The premise behind TD games is simple: you have a battleground or map and place a variety of towers at strategic points. You then watch, while you collect more resources and build more towers, as waves of creeps slowly follow a path to your base and get satisfyingly crushed, fried and obliterated by your arsenal. Kill them off before they get to your base and it's happy days; fail and your base is toast.
A lot of people hate tower defense games because they feel it is a passive form of gaming. "You just place things down and sit back" they might say or "You don't even get to move and control the firing". This is true, in a sense, but - if it's done well - there is great pleasure to be had in deducing which area is the best to place towers or which variety should be used to get the job done most efficiently.
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Defense Grid is the tower defense game that all others are measured by or, if not, certainly should be. If you only get one TD game ever, then make sure it's this one. Starting with very basic and simple maps, along with straightforward first tier towers, you get to play about 16 levels as part of the main game which is great fun in itself. What adds to the more-ishness of it all, is the experimental nature of re-doing the levels in an effort to win higher medals - where you learn the mechanics of the game at a deeper level. With smooth controls, decent user-interface and a superb zoom-in feature, frying creeps in a TD game gets no more fun and absorbing as this!
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Fieldrunners (with its cartoon-like presentation and humourous character animations) along with iBomber Defense, is a very simple tower defense game that quickly becomes super-addictive once you start exploring its layers and completing levels. It presents you with just 8 fairly open maps but these are different and dynamic enough to offer a good set of varying challenges. With each having three levels of difficulty, along with each consisting of 100 waves of creeps, there is plenty of stats to view and improvements to make to keep you busy. Like all good TD games, it has you learning, experimenting and then progressing through the game as you find more efficient ways of clearing the maps.
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iBomber Defense is another very simple and straightforward TD game that is highly addictive once it draws you in. It comes loaded with a campaign of about 20 maps - plus the option of completing each one in an effort to win 3 different medals for three different reasons. The World War II theme is the order of the day and the creeps, that come in the form of infantry, armoured cars, tanks and planes, will have you building machine guns at first followed by heavy anti-tank guns and anti-aircraft missile towers. The creeps come at you in a more path-driven manner than Fieldrunners but the slow obliteration of your enemies is equally satisfying. Its sequel iBomber Pacific is also recommended.
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Orcs Must Die is a TD game, set in a dungeon, for those who prefer their action a bit more mad and frantic. In fact, with the player commanding a character in 3rd person view who can run around the map clobbering and destroying the creeps himself, this is closer to a third-person shoot 'em up than a TD game. It means your character has to be at the location where you want the traps and gadgets to go rather than you being given the freedom to place the towers wherever you want while looking at an overview or plan view of the entire map. Different gameplay, therefore (along the lines of Sanctum, Dungeon Defenders and Iron Brigade) but a blast nonetheless.
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Plants Vs Zombies is your first step into the world of tower defense games; your starter pack, as it were. Its cartoon-like graphics and child-like themes may make you hesitate but it is a very popular critically acclaimed little number that shines clear and bright - and for very good reason. Your battleground is your front lawn, your "towers" are pretty little flowers and your enemies are zombies that are trying to break into your house! You simply line up your plants along the left hand side of the screen (or lawn) as the zombies of varying kinds enter slowly and approach from the right. It may be a tad on the easy side but as an introduction to tower defense games it's fun fun fun all the way!
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Honourable Mentions:
To a lot of gamers, tower defense games are ten-a-penny these days and hardly worth bothering with; of those that do play them, they might be played with for a short while, as a small diversion, but will be soon rejected in favour of something more "exciting." However, a few of us love 'em and can't get enough of 'em. For those who might like to explore further, here are a few recommendations:
Anomaly Warzone Earth is a TD game in reverse where you control the creeps and destroy the buildings and towers. Very good, up to a point (level 14 of 16) when it becomes too heavy going.
Atom Zombie Smasher - Played on a very basic map of the streets where you rescue yellow dots form the pink dots.
Dungeon Defenders - A very popular TD game much like Orcs Must Die but deeper gameplay with RPG elements.
iBomber Defense Pacific - The sequel to iBomber Defense. A must have if you liked the first game.
Orc Must Die 2 - The sequel to Orcs Must Die. A must have if you liked the first game.
Sanctum - Less a personal recommendation (you join the battleground as a character in first-person mode and this makes me queasy) but recommended based on its popularity with the Steam community.
Shad'O - A bizarre but very enjoyable TD game revolving around the theme of dreams and memories. Unfortunately crashes and freezes my computer at Level 10 :-(
Sol Survivor - An inferior but playable alternative to Defense Grid.
Unstoppable Gorg - Defend your base in outer space by moving towers around on concentric circles; all to a theme of bad 1950s "B" movies.
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