Anomaly: Warzone Earth put a twist on the usual tower defense genre by putting you on the offense against the towers. It was a success, seeing versions on PC, iOS, consoles and more. The recent Anomaly: Korea extended the idea of the original, but Anomaly 2, releasing later this year, is the true successor. It continues the story with new landscapes, units and command powers.

What it is: Anomaly 2 is a tower offense game in which the human race is fighting for survival against a machine intelligence intent on wiping humanity out. As the commander, the makeup of the units and the path they take is up to you. You have some new, useful powers to use to help out your units and (potentially not new) units that can morph between two different firing modes, to deal with different tactical situations.

Why we’re excited: A tower offense game is a great idea, and it seems to be as well executed in this sequel as it was the first time. One of the new commander powers, the EMP, was playable in this build, and it works as well against machines as you’d expect. Laying it down will completely disable any towers in its radius until they get shot. Additionally, the new units are morphable between two modes. Of the units we got to use, one has a machine gun mid-range mode and a flamethrower short range mode. The other has a fixed-direction artillery mode and then a mid-range shotgun mode. You can morph between modes on the fly, which adds a second layer of strategy to deciding what routes and units to take.

What we’re wondering: What we’ve seen is great, but it represents a very small part of the full game. If 11 Bit can keep the quality and story going for a good while, this will definitely be a title to anticipate.

Anomaly 2 is scheduled for release in Q3 2013 for PC, Mac and Linux.