acting is decent as the champions have a few repetitive catchphrases they utter when you select them or when they enter battle. I enjoy the main voice actress' English accent, which lets me know when I don’t have enough resources to build something or when a structure is completed.

As previously mentioned, this game is extremely bloody and violent. There is some language (b*stard) too. Magic use is prevalent and that includes necromancy.

Overall Conan Unconcerned is a fun game. It’s a shame that the multiplayer matches are few and far between. Thankfully there’s plenty to do by yourself. If you enjoy RTS and tower-defense games, you’ll want to check out Conan Unconquered.