Lighting the ward-fires…
No ads in Apep's Eclipse — just the river, the brood and thirty banks of the night
Play Apep's Eclipse: Defense of the Solar Barque — a free Egyptian tower defense in your browser
A free browser tower defense. Raise ward-towers on the riverbank of the Duat and hold thirty banks of the night against the brood of Apep.
Ra sails the Solar Barque through the twelve hours of the Duat every night, and at the seventh hour the serpent Apep rises out of the river to swallow the sun. In Apep’s Eclipse he has finally done it: the night has lasted three days, the barque is held in his coils, and Princess Meritamen — the Sun-Child — is somewhere on the deck behind him. The sun does not come up until you make it come up.
You are Kenamon, an architect-priest of the House of Life, and you do not fight a two-hundred-foot serpent with a spear. You build. Thirty banks of riverbank stand between the gate of the Duat and the barque, and on each one you raise wards, spend deben, and make the dark expensive enough that the brood cannot pay it. Four acts, thirty chapters, and the serpent waiting at the end of the last one.
How to play
- Pick a foundation and raise a ward. Turquoise rings on the bank are the only ground that will hold a tower. Tap one to see what you can afford, or pick a tower in the toolbar and then tap the ring you want it on.
- Watch where the channel bends. A channel that doubles back past the same patch of sand is the best ground in the game, because one tower there fires on the brood twice.
- Spend deben, not hope. Every kill pays you in deben and every repelled wave pays a bonus. Towers upgrade in place, and selling one returns 60% of everything you put into it, so a wrong tower is a cheap mistake rather than a lost chapter.
- Send the wave early when it is safe. The Send button pays you for the seconds you skipped. It is free money on a quiet bank and a disaster on a busy one.
- Keep the flame. Every creature that reaches the Solar Barque puts out part of its flame. You start with twenty. Finish the last wave with any of it left and the bank is yours.
The six ward-towers, and what each one actually does
| Tower | Deben | What it does | Damage | Reach for it when |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sistrum Chorus | 60 | A cheap rattle that never stops: fast single-target damage, no splash. | Physical | The bank is quiet and you need coverage everywhere at once. |
| Scarab Nest | 110 | Lobs a live scarab that bursts on impact and soaks everything nearby. | Physical | The brood comes in a queue rather than a crowd. |
| Obelisk of Ra | 180 | A slow sun-lance from the top of a monolith, with the longest reach in the game. | Piercing | Ushabti, bas, or anything wearing the serpent’s mark — it ignores armour completely. |
| North Wind | 130 | Chills a wide ring and slows everything standing in it to a crawl. | Magic | A heavy wave is coming and nothing you have kills it fast enough. |
| Eye of Horus | 200 | Arcs its damage from body to body, losing a little at every jump. | Magic | The channel is packed and you want one tower to hit six things. |
| Altar of Isis | 150 | Never fires a shot. Consecrates every tower near it with more damage and more reach. | — | Two rings already share a bend and both are worth more than they cost. |
What walks the channel
| Brood | Behaviour | What it costs you | Answer it with |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scarab Swarmling | Weak, quick, and arrives in numbers from the very first wave. | 1 flame | Anything. The swarm is the tax you pay for the rest of the act. |
| Walking Ushabti | Slow and heavy, and it shrugs off a flat slice of every physical hit. | 2 flame | Obelisk of Ra, or magic damage. Not a wall of Sistrums. |
| Winged Ba | Nearly twice the speed of a swarmling and completely immune to slow. | 1 flame | A long-reach tower over the straights, plus a second line further along the channel. |
| Serpent Spawn | Sheds itself into two smaller swarmlings the moment it dies. | 2 flame | Splash damage and slows, so the shed halves die where they fall. |
| Sand Wraith | Solid for a few seconds, then a ghost that nothing can touch. | 1 flame | Volume of fire. It cannot hurt what is not looking at it. |
| Bound Priest | Heals every creature standing near it, forever, at no cost to itself. | 2 flame | Reach past the front rank and kill it first. |
| Herald of Apep | Two and a half thousand hit points of armour that walks slowly and does not stop. | 6 flame | Everything you own, at once, for a long time. |
| Apep’s Coil | The serpent’s own body, at the end of the fourth act and of every Eclipse Cycle. | 10 flame | The Obelisk of Ra and a bank full of everything else. |
Three stars, and where the reference line comes from
The reference line printed on the HUD is not a designer's guess. Before a bank ships, an offline reference architect plays it: it reads the same foundations, buys the same ward-towers at the same prices under the same deben economy, and fights every wave out in the same deterministic 60 Hz simulation your browser runs. If it cannot hold the bank, the bank is thrown away and rebuilt. The flame it finished with is then baked into the chapter, which is why the brief can print a real number and why three stars means something.
| How you finish | What it means | Stars |
|---|---|---|
| Any flame left | The brood never put the solar disc out. The bank held, and the barque moves on an hour. | ★ |
| 55% of the flame | Eleven of twenty. At least one tower was doing three jobs. | ★★ |
| 85% of the flame | Seventeen of twenty: the line the reference architect actually plays to. | ★★ύ |
Four hours of night, thirty banks
| Act | Chapters | Where you are | What changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| I · The First Hour | 1–8 | The Bank of the Reed Fields | Swarmlings and the first walking ushabti. Two towers. Nothing is armoured enough to matter yet. |
| II · The Fourth Hour | 9–16 | The Sedge Marsh of Sokar | Winged bas over the water and bound priests in the reeds. The Obelisk of Ra and the North Wind are surveyed. |
| III · The Seventh Hour | 17–24 | The Coils of Apep | Sand wraiths that phase out, spawn that shed themselves, and the serpent’s own get. The Eye of Horus and the Altar of Isis open. |
| IV · The Twelfth Hour | 25–30 | The Mouth of the East | Everything at once, and then Apep himself walking up the channel in the final chapter. |
The longest bank in the saga is a thirty-four tile serpentine that doubles back on itself three times and gives a single well-placed tower four separate firing angles. The shortest is a sixteen tile L, where the brood arrives at the barque almost as soon as it leaves the gate and you feel every point of lost reach. Every bank is hand-fitted to its chapter — route length, foundation pattern and wave budget are all part of the same number, because in a tower defense a long road is worth more than any upgrade. Past chapter thirty the Eclipse Cycles open: a bank the House of Life never surveyed, rebuilt from the cycle number every time you ask for it, fourteen waves deep, with a serpent at the end and a little more of everything at each depth. There is no reference line in a cycle, and your deepest run is kept on your own device.
Built with nothing but code
The whole game is one page: no engine, no framework, no sprite sheet and no network request at all after the first load. Every star, dune, hieroglyph, obelisk, sarcophagus, scarab and sand wraith is drawn at runtime on a canvas with path operations, and every sound — the sistrum chorus, the scarab burst, the sun-lance, the frost ring and the bell when a bank holds — is synthesised in the Web Audio API. The simulation runs on a fixed 60 Hz step with no calls to Math.random, so a wave behaves exactly the same in your browser as it does in the offline bot that proved the bank was holdable. It plays with one thumb on a phone and with a mouse, a keyboard or both on a desktop.
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Apep's Eclipse: frequently asked questions
How do you play Apep's Eclipse: Defense of the Solar Barque?
Tap a marked foundation on the riverbank and spend deben to raise a ward-tower on it. The brood walks the channel from the gate of the Duat to the Solar Barque at the far end, and every one that reaches the barque puts out part of its flame — you have twenty. Hold every wave of the chapter with any flame left and the bank is yours. The reference line on the HUD is the flame an offline architect bot still held when it cleared the same bank, and matching it is worth three stars.
What are the six ward-towers and what does each one do?
The Sistrum Chorus is cheap, fast and single-target. The Scarab Nest lobs a live scarab that bursts and soaks everything nearby. The Obelisk of Ra is a slow sun-lance with the longest reach in the game, and it ignores armour completely. The North Wind chills a wide ring and slows everything in it to a crawl, which is the only answer to a heavy wave. The Eye of Horus arcs its damage from body to body, so it is worth most where the brood is packed tight. The Altar of Isis never fires a shot; it consecrates every tower standing near it.
Why can I only build on some tiles?
The House of Life surveyed thirty banks before it sent you, and it only marked the ground that will hold a ward without sinking. Those are the foundations: faint turquoise rings along both sides of the channel. Everything else is sand, water or somebody's tomb. The count of foundations is printed in the chapter brief, and it is the real limit on your defence — deben is almost never the problem.
How does the winged ba get past my towers?
It does not fly over them. The ba takes the same channel as everything else, but it moves at nearly twice the speed of a swarmling and it is completely immune to the North Wind's slow, so it spends far less time under fire. The answer is a long-reach tower covering the straights — an Obelisk of Ra can reach a ba through three or four turns — or a second line of fast towers further along the channel. Do not expect one tower to hold a lane on its own.
Is every chapter actually winnable?
Yes, and it is measured rather than hoped for. Before a bank ships, a reference architect bot builds on it under the same rules you have — same towers, same prices, same foundations — and plays every wave out. Only banks it can hold are kept, and the flame it finished with is baked into the chapter as the reference line on the HUD. All thirty banks in the saga are cleared by that bot with at least four flame to spare.
What happens after chapter thirty?
The coils come apart, Meritamen walks off the barque on her own feet, and the sun finally rises over the Mouth of the East. The Eclipse Cycles then open: a bank the House of Life never surveyed, rebuilt from the cycle number every time you ask for it, fourteen waves deep, with the serpent himself at the end of every run and a little more of everything at each depth. Your deepest cycle is stored on your own device.