Tower defense - build towers beside a fixed road and hold the core against endless waves

Waves on a timer - the next wave comes 15 seconds after the last one spawned; call it early for bonus gold

Upgrades and selling - level towers up during a run, sell them back for part of the cost

Tower XP - towers earn XP as they fight, level up and pick abilities

Game speed - play at x1, x2 or x3

Ten towers - Blaster, Lancer, Mortar, Flak, Shredder, Arc, Acid, Seeker, Prism and Frost

Nine enemies - Hex, Dart, Block, Pixels, Kite, Cross, Fractal, Shard and Monolith, each with its own trick

Three bosses - Tesseract, Mandala and Kernel guard the gates between areas

Enemy cards - the first time an enemy shows up the game pauses on what it does and which towers beat it

Sector map - one road down through a tutorial and three areas, 25 sectors to clear

Stars - up to three stars per sector; stars and clears open new sectors

Challenge sectors - set towers and enemies; some hand out a new tower

Endless sectors - see how many waves you can last

Research tree - over 200 nodes bought with research points between runs: tower stats, new towers, global upgrades

Tower points - each tower group banks its own points for its own upgrades

Coach - the first sectors walk you through building, upgrading, waves and research

14 achievements - beat the three bosses, collect stars, buy research, level towers to their special and ultimate

Flat top-down look - long drawn shadows and a CRT screen effect (can be turned off)

Music - tracks for the map, runs and bosses that build with the danger

Sound effects - for every tower, hit, kill and button

Main menu - Continue, New game and Settings over a run the game plays by itself

Pause menu - music and sound volume, CRT on or off, restart or give up a run, Discord

More settings - opens s&box's own settings (display, graphics, volume, key binds) from the pause menu and the main menu

Auto pause - a run pauses when the s&box menu or the Steam overlay opens, or when you Alt+Tab out

Run end card - waves, kills, time, stars and rewards, plus the towers, research and sectors a run opened

Leave a review - from the sector map, where the next area is in the works

First build on s&box - a test upload, not public: tower defense with endless waves, ten towers, three areas and the research tree

Game page - built while testing the published game