About

IonLab Play started as a group chat where a few of us kept swapping screenshots of tower layouts and arguing about which unit to upgrade first. At some point the notes got long enough to be a website, so here we are. We mostly care about strategy and tower defence, but we test other genres too when something grabs us.

Every game we cover gets real playtime. We don't judge from a trailer or a store description. Someone on the team installs it, plays through the early game at minimum, and usually much further before writing a word.

We pick games by a simple rule: is it fun to think about? A good tower defence makes you plan three waves ahead. A good strategy game punishes lazy decisions. Those are the ones we want to explain properly, so a new player can skip the frustrating first hours.

The site is independent. We run it in our spare time, and we write the way we'd explain a game to a friend over coffee.

Lukas Meinhardt — Lukas has been playing tower defence since the flash-game era and now leads the editorial notes at IonLab Play. He is happiest when a level forces him to rebuild his whole layout.