← Lyran Defense

Press Kit

The homeworld is falling. The ships are loading. Every wave you hold is a ship that gets away.

Trailer

51 seconds · 1920×1080 · H.264 · captured in-engine, no cutaways

Fact sheet

Title
Lyran Defense
Developer
Tatzel Labs LLC — Massachusetts, USA
Platforms
iPhone · iPad · Mac · Apple TV, from one free download. Coming to Android.
Genre
Tower defense · strategy · single player
Release
Version 1.0.0, App Store, 2026
Price
Free. One optional supporter purchase, “Light the Beacon”, US$4.99, which unlocks no gameplay.
Content
21 story levels plus an endless mode · 22 hand-painted maps · 12 buildable towers across 8 upgrade families · 19 enemy types · 4 difficulties
Languages
English
Connectivity
Plays fully offline. No account, no ads, no analytics, no third-party SDKs, and no server of ours. The only network use is Apple’s own and all of it is optional: Game Center for achievements, iCloud for the progress backup, the App Store for the supporter purchase.
Same universe
Starfall: A Lyran Saga — an 8-bit role-playing game set generations after these events, when one ark-colony comes down on a young world and cannot leave. In development; no date, no store presence yet.
Contact

What it is

Lyran Defense is a painterly tower defense campaign set during the Lyran Wars, in the last days of a homeworld that does not survive them. It is a story about a proud feline people buying time with their lives so that their children reach the stars, and the game is honest about how that ends: the campaign is a won evacuation, not a won war.

Twenty-one levels trace the retreat to the evacuation fields. Every board is a painting rather than a tile grid, gold against violet, each with its own biome and its own landmark. The score is generated as you play, rising with the battle and mourning the losses, and it never repeats itself the same way twice.

Features

  • A campaign that is a retreat. Twenty-one rearguard actions, each one buying the evacuation ships their time, plus The Long Watch: an endless mode where the longer you stand, the more ships get away.
  • Eight tower families that upgrade into an elite form — arrow, frost, ember, mortar, venom, lance, banner and mender — and three families fork at the top into two rival elites, a choice the player cannot take back.
  • Special attacks by hand. Aim the Chord, time the Pulse. Neither is on a cooldown you can ignore.
  • Terrain and weather that fight you. Mires that slow the column, rifts that tear open mid-wave, roads that fork and cross, rain and snow that hide the road.
  • A procedural orchestral score written for the battle it is scoring, not looped under it.
  • Plays fully offline. No ads, no tracking, no account required. The entire game is on the device; the platform achievement services are optional.
  • A deterministic engine verified bit-for-bit across every platform it ships on, so a battle replays identically on a phone, a television and a server.

Screenshots — iPhone

A wave crossing a painted board on iPhone A special attack being aimed by hand The campaign map A boss wave A story scene between levels The Journal war codex The Gallery Title screen

Screenshots — Apple TV

A wave crossing a painted board on Apple TV A boss wave on Apple TV A special attack aimed on Apple TV The campaign map on Apple TV

Screenshots — Mac

A wave crossing a painted board on Mac A boss wave on Mac The campaign map on Mac The Journal war codex on Mac

Screenshots — Android

A wave crossing a painted board on Android A special attack being aimed by hand on Android The campaign map on Android A boss wave on Android A story scene between levels on Android The Gallery on Android

Permission

Everything on this page may be used freely in coverage of the game, including video captured from it, monetised or otherwise, with no further permission needed. Attribution to Tatzel Labs is appreciated and not required.

Contact

David Tatzel — [email protected]

No embargo. Coverage is welcome as soon as the game is on the App Store. This page is public and indexable; everything on it is cleared for use, and the press assets above need no permission.