Well, I've officially compared a game to Dark Souls. Time to turn in my games journalism badge and gun and enroll in graduate school.Hell Warders, announced today by publisher PQube Limited and developer Antigravity Games Studios, is a high-fantasy tower defense game that tasks players with protecting themselves from the legions of hell. Players will have to deploy units such as knights, archers, and mages, to ward off the unrelenting waves of demons. In true tower defense style, each wave gets significantly tougher with boss battles sprinkled throughout the game.

However, players don't take a backseat during this combat. Choosing one of three customizable, upgradable heroes, players get into the action with an animation-locked, action-RPG combat style. As players progress through each wave, they'll have the opportunity to upgrade their character's health, damage, attack rate, cooldowns, movement, and luck. Since the game promises both online and local multiplayer, it will be interesting to see how players level themselves up in-tandem with one another to overcome the game's tougher stages.

Hell Warders continues the trend of tower defense games that aren't afraid to mix things up a bit. Just last month Sleep Tight, developed by We Are Fuzzy, brought the tower defense genre to a child's bedroom, channeling Pixar's Monster Inc.

Hell Warders is coming to Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC sometime this fall. You can check out the game's announcement trailer below.