Arknights is a tower defense game for iOS and Android that puts a huge emphasis on its lore, you can pre-register now

Arknights is a supremely popular tower defense game in China that the rest of the world is probably not overly familiar with. That may change on January 16th when the game makes its way to the rest of the world for both iOS and Android. News of the upcoming release date was first spotted by Kongbakpao.

You might be wondering why a tower defence is so popular and at first, I was too. But then I saw a few trailers for Arknights and I quickly realised that it's most likely the fact that so much production has been put into making the game's lore seem like the coolest thing there's ever been.

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Take a look at either of the trailers I've embedded into this article and you'll probably think 'yeah I'd binge all 6 seasons of this on Crunchyroll in one afternoon'. If you're into anime, that is. It has very high production value in that respect and even the in-game menus look pretty fantastic too. It's enough to make you temporarily forget that this is a tower defense game.

Instead of towers though you'll be recruiting Operators instead, which is effectively a varied roster of waifus and the odd husbando – I believe that's the right term. This is probably where gacha elements will be brought in for discovering new Operators and strengthening existing ones.

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There's an energy system that dictates the speed at which you can play your different units. It also appears that you'll have a set hand at the start of each level that you'll need to use strategically, saving your more powerful operators for the latter stages. So there will effectively be some deck building to ensure you have a good balance of characters to deal with a variety of enemy types.

Arknights is available to pre-order now on the App Store and Google Play ahead of its launch on 16th January. It will be a free-to-play game.