The Ultimate Guide to Tower Defense Games
Tower Defense games have come a long way since their humble beginnings as a spin-offs of classic strategy games. They first become widely popular through games like Starcraft and Warcraft III, which had customizable maps that players used to build Tower Defense like scenarios.
Since, Tower Defense has grown into its own full-fledged genre— finding a home on consoles, PCs and of course, Flash-based browser games. The latter is really were the genre thrives, in part due to its straightforward game mechanics (build towers that shoot stuff), which lends itself nicely to Flash development. Flash itself has seen major advancements in the past few years, but the real success of Flash-based TD games probably comes from the fact that they are just so darn fun to play.
Tower Defense games generally follow this premise: players are tasked with stopping enemy forces from encroaching into their territory, and to do so they are given towers to shoot them with. Pretty simple.
There are many of variations on this formula, but in most cases, the main challenge is trying to manage the positioning of your units, as players are usually given a limited amount of resources to place defenses. Resources are earned by defeating enemies, and then used to either buy more upgrades, reinforce existing defenses, or save up for bigger and better towers.
Now, there are a lot of options when choosing what TD game to start with, so we’re going to give you some suggestions. Whether you are looking for a deep strategy experience, great graphics or just some quick time wasters, you’re sure to find something good to play in the list below.
Graphics
Flash based games haven’t been known for groundbreaking graphics. However, as the platform has evolved, developers have found interesting ways to maximize their limited graphical power in unique ways. Below are some our favorites.
This game has the best looking background of them all, consisting of what looks like a real life hardwood desktop complete with loose change and pens scattered about. All the towers in this game are hand-drawn, looking like little scraps of paper and adding to the desktop theme.
This is by far my favorite TD game, graphics wise, but younger players may not appreciate the retro aesthetic. If you’ve been gaming since back when “Flash” was nothing more than a dirty trick pulled off by old men in trenchcoats, you may just fall in love with this eighties Tron send-off.
While most TD games go for that green grass, brown dirt look, Whiteboard Tower Defense changes things up by going for the, well, whiteboard look. The graphics look like they were drawn with magic markers, with smooth character animations and slick, original looking towers.
Gameplay
Though most TD fans will say that nothing Flash-based even comes close to the TD maps found in Starcraft and Warcraft III (hint: they’re kinda right), there are still some surprisingly deep experiences out there.
This game is a very bare bones experience, and may feature simple graphics and mediocore sound, but what it lacks in fidelity it makes up for in battle. Players can choose how they want to upgrade their towers ( Fire Rate, Damage, Range) and can even achieve super attacks by placing compatible towers near each other.
This game is as close as your going to get to playing a classic TD experience on your browser. As the title suggests, the game takes heavy inspiration from the genre’s forbearers, Warcraft and Starcraft. It is no where near as good, but it is still deeper than most of its Flash-based brethren.
The Bloons TD games have all been great, and the newest is no exception. Bloons TD 4 lets players use an arsenal of bombs, cannons and fighter planes to ward off seemingly endless waves of balloons. The game is big too, with several maps and three difficulty settings.
Original
With so many Tower Defense games out there on the internet, there are a lot of options to sift through. While many are generic games that merely follow the Tower Defense formula ad nauseum, there are some games that change up the genre.
Defender: Hold the Holy Pig adds an elemental feature to battle that really freshens up the gameplay. There are a variety of enemy types, and each can be taken out by certain types of towers. Players must position water, fire, earth and wind towers to thwart the elemental invasion, and those who don’t keep an eye on their enemy type may quickly turn belly up.
Most Tower Defense games use towers, but Protected proves you can build a satisfying TD game without any brick and mortar. Protector changes things up by having players controls wizards and knights, casting spells and swinging swords to root out the baddies. It has an RPG vibe as well, as your warriors grow stronger and eventually earn new skills.
GemCraft Zero: Gem of Eternity
Not all towers are created equal. In GemCraft Zero you actually have the ability to construct unique towers by combining a variety of gems, each which imbue the tower with certain attributes. The currency you use to make gems and towers is also your life, making this TD particularly challenging.
Quickies
At the office (or school!) and only have a tiny bit of time to play? Check out these fun titles that pack all the TD fun into a tight packages that are easy to jump into and play.
Have you ever wanted to play as an elf trying to defeat a Walrus King so he can get his own apartment game? Well now you can! This short but sweet game is perfect for quick sessions. It has a quirky attitude, simple gameplay and an oddball premise the requires little thinking—just clicking!
There isn’t anything particularly astonishing about this game, but its a simple TD title that is easy to pick up and play. I love the animations used on the penguin soldiers too, and nothing beats seeing a penguin flying around in a B-52 Bomber.
If you only have a minute or two to squeeze in some mindless TD gaming, Defend Your Castle will do the trick. You may not get to upgrading your castle towers much, but you will get to fling your attackers around with your mouse. This is far from classic TD gameplay, but hey, its all in the name defense! Tower Defense!
Toughest Tower Defense challenges
If you’re a Tower Defense newbie, this post isn’t for you. We’ve put together the toughest challenges and maps in the world of Tower Defense for your masochistic pleasure.
Warning: may cause sleepless nights.
Vector TD 2
To kick things off we start with Vector TD 2, a rock-paper-scissor type TD game where interest plays a key role. The starting waves are easy to survive but if you want to do well in later waves you must save up as much as possible early on to maximize your interest.
Challenge: “The Ladder” – this map is extremely hard and unforgiving. Expect to fail repeatedly a few dozen times before you even come close to finishing it.
Pro tip: it’s ok to lose a few lives early on in order to maximize your interest level.
Desktop TD
Most of you probably know the classic Desktop TD, the game that pretty much started the Tower Defense trend in the world of flash games. It’s still brilliant today and contains one of the toughest challenges out there.
Challenge: “The 100” – as the name suggests, it’s a mode with 100 waves. The challenging part here is that starting wave 60 or so you have to start juggling, and since waves come in on a timer you don’t get to stop juggling until the end of the game. To make things worse, you have to deal with insane Air levels that don’t care to be juggled.
Pro tip: When you get to wave 70 or so, pause the game and take a break.
Bloons TD 4
One of the most popular TD games of all time. While previous games in the series capped out at a medium difficulty level the forth installment has some freakishly hard modes.
Challenge: Expert track on Hard. All the know-how and tricks you’ve learned in previous tracks are useless here. Time to start over and think of new tactics to deal with this ridiculously pointy track.
Pro tip: Our screenshot should get you started in the right direction
Onslaught 2
Our personal favorite Tower Defense of all times. Mostly because you get to shoot hamburgers with lasers, but also because of its amazing depth. You can create many different “super towers” by combining regular maxed out towers which are all useful for different situations. It’s also the only TD game we know of where you can actually gain an advantage by ZOOMING in.
Challenge: Hard mode on Lyne map. Yup, the enemies don’t feel like circling around on this map and they are just heading straight to your base. There are actually harder challenges in this game (there’s a challenge mode, try Smollocks on the classic map), but the learning curve is already so high to beat something like Lyne on Hard that we decided to spare your sanity.
Pro tip: Lasorz.
Bubble Tanks TD
One of the best TD games to come out of late. Building on the popular Bubble Tanks franchise, Bubble Tanks TD does not disappoint. There are a lot of hard maps in the campaign but one certainly stands out.
Challenge: “Cut Through”. Place, sell, place, sell, place, sell. Sounds like fun? It’s not. We will say this though, when we finally managed to beat this map, the neighboring office came complaining about the noise of our loud cheers.
Pro tip: there isn’t one really. Here’s a noob tip: use hotkeys (S – sell, T – place tower)
Exclusive: Steve Jobs Holding the New Apple Tablet
An anonymous reader has sent us this exclusive photograph taken this morning at Steve Jobs’ house while he is preparing for his big presentation on Wednesday:
Pony Hole
This video made us laugh all day we didn’t get too much work done.
Warning: may not be safe for work.
Online games for kids - are they safe?
Online games are fun. They are free and easy to access. The games are usually simple and the large variety available makes them appealing to almost everyone.
This makes online games very popular amongst kids. I can see my three children coming from school every day and rushing to the computer looking for new games on the net. They play all kinds of games - sports games, strategy games and their favorite - adventure games.
As a gaming freak, this is a dream come through. Wow, my kids really like games. I can retire now. But as a parent, is it really good for them?
On one hand, online games provide a lot of excitement for kids, develop their curiosity and improve their senses. They are also a way to create communication with people, contemplate, learn history and strategy, and experience interesting tasks and roles.
On the other hand, online games might also have bad influence on kids exposing them to improper content such as violence, sex and foul language.
Some sites also come with built in chat applications, which are usually not moderated. Kids their find themselves chatting with adults which not always have proper intentions.
I searched for sites that provide content for children, high moderation and safe chat, but also great excitement to my children. After all, I don’t want them to be bored and bother me while I’m raiding with my guild in World of Warcraft…
One of my children’s favorites in Club Penguin - http://www.clubpenguin.com/
It offers a variety of fun penguin avatars, activities, chat and games. Their chat limits what users can say to a predefined menu of greetings, questions and statements, as well as emotes, actions and greeting cards - seems perfectly safe to me. There is also a timer allowing parents to set a limit for the amount of time spent on the computer and Club Penguin. Best of all, there’s no third-party advertising. On the downside, many features are not free, and your kids are bound to ask you to upgrade to the monthly subscription.
Another option is Webkinz (http://www.webkinz.com/) with plush pets that comes with a unique Secret Code which allows to enter the Webkinz World where the aim is to care for your virtual pet, answer trivia, earn KinzCash, and play games, offers the same “parents control” and peace of mind as Club Penguin.
And all the idea of growing a pet is very educational. But Webkinz costs money. You cannot enter the world if you don’t have the secret code attached to the pet. 
An upcoming game to look for is The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks (http://www.wiglingtonandwenks.com/) is scheduled to launch on Christmas 2009. It promises an experience in which players will be able to travel to places around the world, through time and space, meet famous historical people, play dozens of fun enriching games, make new friends, buy exotic islands, build culture-inspired houses, wear clothes from different countries, explore secret locations, solve mysteries and become a legendary traveler.
Protecting children from bad influences on the Internet, The Travels of Wiglington and Wenks Virtual World has developed a set of proprietary safety features such as:
No Numbers, A system that cleverly filters out telephone numbers and addresses to prevent the exchange of sensitive information, No URL Links, URL links are disallowed to prevent the dissemination of inappropriate websites, No Vulgarities, No Private Messaging, etc.
Another very nice site is I Know That (http://www.iknowthat.com/)- it offers a broad collection of educational activities and games.
Each activity is designed to give the experiences and access to content needed to meet standards and benchmarks in that subject. Charts, graphs and progress report emails give the parents a quick, easy ways to review the child’s achievements.
Hope it helps.
Love to hear your comments.
5 flash games your mom will enjoy
There are many reasons to get your mom to play games. Probably the most important one is that it will get her off your back about how much time you spend playing games yourself.
So without further ado, Packed presents: games for moms
#5 Civiballs 2
This Puzzle game by King is perfect for the newbie mom. The graphics are appealing enough to spark an initial interest and the controls are simple enough to avoid unnecessary frustration. The game has a very gradual difficulty curve and should be a good candidate for introducing your mom to the world of flash games.
#4 Woobies
This Puzzle Bobble clone is also great for first timers. Instead of Bubbles you’re trying to create sets of 3 or more Woobies which are furry and wobbly creatures. It will take exactly two minutes to teach your mom how to play it leaving you plenty of time to get some triple-kills in your favorite shooter.
#3 Qbeez
The nice thing about Qbeez is that you can’t get stuck or lose a life. You complete a level when you remove all the bricks or when you have no more moves left (hence you can’t get stuck). The worst that can happen is that you will run out of time and will have to restart the level (unlikely, since you have a LOT of time).
Yet, despite its simplicity, your mom may become addicted to Qbeez because it’s quite challenging to try and get good combos (which equal better scores). Another nice feature is that the game is updated with new levels every day from the Qbeez servers. This one has the potential to keep your mom hooked for weeks!
#2 Stackle
Stackle is a puzzle game where you must restack a pile of bricks to reach as high as you can without having the entire thing topple. If you live at home this will get your mom busy organizing bricks instead of asking you to clean your room.
#1 Fishdom
Fishdom is a very good Bejeweled clone. What sets it apart from other Bejeweled clones is that every level you get money which you can use to buy fish and decorations for your Aquarium. I know this sounds extremely silly, but you will learn the power of the aquarium when your mom tells you “later, I have an aquarium to fill”.
Twitter integration
We are excited to complete and deploy integration with Twitter !
Everyone is welcome to follow us @packed_games to get updates on the latest games and news about packed and online gaming.
Quest for points and levels
As you may have noticed, we’ve added a new feature to Packed called Quests.
Quests challenge gamers to complete a number of tasks in different high-score enabled games on Packed. Quests typically have a certain theme and involve 3-5 different games. An easy quest might take an experienced gamer only an hour to complete while a difficult one can take days or even weeks.
For completing a quest you will receive gamer points (which increase your gamer level) and a shiny badge for your profile page. More difficult quests yield more points (and shinier badges!)
We’ve started out the quests feature with three quests and plan to add 3-4 new quests every month.
Soon we will be launching our community forums which will be the last major update before the release of the Packed factory (which will enable you to create your own games on Packed) so stay tuned!
Introducing Packed levels
Some of you may have noticed that we’ve implemented a points-based level system for users. The level system is used to recognize player achievements in three different categories:
Gamer levels
Gamer points recognize skill and effort in Packed gaming and can be earned in two different ways.
- Making a top 10 score in a particular game. This is worth 10 points and will be awarded for either a new or an improved score, up to a maximum of 1,000 points. Each board on a game that has multiple score-boards (example: Powerpool 2) will be treated as an individual game.
- Completing a quest (quest section coming very soon!)
Community levels
These are awarded to users who contribute something to Packed. The community point system works as follows:
- Posting a comment - 1 point
- Rating a game - 1 point
- Thanking a user - 1 point
- Writing a tip - 3 points
- Writing a walkthrough - 5 points
- Getting a ‘thanks’ from another user - 20 points
You may gain an unlimited amount of points and levels from getting ‘thanks’ from other users. However all other forms of gaining points are capped at 1,000 points. This means that after you’ve gained 1,000 points from posting comments, rating games and writing tips, the only way you could gain additional points and levels is to get thanked by other users for tips and walkthroughs you have written.
Developer levels
These would recognize accomplishments of users who build games at the Packed factory. More details on this will be announced once the factory is open to the public.
You will gain gamer, community and developer levels automatically and concurrently, but only one of them will be displayed next to your name when you post a comment or tip. You can go to your profile page to see more information about your current levels and how many points you need to advance to the next level. Currently we display your highest level next to your name when you post a comment but soon we will allow you to choose which level to display.