What The Hen!

What The Hen! runs its tower defence as a duel. Both sides summon along the same short lane, each summon costing energy that refills slowly, and because the cards come from a deck you built earlier, most of the outcome was settled before the match began.

Card collecting is therefore the real progression, and the collection runs to over a hundred heroes. Heroes counter each other in ways that are easy to learn and hard to hold in your head mid-match, so a deck that answers several threats poorly usually loses to one that answers two of them well.

Evolving a card costs duplicates, which puts a quiet limit on how wide a collection can grow. Pushing one hero far up the ladder gives you something the campaign cannot handle; spreading the same resources thin gives you a shelf of cards that all fall a little short.

The campaign teaches the matchups and the arena punishes you for only half learning them. Bosses sit at the end of chapters and are built to beat a deck that never had to change, which is the point at which most players finally rebuild.