Marrow March

The best horde defense games

Updated

A horde defense game is a siege seen from the inside: the enemy comes in numbers that fill the screen, and everything you build exists to hold one line a little longer. These do it best, from huge survival strategy games to short incremental ones.

We make Marrow March, so it is on this list; it is marked as ours and it comes last. The rest are games we would point a friend to.

  1. They Are Billions

    Numantian Games · Windows (Steam) · Paid

    The landmark of the genre: steampunk colonies after the zombie apocalypse, walled in with gates and towers against the infected, all billions of them.

  2. Diplomacy is Not an Option

    Door 407 · Windows (Steam) · Paid

    Medieval and enormous: more than 25,000 enemies storm your castle on procedurally generated maps, swarms of zombies among them, and walls and armies are all that keep them out.

  3. Cataclismo

    Digital Sun · Windows (Steam) · Paid

    Build fortresses brick by brick against endless hordes of Horrors from the Mist, lead from the ramparts, and when the walls falter, fall back on the homes behind them.

  4. Age of Darkness: Final Stand

    PlaySide · Windows (Steam) · Paid

    Light, build and defend humanity's last bastion against hordes of Nightmares, in a kingdom consumed by a deadly fog.

  5. The Last Spell

    Ishtar Games · Windows (Steam) · Paid

    Rebuild a battered city by day and hold its walls by night with a squad of heroes, in a tactical RPG with rogue-lite runs.

  6. Here Comes The Swarm

    CableHook Games · Windows (Steam) · Paid

    A survival RTS with a pause button: build and defend your settlements against thousands of fiends trying to breach your walls, then take the fight to the hive.

  7. Kingdom Two Crowns

    Fury Studios, Coatsink · Windows, Mac, Linux (Steam) · Paid

    A quieter take: gather coins, build walls and towers, and protect your crown against the waves of Greed that come at night, alone or in co-op.

  8. Sir, We Have an Orc Problem

    Mumpitz Games · Windows, Linux (Steam) · Paid

    Short and incremental: an overwhelming number of orcs, met with ever more bullets, bombs and lasers, and a massive upgrade tree that every run, won or lost, pays into.

  9. Dome Keeper

    Bippinbits · Windows, Mac, Linux (Steam) · Paid

    Dig beneath your dome for resources between waves of alien monsters, and hurry back before the dome is destroyed: half mining, half defense, all roguelike.

  10. Marrow MarchOur game

    Enes (us) · Desktop browser · Free

    Our horde is the dead: 13 kinds of them march on the last wall in assaults, against soldiers you place and train, guns on the wall and traps before it. When the wall falls the run ends, and the fall pays into a tree of 100 permanent upgrades. Free in a desktop browser.

How we chose

We picked games in which the enemy is a horde, hundreds or thousands at once, and you defend a place: a wall, a city, a base, a dome. Facts were checked against each game's store on 1 October 2026.

Questions

What is a horde defense game?

A strategy game in which you defend a place, a wall, a city or a base, against enemies that come in overwhelming numbers, often hundreds or thousands at a time.

What are the best horde defense games on Steam?

They Are Billions and Diplomacy is Not an Option are the best known. Cataclismo, The Last Spell and Age of Darkness: Final Stand are newer takes, and Sir, We Have an Orc Problem is a short incremental one.

Is there a free horde defense game?

Marrow March runs free in a desktop browser, and Zombie Defense is free on Steam.

More to read