Tower Defence
General
Tower Defence is an RTS game in which you have to stop enemies from crossing the map by building towers. Your towers have different damage types and costs, a mix is usually required to kill the hostiles. Most variants feature rounds in which you earn money to buy or upgrade towers.
The location of your towers is an essential strategy element of the game. The hostiles usually follow a pre-set path, though some variant do not and you create a path using your towers.
History
The original Tower Defence game is Rampart. It re-appeared as a mini-game in the late 1990s in Final Fantasy VII later featuring in Age of Empires II, Starcraft, & Warcraft III.
The explosion of browser based games using Flash resulted in the many stand-alone variants seen today.
Game Play
In essence you place your towers and upgrade as necessary attempting to stop enemy units moving from A to B, the later usually being your base. You can take a finite amount of damage or the loss of jewels etc until the round is is lost. Most games can only be won if you upgrade your towers, this usually requires a certain amount of resource juggling.
Trademark Controversy
In typical US litigious fashion, COM2US was awarded a trade mark in 2007 and is now happily suing people for copyright infringement of the name “Tower Defence” despite its generic usage.
Games & Ratings
I have played these games for 5 or 6 years now, the ratings are arbitrary and there are many more variants than those listed below. These are simply the ones I have played to date.
| Game | Rating | Game Platform | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bloons Tower Defence 4 |
3/5
|
Browser
|
Polished, but a little too frantic in the higher levels with irritating cartoon graphics |
| Cursed Treasure |
4/5
|
Browser
|
Very polished, decent size play field. |
| Desktop Tower Defence |
5/5
|
Browser
|
Well made, no maze with multiple play modes.. |
| Flash Circle TD |
2/5
|
Browser
|
1 Map only, endless waves |
| Flash Element Tower Defence 2 |
4/5
|
Browser
|
1 Map only, endless waves |
| Master of Defence |
5/5
|
Windows
|
Brilliant, stand alone 3D implementation |
| Onslaught 2 |
4/5
|
Browser
|
Maze free, multiple modes and novel gun-stacking feature. |
| Speedway Tower Defence |
2/5
|
Browser
|
Car based, poor implementation |
| Star Wars Turret Defence |
2/5
|
Browser
|
Amusing, but easy to beat |
| Tower Defence |
1/5
|
Browser
|
Plain and simple with no sound |
| Tower Defence |
1/5
|
Browser
|
Platform variant smash, bash & crash |
| Vector TD 2 |
4/5
|
Browser
|
Very polished implementation, multiple play modes. |
| Warzone Tower Defence |
4/5
|
Browser
|
Tanks & planes, no maze. |
| Zombie Tower Defence 3 |
2/5
|
Browser
|
Mildly amusing |
Links
There are site dedicated solely to this game type with huge collections of TD games:
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