thwack·er·y | ˈθwak(ə)ri | noun
Thwackery
A tower defence you also walk around in. You are issued a stretch of road, a purse, and no men. The purse buys the line; when the purse is empty, you are the rest of the line.
Click the road
thwackery noun
| ˈθwak(ə)ri | · plural thwackeries
The trade of stopping a man walking down a road. Licensed by the Company of Thwackers, which sets the examination, grades it, publishes guidance and collects a subscription.
Carpentry is what a carpenter does to wood. Husbandry is what a husbandman does to livestock.
The trade is named after the noise an arrow makes when it arrives. Nobody in this world has ever noticed.
Why the camera came down here
There is nobody else
Every other tower defence hands you an army and a commission. This one issues a stretch of road, a purse, and no men.
So you build from above and you fight from the ground, in the same level, without a loading screen between the two. The towers are what the budget could buy. You are what it could not.
Behind you is a tollhouse. Twenty bodies may get past before the Office writes the stretch off and recalls you, which is worse than dying, because you have to go in and discuss it.
Fig. 1 — one stretch, one purse
Spend it
Eight sound foundations on this stretch. Filling all eight costs seven hundred and forty. Requisitions has issued you five hundred and considers the matter closed.
Road covered by a tower 0% Covered by you 0 m
I
Approved equipment
Four towers, three grades each. The Company approves the list; the Wardenry pays for it. It is the only thing the two offices have ever agreed on.
What the purse can buy
Every figure below is the one the game uses. Take hold of the item and turn it; you will be looking at it from a great height soon enough.
II
The stretches
Places on the Drove are named by the people who have to work them. A wood is named for the timber it yields; a range is named for what it costs to cross.
Six stretches, west to east
The Drove is a road. It is the only thing this country owns worth owning, and the Wardenry is the office that keeps it open. Six stretches are open for work; each one asks a different question of the same purse.
— Brack, Clerk of the Wardenry
III
The other office
They are not enemies of the Wardenry so much as a second body with overlapping jurisdiction, which is worse.
They are not invading.
They are on a schedule
The Moot is a standing council of warlords who have divided the Drove between them into stretches, the same way the Wardenry has. They will not be told this.
Each warlord works a length of road in shifts, carries the take back to his fort, and warehouses it. They never spend it. Rank in the Moot is measured by what is standing in your counting house, so a hoard is not a war chest — it is standing.
Which means the enemy is not evil. It is extractive, and a dead country cannot be stripped again next season.
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Grunt
Rank and file
Carries a plank and a load, in that order of priority.
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Skitter
Rank and file
Light and quick, and through the gap before the drum has turned.
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Shellback
Rank and file
A body wearing the plate the job requires. He was issued it.
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Brute
Rank and file
Slow, heavy, and the entire reason the mortar exists.
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Ghorzag the Warbringer
Holds the fort at the causeway
He chose that epithet himself. He has never brought a war. He runs a warehouse.
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Skarn the Gate-Breaker
Specialist, on loan
Does not hold a stretch. He is sent for, by warlords whose gates are inconveniently intact.
Off the board
The excursion
You can leave. Walk off the board through their gate, up the causeway, into a walled court where the chest sits on a dais and the horde musters in files along the walls. The waves keep coming while you are gone. The lane is left to the towers.
Everything in that chest is recovered property, and recovered property is entered and reported through channels, at which point you would see none of it. The Office knows you do not do that, and has never quite forbidden it.
Ghorzag does not care about the twenty lives; he is paid in loads either way. What he cannot survive is a hoard that keeps getting smaller, because that is his rank. It is not heroism. It is burglary against a man's reputation.
No way back
IV
Subscription
A trade body collects a subscription. So, it turns out, does this one.
Early access
The app is free. Early access is a subscription bought inside it, and what it buys is unfinished work: you play things before they are done, and you tell us what is broken.
USD 4.99 per month · auto-renewing
- Payment is charged to your Apple Account at confirmation of purchase.
- The subscription renews automatically unless it is cancelled at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
- Your account is charged for renewal within 24 hours of the end of the current period.
- You can manage or cancel it in your Apple ID account settings.
- Full terms, including the licence that governs the app, are on the terms of use page.
What is behind it today
- Available Endless mode. Pick a level and see how deep you get. Records kept per map. The difficulty curve is the part we need you to break.
- Not yet The excursion. A level you cannot finish from the board. It is being built, it is listed here because you would be paying towards it, and it is not available yet.
Thwackery is in development for iPhone and iPad and is not on the App Store yet. There is nothing to buy on this website; the subscription is sold inside the app, by Apple.