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Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
Thanks for all the support. Remember, if you're enjoying, please leave a nice review, it both helps and warms our hearts.
We've also added a few new Commanders and passives for you all to check out while we work on the next larger chunk of content...
Dredger: Has the power Rainy Day, turning the field to mud for a long time. Then their passive gives bonus speed to their units in mud.
Aviator: Has the power Valkyrie Squad, calling in helicopters to defend a territory. Then their passive allows them to take control of one.
Deliveryman: Calls in a Special Delivery of trucks carrying zombies and commandos. Their passive buffs infantry move speed.
Chemist: Sets an area to Gas Overwatch, calling in gas shells on any enemy daring to walk in it. Their new passive, Gassy, makes Boomers move extremely fast but leave behind gas clouds instead of explosions.
Tamer: Calls in a worm carrying a crack squad of squids, with the worm eating the defences above. Their passive, Quicksand, causes one enemy territory to become muddy, slowing down movement.
Protector: Calls in an exclusion zone, a super powerful, free, dimensional barrier, allowing the slow build up of a defensive wall. Their passive is Sturdy, a simple health increase for all structures.
We've started work on our next faction, The Ascendancy! Their campaign will follow the journey of Algernon from a simple rat to the leader of an underground horde of rats hungry for Chroma.
Added launch options for DirectX 12 and Vulkan, as some people have reported crashes with both. Hopefully this gives everybody a launch option that works.
See some friends of the developers playtest Global Domination
Thanks again to all the gamers who have helped us develop DOT over the Early Access period, your feedback has been invaluable and the game greatly improved from it.
Global Domination mode, the 4X version of dot, is available after beating the campaign.
Steam Achievements have been added and are available for unlock.
A bunch of tuning, bug fixes, and optimizations.
New map, Iris Crater, where a mysterious entity lurks.
I probably should have been doing these throughout the EA process, we had some feedback from players that our Steam social game has been lacking. Sorry! Better late then never.
I'm going to run you through what we've been cooking for the next update, what it is, how it works, and the high level mechanics.
Global Domination is a lite 4X inspired by games such as the Total War series, or more specifically, Great War: Western Front. The intent is to add some high level strategy, escalation, variety and importance to individual fights in a way other modes cannot.
(although if I'm being honest it is more 3X, it has the eXpand, eXploit, and a whole lotta eXterminate, but is lacking in the eXplore. Would be fun to add this in eventually)
A game of Global Domination goes until you've knocked out all other team's HQs. After you knock out a team they'll join their conquerors, to make sure players still get to do stuff!
Commander Power: An indicator showing the charge state of your map power. These are faction specific and are extremely powerful!
HQ: Your center of command. It provides some base income, fortification and army generation. Lose it and lose the game!
Map Hazard: Weather will spawn. These have a few effects: They'll kill an army that ends on it, they'll stop building, and fights that happen on that tile will have that weather effect causing chaos!
Tile Multiplier: A big part of the economy is seizing these valuable tiles. They'll multiply the income of a structure by the amount shown to any structure built on the tile.
Mountain Ranges: These will block movement, creating chokepoints on the map. Until the nukes land...
Neutrals: High value territories with lots of tile multipliers will have neutrals spawn in to defend them, requiring their defeat before you can capture the territory and start building.
And to make sure you get the experience you want, there's a bunch of options you can set.
The main phase you'll spend your time in, this is the phase you give move orders to your armies and build structures.
A territory can hold up to 4 structures. They cost gold to build and gold to upkeep, and provide an income.
The 4 types of structures are:
Factory: produces armies
Mines: produces gold
Labs: produces research
Fortification: fortifies territory, up to 4 levels of fortification
The factions are slightly asymmetrical, with Invader labs costing much more but serving as teleporters, Chromatech labs eating armies to produce more research, and their fortifications produce armies, and UCF getting a discount on their structures.
During the command phase you can issue move orders to your armies. An army can move one territory a turn, and if it enters a territory with another enemy army it will result in a fight.
Expanding quickly in the early game is critical, so generally you want to split up, but it is also key to seize big tile mod territories from the neutrals, which encourages putting enough armies together to conquer them. So clever army maneuvering is key.
During the power phase you can use any map powers that have been charged. The powers, by faction, are:
UCF: Chromastrike: Nukes a tile at the end of the turn, destroying everything on it, and any mountain ranges on the tile (take down the Shield Wall!)
Chromatech: Blood Moon: for the rest of the round, any fights you're present in will have a friendly Blood Moon, raising any corpses as zombies and adding significant numbers of zombies to each of your armies.
Invaders: Meteor Landing: Summons a meteor to land an army at an undefended territory, great for seizing an enemy back line.
All player's armies will now move.
Any colliding armies will fight a battle. If no one controls the territory it is a collision battle, and armies instantly deploy.
Territory battles will occur if a friendly territory is being attacked.
In territory battles, the fortification level determines how much set up the defender gets to make.
And the directions and number of armies determines how much the attacker gets to deploy:
To take heavily fortified territories, players will want to attack from multiple directions and with many armies!
Players can also choose to autobattle, which uses an estimate of forces and rolls the dice.
It also helps to tech up. After a player has reached a threshold of research, during the tech phase they get to make a choice.
Passives and Structure Upgrades works like it does in the other modes, where you can get up to 3 bonus passives, and add up to one upgrade per structure. Tech works as a modifier for the global domination map itself, impacting something about the economy or the nature of battles.
Keeping up on your tech is crucial for an edge in battles and for the economic war!
Resolution phase is where all the incomes from the structures come in, new armies are produced, and things clean up for the next round.
That about covers it, without going into exhaustive detail. Hopefully you all found that interesting, and we especially hope you all enjoy the mode when it comes out on June 11th!
For those new to the frontlines, D.O.T. Defence seamlessly blends accessibility with tactical depth, removing complex micromanagement so players can focus on pure strategy. Designed for short bursts of chaotic fun, typical matches last between 5-10 minutes.
Turret Mayhem: Defend your regions—the beating heart of your economy—against relentless hordes trying to seize your resources. Mix, match and sell a variety of turrets based on incoming threats. Commander Fantasy (Macro Orders): Take command with broad-stroke macro controls. Utilise commander powers to evolve the battlefield, draw paths for your armies or let them autonomously capture crucial map points while you focus on the big picture. Diverse Game Modes: Go toe-to-toe with smart AI in classic Skirmish, hold the line in Wave Defence, or brave the roguelike Endless War mode featuring procedurally generated waves and unique modifiers. For the ultimate test of survival, jump into Escalation—a tournament mode where you draft continuous upgrades for your turrets and passives between rounds, squaring off against a stacking deck of random modifiers for a completely unpredictable experience. Single Player Campaign: Experience a high-stakes military epic told across 25 missions, spanning 8+ hours of tactical gameplay. The story plunges you into the heart of the Chroma Wars. Local Multiplayer Mayhem: Gather friends for intense 1v1, 2v2, or free-for-all couch co-op battles with full gamepad support. The crown jewel of the 1.0 release, Global Domination mode completely reshapes how D.O.T. Defence is played. Moving away from standalone skirmishes, players command their armies across a persistent map where every territory gained is a foothold in the Chroma Wars. Managing resources through evolving biomes that shift under the heat of battle and developing new technologies, players can also unleash faction powers to leverage the environment. Resolve grand-scale conflicts through exploration, expansion, exploitation and extermination to achieve total world control.
German localization. The amount this will matter to people who read my English patch notes is questionable. But go tell your German friends!
Repair Bay: The mission specific Repair Bay is now part of the UCF roster.
Sonic Projector: This turret fires sound beams that disorients
Zombcycler: This support structure sends out birds to collect zombie corpses, which will turn into extra stock over time. No parts wasted in Zombonomics!
Ball Launcher: This turret fires Rotballs, which gain in mass as they roll over enemy infantry and friendly zombies.
Skitterpod: A new tripod that hatches skitterlings and moves rapidly to capture territory.
Thumper: This calls the mighty Grunt Trap worm to devour foes.
We've been adding a bunch of new skirmish maps to flesh out the roster, and also because they're used for the global domination mode we've been building. Thanks to the DIscord community for the suggestions, all names and most of the concepts were provided by them!
New maps are:
No Zombies Land: Zombies constantly attack as you fight over their land
Back to Back: you start right next to each other's HQs and have to go the long way around
Ultravioletence: enemy growths disrupt the flow of battle
Kaleidoscope: a chaotic mix of map elements, inspired by the final mission's map, with a Chroma Facility King of the Hill mode
Wasteland: a muddy map with many chokepoints
Prism Valley: crossroads provide long firelanes while the sides of the map provide tight corridors for ambushes
Spiral Road: Another Chroma Facility KoTH mode, an asymmetric map designed around a spiral road.
New Upgrades + Passives
We have a few new ones for you Escalation/Wave Defence players:
Go Time: a structure upgrade that buffs a turrets stats on Command Power usage.
Coordination: A UCF specific passive that causes adjacent structures to buff each other
Rubble Regen: A passive that on death causes a heal burst to nearby friendlies
Corpse Factories: A Chromatech passive that causes all structures to spawn grunt corpses intermittently, great for Reanimators.
Harmonious March: An Invader passive that causes uprooted Tripods to massively buff nearby friendly units speed.
Big rewrite to loading data into memory, the game should boot faster and have less RAM and VRAM usage throughout
We fixed some bugs reported by the community
continued tuning missions
improved some VFX/SFX
The last 4 missions for the campaign are complete, concluding the lead up to Global Domination mode.
A new terrain mechanic findable in the new missions and some of the new maps.
Most notably the chroma missiles have proper nuclear mushroom clouds. Also added more post processing to some effects.
Invaders got a new tower, and there is a smattering of new passives and a new upgrade, Cryo Bullets, for Wave Defence and Escalation mode.
In Escalation maps have a chance of swapping biomes. This was tech added for the upcoming Global Domination mode, but we liked it so much we added it to Escalation too!
Hungering Lands: A new joint wave defence/skirmish map.
Triad: A skirmish map designed for 3 player games.
Hunters: A callback to Big Game Hunters from Starcraft 1, with heavy use of grunt traps.
No Zombies Land: Another community designed map, intended to be a meat grinder where all players are under assault from zombies.
Went back and added a bunch of barks and some general improvements and rebalances to a bunch of campaign missions.
Thanks for playing, and as always – we love hearing your feedback. Join the discussion, share your chaos combos, and let us know what you think! - RattleAxe Games
The last 4 missions for the campaign are complete, concluding the lead up to Global Domination mode.
A new terrain mechanic findable in the new missions and some of the new maps.
Most notably the chroma missiles have proper nuclear mushroom clouds. Also added more post processing to some effects.
Invaders got a new tower, and there is a smattering of new passives and a new upgrade, Cryo Bullets, for Wave Defence and Escalation mode.
In Escalation maps have a chance of swapping biomes. This was tech added for the upcoming Global Domination mode, but we liked it so much we added it to Escalation too!
Hungering Lands: A new joint wave defence/skirmish map.
Triad: A skirmish map designed for 3 player games.
Hunters: A callback to Big Game Hunters from Starcraft 1, with heavy use of grunt traps.
No Zombies Land: Another community designed map, intended to be a meat grinder where all players are under assault from zombies.
Went back and added a bunch of barks and some general improvements and rebalances to a bunch of campaign missions.
Thanks for playing, and as always – we love hearing your feedback. Join the discussion, share your chaos combos, and let us know what you think! - RattleAxe Games
Dear Players,
Thank you for your unwavering support! This year, \ is eligible for the Steam Awards, and we would be honored to have your nomination! 🙏
Meticulously designed animations and effects
Repeatedly polished UI
Unified and coordinated art style
If you resonate with this pursuit of aesthetic consistency and technical breakthrough, we welcome you to nominate us for the Outstanding Visual Style award.
If you are willing to support us, please go to the Nominate Section at the top of this announcement (or on the Store Page).
Please nominate us for:
Outstanding Visual Style
Every single vote fuels our passion to keep creating, updating, and perfecting the game.
Whether it's a nomination or a review on the store page, we appreciate you being part of our community.
Thank you for being with us. Let's make a splash at the Steam Awards together! 🚀
Commanders! A new update has landed for D.O.T. Defence, packed with a new game mode, missions, maps, and quality-of-life improvements. Here’s what’s new:
Thanks for playing, and as always – we love hearing your feedback. Join the discussion, share your chaos combos, and let us know what you think! - RattleAxe Games
Alien invaders from beyond have shown up on the world of DOT to eat the chroma seeping into the land from the Chroma Wars. Their main mechanics are:
Units are hatched from eggs that take up space. These can be warmed to hatch faster by various means (like fertilization from the remains of your enemies)
Tripod structures can be directed to get up and walk to new lands, allowing your structures to spearhead your assault. But this comes at a cost, very few Invader structures have long range!
They’re here to stay, and terraform the land, spreading alien flora that can hatch into skitterlings.
Make the enemy work for you! Using their trans dimensional powers, many units/structures can convert enemy infantry to your side using mental beams. (Zombies resist these)
New faction means new biome, with some new mechanics:
Fog Banks block LoS but not movement, and can be raised/lowered.
Teleporters allow units to enter and teleporter to the matching exit, allowing for surprise attacks.
Skitterling trees will hatch if exposed to alien flora.
Infested territories will erupt in skitterlings to protect the territory if it is being captured.
The first four missions for the invaders run players through the basics of the new faction and their place in this world (they’re the ones invading it!)
Peek a Boo: A solo Wave Defence map intended to explore the new biome mechanics.
Foggy Banks: A skirmish map that makes heavy use of fog banks and teleporters.
Fixed a variety of pathfinding/spawning bugs that lead to units getting stuck off of the nav mesh.
Continued tuning structures/units.
Updated physics engine and collisions to optimize.
Tuning powers/structures for better balance.
Tuning endless war mode spawning to ramp up difficulty faster, and slow down the player economy.
Commanders! A new update has landed for D.O.T. Defence, packed with a new game mode, missions, maps, and quality-of-life improvements. Here’s what’s new:
Thanks for playing, and as always – we love hearing your feedback. Join the discussion, share your chaos combos, and let us know what you think! - RattleAxe Games
This is an evolution of the Skirmish mode, where you compete on randomized levels to be the first to accumulate enough points, and between rounds you get to upgrade your towers and add new passives.
Note, to unlock this mode you need to win a single skirmish match!
Attacks now have damage types, and different units/towers are vulnerable/resistant to these attacks.
There is now a screen that gives the detailed info on units and structures stats, including their new resistances/vulnerabilities. Check it out!
The final two missions of the Chromatech campaign have been released, with a level playing with a Wave Attack mode intended for the global domination game mode, and a climatic showdown with the U.C.F..
Pay attention for some hints of the next faction!
We added a few more upgrades and passives now that Escalation mode is out and you can use them there.
Bastion: A new dual Wave Defence / Skirmish map designed by a member of the community.
The sniper tower wasn’t as fun as we wanted, so we redid the way it works, it now fires all the time normally, and if you hover over a target in range and los it will focus it, instead of focusing the player’s cursor at all times.
Nerfed Field Promotion for being way too OP
Fixed some scoreboard bugs and made it so you can see the global high score without having to have a score of your own first.
Tuning powers/structures for better balance
Continued to improve performance
Improved/optimized pathfinding for better performance and less units getting stuck
Fixed a variety of localization issues
Thanks for playing, and as always – we love hearing your feedback. Join the discussion, share your chaos combos, and let us know what you think! - RattleAxe Games
Both factions have received a new unit, and a structure to produce that unit.
Helicopter: The UCF now have an attack helicopter that can hover over water to capture territories. Produced by the Helipad.
Zedplin: Chromatech now have a hot air balloon that fires zombies, which excels at hunting down enemy artillery. Produced by the Rigor Riser.
This also comes with a new passive available in Wave Defence, Air Commander, that allows you to take to the field to directly control air units!
The Happening modifier has been added to both wave defence and skirmish modes. This modifier allows for various events to occur. Right now just the Blood Moon, raising all corpses as neutral zombies, and Lightning Storm, however more will be added as time goes on.
Each faction got a new Commander, with a new power and one new passive.
Instructor: The UCF got a commander with the Field Promotion power, upgrading all grunts in range to the nearest special tile. Their passive grants bonus stats to elite units.
Economist: Chromatech got a commander with Zombonomics, a power that converts zombies in the area into bonus stock for the nearby territories.
The next two Chromatech missions chronicling Dr. Strangehue’s quest for revenge have been released, bringing the Chromatech campaign to near the end and featuring the new flying units.
Campaign and Wave Defence maps now have the option to see the global high scores close to you, so you can compete to be the best in the world!
Wing Tide: A new dual Wave Defence / Skirmish map focusing on aerial units
There is now an option in skirmish games to add a bonus or handicap to human players. This allows for novice players to fight on even footing with more experienced ones.
Structures that produced bonus resources were too strong in Endless Mode, so they were reduced by ½ in that mode (single resource structures go down to a 50% chance of getting 1). Also, a new structure, the Bank, has been added as a potential Permastructure in the store in Wave Defence. This gives 2 resources per wave in Wave Defence and 1 in Endless.
Continued to juice the effects of the game
Tuning powers/structures for better balance
Continued to improve performance
Improved/optimized pathfinding for better performance and less units getting stuck
Made waves 20+ harder on Endless Mode
Fixed a variety of localization issues
Fixed some crash bugs related to unit removal/summoning
Thanks for playing, and as always – we love hearing your feedback. Join the discussion, share your chaos combos, and let us know what you think! - RattleAxe Games
Commanders! A new update has landed for D.O.T. Defence, packed with new modes, missions, maps, and quality-of-life improvements. Here’s what’s new:
Thanks for playing, and as always – we love hearing your feedback. Join the discussion, share your chaos combos, and let us know what you think! - RattleAxe Games
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for D.O.T. Defence, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main D.O.T. Defence statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.