Next week launches the first PSN title I will buy on my shiny, albeit ignored Playstation 3. Saying that PixelJunk Monsters doesn’t take the PS3’s abilities to the fullest is the understatement of 2008; the graphics are mediocre and the gameplay is fairly simple. Even with those points against it, the title still earns points for being the first in its genre to make the foray onto consoles.

The genre is “tower-defense,” and unless you are a PC gamer you may have never heard of it before. It was born through custom maps in real-time-strategy games such as Warcraft and Starcraft, using the games defensive towers to fight off waves of enemies. After every level you are awarded with more money to build more towers to defeat, you guessed it, more enemies. Here is the description of PixelJunk Monsters from the official website:

Anyway, let’s dive into the scenario - you have to protect your island and its villagers from the monster horde and you begin roughly in the center of the island where there are about 20 villages to defend in 3 areas; designated easy, medium and hard. In each area there is a special end stage that gives you some kind of ability or power-up when you complete it.

If you save all the little villagers in a particular stage a rainbow will be displayed and collecting these rainbows allows you to unlock new areas to explore.

For the easy set of levels there are ten waves of monsters. There are quite a few types, but to begin with I feel it’s a good idea to warn you about the spiders - they are FAST!

When monsters are killed, they drop coins for you to run around and collect and this money lets you build more towers. Occasionally they will drop little gems that are pretty important.

You can follow this link to more information and descriptions of some of the towers you can build in the game. If you have never played a game like it before and want a general idea of what it is, click here for the fun (and free!) Desktop Tower Defense.

PixelJunk Monsters will be out next Thursday for a yet-to-be announced price.