Arknights is a mobile tower defense (TD) game developed by
Hypergryph. Originally released in mainland China (
CN) on May 1, 2019, it later received a release in Japan, Korea, North America, Europe, and Southeast Asia (collectively known as
Global) by
Yostar on January 16, 2020, and in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau (
TW) by Longcheng on June 29, 2020.
While at first it appears to be a deceptively simple TD,
Arknights tends to be more difficult than the run-of-the-mill TD game due to tricky maps, enemy design, and challenging combat puzzles. One strong aspect of the game is the player's management of
Operators and the correct use of their abilities to achieve victory.
Arknights also features an important
base building feature.
Arknights utilizes a
gacha system for players to obtain Operators, however, the game designs stages to be solvable using Operators of the most common rarities. In addition, the
Recruitment system permits the free, albeit rare, acquisition of most of the older high rarity Operators.
Due to the differing release dates of each version as well as other factors, the Global server of
Arknights is ~6 months behind the CN server, while the TW server is ~8 months behind CN (~3 months behind Global).