A New Ethos Games title
Defend the Gate — Ascend the Scale
A space tower-defense game about climbing the technological ladder of a civilization — from crude railguns to weaponized stars — while the Swarm tries to eat your Gate.
The Game
You defend a single Gate against forty waves of the Swarm. Between waves you spend alloy ⬡ to raise towers, advance your civilization through five technological ages, and ratify run-scoped doctrine. Bosses land at waves 10, 20, 30, and 40 — the last is always the toughest thing in the sector.
Pay alloy mid-run to climb Silicon → Fusion → Antimatter → Stellar → Galactic. Each age unlocks wilder towers, a new palette, and a music shift.
21 towers across three tiers and two exclusive branches. Gravity wells bunch enemies for plasma mortars; cryo makes everything brittle; EMP strips shields and armor alike.
Win a sector to unlock the next Threat level on it. The Swarm adapts as you ascend — telegraphed mutations you counter, not memorize.
The Kardashev Scale
In 1964 the astronomer Nikolai Kardashev proposed measuring a civilization by the energy it commands. KARDASHEV turns that ladder into a win condition: every tower you raise and every star you weaponize pushes your civilization one step up the scale.
Harnesses only a fraction of its home planet's energy. Where humanity sits today.
In game: your first sectors — crude kinetics, a handful of towers, one Gate to hold.
Commands the full energy of its planet — every storm, tide, and reactor.
In game: fund Civilization Projects like the Orbital Ring and bring the Ring Cannon online mid-run.
Captures the output of an entire star — the domain of Dyson swarms.
In game: the Swarm evolves against you across twelve mutations; you answer with stellar-age towers.
Draws on the energy of a whole galaxy — the far horizon of the scale.
In game: the Galactic Age — Kugelblitz Lances, gravity looms, weaponized starlight across five galaxies.
Systems
Every run feeds a persistent meta-game. Spend what you earn on a constellation of permanent upgrades, then take a stronger civilization back into the war.
Spend Dark Matter ✦ on a 57-node constellation tree — new towers, new sectors, Anomaly slots, an Endless mode, and permanent boosts.
The idle layer. Charter fleets to secured sectors; they return with cargo, Dark Matter, and crew even after you close the game.
A persistent autonomous hero ship that levels forever — passives, actives, ore mining, gear crafting, and sector-locked boss duels.
Prestige. Collapse the front to deepen the Singularity and unseal the next galaxy in the chain — five gates, ever-deeper systems.
Quest-style deterministic challenge runs with fixed seeds. A date-seeded Daily Directive rotates at midnight and builds a streak.
Recruit specialists across three stations; socket ten Elemental Artifacts that resonate with particular tower types.
Combat
Launch window
KARDASHEV runs entirely in your browser. Cloud saves are optional. No install, no store, no ads.