Defense Grid: The Awakening is designed to be the definitive tower defense game experience designed specifically for Xbox LIVE Arcade. The role-playing game lets let up to four players hack, slash and smash their way together through a hand-drawn landscape.

Defense Grid: The Awakening has 20 unique environments, each with a different placement of roads, tower build locations, and open areas to plan a strategy around. Each level encourages a different strategy, such as trying to find an optimal path to redirect enemies, making the best use of limited space, and breaking up individual enemy waves to avoid being overwhelmed, all while planning ahead for future waves.