Okay, rather describe all the Tower Defense games I've played, I'll give you a run-down of three of my favorites. Incidentally, the games reviewed in this post can be found at kongregate.com
BLOONS TOWER DEFENSE
There are five incarnations of Bloons Tower Defense, plus a Player vs Player (PvP) version. My computer, which was old years ago, doesn't run Bloons 5. They all have a measure of fun, but the graphics get slicker and the monkey towers do more things in the higher version. What are monkey towers, you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked. The towers you place are mostly monkeys throwing darts or glue or what-have-you. (This is a very weird game.) Even though maybe half the towers don't have monkeys, depending on the version, I still call them that because I like saying monkey towers. Monkey towers.
Anyway, there's a set path along which balloons travel, and you place monkey towers near the path to pop them before they complete it. There's too many tower types to go into detail, but I would like to highlight the "Super Monkey" - a very expensive tower which shoots darts really fast. Like, super fast. He wears blue and red and has a cape. Some Balloon types include the basic red balloon, the blue one which turns into a red when popped, ceramic and lead balloons which pretty much require explosives or fire to pop, camo balloons which require certain upgrade towers in order to see them, and the MOAB - Mother of All Balloons. It's a balloon pinata, with balloon prizes. You need highly upgraded cannons to deal with it.
On the surface, you wouldn't think I'd like this one. It has a set path on which nothing can be placed. However, the absurdity of monkeys popping balloons and the upgrade options of the monkey towers just make it fun - and there's enough challenge to the game to keep me coming back for more without being so challenging that it doesn't feel beatable.
CURSED TREASURE
In this one, you are an evil someone or other guarding their magic jewels from nasty adventurers who want to steal them. You have three towers: dens, which shoots arrow after arrow and can be placed on grassy areas; crypts, which shoot a limited number of magic balls and can be placed on ice; and temples, which continually shoot a stream of magic and can be placed on red tiles. (I think the red tiles are either supposed to be mountainous or burnt forests.) Towers gain experience as they kill monsters; when they gain enough experience, you can pay to level them up. Each eventually has two different types of towers they can level up to. You also have three spells: one allows you to cut down forests to make room for towers, one increases the attack rate of your towers, and the third rains a fiery meteor down on those annoying adventurers
Cursed Treasure has a leveling system. For each level, you gain experience (separate from your towers experience, which only applies to individual towers on a map) based on how many actual enemies you destroyed, how many waves were destroyed, and how many gems you save. When you level, you get three skill points you can put into one of three tracks - Orcs, which increases your tower's firing rate, Undead, which increases your tower's range, and Demons, which increases your tower's damage. Each skill point also grants or increases special abilities based on how they're spent.
Also, there's a rating system which displays the rank you've received for each completed map - good gives you a bronze star, excellent gives you a silver star, and brilliant gives you a gold star.
I have a lot of fun with this game. I enjoy seeing how different leveling paths affect the play of the game.
GEMCRAFT LABYRINTH
There are three games in the Gemcraft series: Gemcraft, Gemcraft Chapter 0 and Gemcraft Labyrinth. In each, you play a wizard who creates various gems and towers. When monsters pass by, the gems zap them. Different gems have different abilities, such as increasing damage, giving you mana, or poisoning the enemy. You can also combine multiple gems together to get gems that have multiple powers. You can also build traps that go off as monsters run over them. These things pretty much hold true over all three games. The rest of this review will just go over Gemcraft (Labyrinth).
You can place towers in the path of the monsters, although you cannot completely block them off, which I've found to be acceptable. You can still make mazes, to some degree, for them to go through. You can also place towers in areas beside the path, where the monsters cannot go. This breaks from most TD games, where it's one or the other. You can build "Shrines" which allow you to destroy gems to create special effects. There are amplifiers - towers that don't allow gems to fire, but do boost the power of gems in towers adjacent to it.
Then there is one of the key features. The mana that you use to create gems and towers? Yeah, that's also your health bar. It creates a real sense of strategy - do you sacrifice your health to kill more monsters, or trust the ones you have built to do the job? Your mana regenerates over time, making this an interesting dynamic, and there is a gem type which gives you mana when it hits an enemy. An interesting feature in a truly impressive game.
Like Cursed Treasure, they have a leveling system. Unlike Cursed Treasure, you can change how your skill points are distributed before each level. Additionally, as you level, you gain options which allow you to change how the monsters work: you can make them faster, tougher, or add extra waves of monsters. It makes it so that even early maps remain replayable as you level.
Speaking of maps, there are an 169 of them. 169! A freaking massive game. If you have time to dedicate, there is huge replayability here.
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