PC - Desktop Tower Defence

PC
Desktop Tower Defence

Never played a Tower Defence game? Maybe you should.

You see, my problem was the name. It didn’t exactly… grab me. It sounded kind of boring.

And then, someone pipes up over on Fruit Forums, “Hey, have you guys played this game? Seriously, I’m hooked.”

So I gave it a try. Guess what? I was hooked.

The premise is simple. “Creeps” will begin to emerge from the top and left and make the quickest journey they can to the opposite exit. Every creep that makes it loses you a life, of which you begin with 20. The only way to stop them is to construct Towers of varying types which will automatically fire at enemies in range.

The best way I can describe this game is… think of Command & Conquer, but your troops cannot move.

Creeps come in many different flavours… standard creeps just amble towards the exit. There’s creeps that like to stick in a big group, so whilst they might get past towers that can only shoot one creep at once, explosions might wipe the whole troop out at once. There’s also fast creeps, flying creeps, spawn creeps and “dark” creeps, which you will just have to learn how to deal with.

Luckily, your towers also come in a variety, and all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some can fire single shots at a time, some fire explosive or “sticky” rounds, or there’s other effects you can induce. Bash Towers are devastating but only harm ground creeps real close by, whilst Swarm Towers will only attack airborne creeps.

Towers can be upgraded too, so that their damage, range and firing rate can be boosted to very high levels. And you’ll need to have some good towers to beat creeps on later levels as their health increases massively.

There’s a couple of accepted tactics usually employed… either concentrate on a particularly devastating section that the creeps must traverse, or create a long maze of low-level towers whose combined firepower should be enough to see off most enemies. Another tactic you can employ is “juggling”, although this is tantamount to cheating. But basically this involves getting the creeps into a long maze, then selling a tower that creates a very short route to the exit, which will actually tempt all the creeps to come back to the hole you just created… only for you to seal it up, causing them to go back through the maze of deadly towers you set up. And repeat ad infinitum.

The latest web version, which can be found here, is TDPro, featuring several scenario levels, a sandbox (with score multiplier based on how easy/hard you make things for yourself), sprint and multiplayer. There’s also a new version on Facebook called Desktop Defender, which I think is brilliant, and allows you to challenge your friends to beat your scores, as well as many other features and boosts you can use. Unfortunately it starts out very difficult as you have to buy extra towers with your in-game coins… But still worth persevering with.

In short, if you haven’t played it before, go and play it now. Although not at work… you might lose track of your dinner break.