Your favorite tower defense games

from Stardock.net Forums

So what is your favorite tower defense game and why?

One of our favorites is Defense Grid.  Below you can read Callum's thoughts on why it's so great:

Defense Grid: The Awakening is regarded as one of the best tower defense game on Steam, my experience with it has been extremely positive and can see why it is praised so highly. Many of the tower defense games try to implement some innovation or unique spin to the genre, but Defense Grid (DG) is a very traditional tower defense. Instead of shaking up the formula it delivers a very solid classic TD experience with an interesting variety of towers that function very differently and consequently forces positioning of them to be very tactical. Short-range inferno towers should be placed on critical choke points while Laser Towers need only to target a creep briefly to apply the damage-over-time burn damage, meaning they can be placed in poor locations to still good effect.


Gameplay There is wide variation in enemy and tower types which means players have to manage their composition (Splash towers, anti-heavy), it also means there is room for multiple different tower strategies both in composition and in positioning. The advanced arenas provide many different build locations for where players can focus their towers, if you lose a mission you can restart and try going somewhere else.

Gameplay DG has a great mission variety with map layouts and creep paths. Some have the creeps spawn in from a single spot and need to run through and back again, others are only A to B, some involve multiple creep entry locations, and some include air units. Some missions require walling while others don’t give you the option.

It tells you which waves are incoming so you can prepare the right towers in advance and not get “unlucky” and build the wrong ones. Tells you how many waves in you are.

Presentation, QoL Creeps and Towers have a consistent color scheme for their difficulty; Green/amber/red denotes their strength as you upgrade towers.

Gameplay Complexity of placing Towers is increased because towers can’t fire through others, they can only fire through the limited gaps inbetween them. This means you want to place weaker or certain tower types (Laser, Meteor) behind others.

Gameplay Towers can be upgraded which takes time so you want to avoid doing that during combat. If upgrades were instant there would be no consideration. A lot of the game is trying to identify which towers are being the most effective and focus on upgrading those or saturating that area.

Presentation The towers, creeps and effects are average looking but the background scapes are gorgeous and makes it a pretty and immersive game. This is an important emphasis that other TD’s do.

QoL Lots of quality of life features very important for tower defense: Fast forward, checkpoints, incoming waves, range displays, hotkeys.

QoL Information is communicated readily to the player, they can select a creep or tower and get a summary of all the stats and quirks.

Gameplay Lots of replayability due to different challenges and modifiers that can be applied to each mission, as well as a leaderboard for competing with steam friends and global.

Gameplay Creeps having to collect Energy Cores and escape back to the end and Energy Cores can be transferred from a dead creep to another as it floats back. This means taking losses is more gradual than just whether or not you kill everything as you can lose multiple energy cores while still being in a good spot.

QoL Shows range of every tower when you go to build or upgrade

Gameplay Towers in many locations can be structured in a way to “Wall off” creep movement paths to funnel them in and maximize their running time through the maze and maximizing damage received from towers.

Gameplay More opportunity cost is made by interest, if you don’t spend your money you get extra interest on that but then you may suffer losses, and loses cores reduces interest rate.

Notes

  •    Can block pathing to create tactical walls
  •    Tells you what enemies are coming so you can counter them more  deliberately
  •    Upgrading towers changes the VFX and weapon type
  •    Beautiful backgrounds
  •    Having them pick up power cores and run off with them is less contrived and feels more tense than just running past the edge.
  •    The maps are positions in a way where some building slots are better than others and you have to be mindful of putting a short range tower in a bad spot
  •    Have to think tactically about where to go
  •    Can hover over each unit to give you info, lore and stats about that unit type.
  •    Different modifiers and mutators for each map, so you can play every mission multiple times to complete all the missions with certain challenges
  •    Gradually introduces towers over time depending on complexity
  •    Upgrading is an interesting opportunity cost.
  •    Leaderboards for every mission
  •    Rounds are mixed up with different alien types even during each mission
  •    Consistent color scheme, green/amber/red for toughness of aliens and  your own defences.
  •    Certain towers do well in certain areas. You want to spread out laser towers instead of placing them all together to tag as many aliens as you can. Inferno you want to place on a great corner.
  •    Fast forward mode
  •    Strength level of tower communicated on its base
  •    Towers can’t fire through each other physically so you have to be careful about blocking the most important tower
  •    When you kill a boss there is a contextual voice line about which laser you kill it with “Nothing a giant laser can’t handle”
  •    Lots of voice over lines to keep you engaged We should have lots of “Enemy Juggernaut detected”
  •    Blocking sight can actually work to the benefit of the laser towers
  •    Some towers can be built on different heights which allows some to fire over others.
  •    Some maps you can completely determine the flow of where they go, there’s multiple strategies you can play not only of directly flow but also tower composition
  •    Tesla towers that charge up should be placed at the end to get max damage.
  •    Having them go back and forwards instead of just through ads a lot more room for creative walling
  •    Some towers have long range with minimum range.
  •    Some maps have multiple entrance paths and air units.
  •    Coming from multiple directions keeps it interesting as you can’t just feel safe forever
  •    Always Show upgrade range
  •    Gives you lots of time at the start to prepare
  •    Auto check points that you can load back to.
  •    Interest, if players float resources they gain bonus.

 

Callum also wrote a review of it for Wayward Strategy.

 

I myself have a general preference for walling but at the same time, I don't like the idea of artificially preventing me from walling which is what most tower defense games seem to do.  

 

20,078 views 10 replies
Reply #1 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Kingdom Rush.

 

I like the abilities you can use to swing the tide of battle. I like the variety of towers and the fantasy theme. Hopefully Siege of Centauri is great! 

Reply #2 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Definitely +3 for shaping paths like Defense Grid.   if you cant implement strategy like that, you only really have half a game.

Sins of a Solar Empire II
Reply #4 from Stardock Forums Top

Two simple Flash games that I think were the best 2 tower defense games of all time are:

Vector TD and Onslaught.  Another excellent one on the phone is Radiant Defense

Vector TD

  • clean vector graphics look clearly signals enemy and tower types
  • The crux of this game's mechanic was to only upgrade when necessary because you earned interest on your "bank" of money at the beginning of every turn.  If you upgraded whenever you had money then you would not have enough money when it got really hard. And it got really hard. I like tower defense games that pose a real challenge, forcing you to try different strategies. this one really pushed you to manage your money and find the right mixture of towers and upgrades.
  • I also like TD games that present clear discrete challenges or levels rather than just being open-ended. i like to "beat a hard level" not see how far I can get before dying.

 

Onslaught

  • ridiculous, simplistic graphics (the enemies were basically an absurd collection of icons like printers and things like that). It didn't matter. The gameplay was addicitive
  • The best mechanic that this game employed was the use of "combos". These were towers that, when placed in close proximity in various combinations, combined to frequently fire a superweapon. There were hordes of possible combos and each one had it's own effect and damage level. It was fun to upgrade your towers clustered together and see the combo appear. 
  • It was open-ended which generally I don't like because you never conquer a level but the use of combos that could scale to an extreme level with more and more money made it like a sandbox which kind of worked. 

Radiant Defense

  • This is, by far, the most polished of these three.
  • It employed an engaging, humorous storyline which was conveyed in text through conversations (mainly wisecracks) between the humans and the alien between levels. The story was not necessary but it added something amusing.
  • The graphics were cartoony but quite polished. The music also added a lot to the game.
  • This one also got quite challenging and I never actually finished it.
  • This one had a similar mechanic to Vector TD in that you had to hold onto your money as long as you could so that you had a lot of it when you ran into that one insane round on a given level. This one also had a good variety of weapons. I think that is very important.

 

Important general considerations:

  • The more that towers/weapons can have distinct attributes that can be brought to bear in combinations suitable for varying situations the more that it invites consequential strategic decisions.   
  • The weapons should not be arbitrarily limited. I'm not fond of weapons that only target air or only ground or otherwise too specialized. OTOH indistinguishable weapons would be boring. 
  • Customizability and upgrading are a very important element to me. It would be especially attractive to me to be able to do some offline tinkering or customizing. More important though is that there are creative or clever solutions to beating levels.
  • Combinations are a very important ingredient and that alone made Onslaught a deep and addictive game. The devs should look at that and study it hard. It would be sweet to see rare experimental weapons appear when you happen to advance far enough to enable the right combinations and/or upgrades.
  • I would love a TD game where there was time between assaults to dig in and lay traps, setting up kill boxes and crossfire zones. Sewing mines or carefully placing slowing weapons in combo with damage weapons is pleasing.
  • Don't be afraid to make it hard to beat. An easy TD game is a boring TD game.
  • I don't necessarily mind fixed paths but the ability to route enemies is usually a very good mechanic. Deformable terrain in an advanced, high budget game could be a nice addition. 
Reply #5 from Stardock.net Forums Top

I really loved the old Warcraft III Tower Defense mods. There were several things I liked about them:

  • Lots of different tower types for different strategies
  • Good variety of enemies and enemy behaviors
  • Route the enemies how you please

I think some of the previous posts have covered a good amount of things I like to see in a game, but I have a few additions/addendums:

  • If there are new enemy behaviors, like enemies that can fly or attack towers, please be upfront about it before the player has spent a sizable chunk of time building up their defenses. Alternatively, you can have mechanics that allow easy adaptation to different enemy types.
  • I think difficulty levels should be adjustable so that all players with different backgrounds can enjoy it.
  • Have an endless mode. It's great at helping the player try out new strategies and explore all of the types of towers and/or units provided.
  • +1 on the idea of persistence from stage to stage. Whether it's resources, upgrades, or experience for units they can all help feel a sense of progression and investment.
  • Having AI controlled units that run up the path to attack and block enemies might be nice
  • +1 on the idea of deformable terrain. It would make the creation of tower mazes slightly more immersive rather than trying to build a ton of weak towers right next to each other. I certainly know this wouldn't be easy, but definitely nice-to-have.
Reply #6 from Stardock.net Forums Top

I LOVE the tower defense genre, and I agree that defense grid one of the best.   The tower types, enemy types, path shaping options and overall balance was near perfect.   Hard difficulty was indeed hard, and required careful placement and pathing strategies.   Tower costs and knowing when to upgrade them was also crucial.    I never been a huge fan of the tower defense + FPS, or tower defense + hero.   I enjoy pure TD the most as it makes the strategy of tower type/placement the utmost importance.   

Reply #7 from Stardock.net Forums Top

A couple other great games are:

Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows. An immense number of different maps. Tower are built by buying gems with different abilities and combining them to create varying affects. Path blocking provides a lot of strategy and spells and tower enhancements can change the battle when played well. A lot of complexity in the upgrade systems provides additional fun.

Cursed Treasure: I've only played it as a Flash game, but I see there is now a Steam version. A bit simpler, with a limited set of towers, though they have branching upgrade trees. A few spells to impact the battle. A nice intro game to the genre, but still plays well even if you are well versed in TD games.

Reply #8 from Stardock.net Forums Top

Cytron Masters.

Although it is classified as an RTS it is really a tower offense/defense where both sides attack the other side's HQ while trying  to defend their own HQ at the same time. 

I very much like the ability to control your units once you spawn them and send them out to attack the opposing side. (It it weren't for this aspect it would probably be just a MOBA, or a Clash of Clans-like.)

But the thing I like most is the slow pace and slow speed of the units that gives you time to consider and changeup your strategy. 

I wish there were a modern day version of this.

Reply #9 from Stardock Forums Top

Sentinel 4 has tonnes of upgrades options including a commander with decent map variety.  This was my go to game for years when waiting around at airports or for taxis.

With Defence Grid it's worth emphasising the scoring system.  The way it was calculated made players think about tower layout, how many and when (i.e. efficiency), the loss of cores had an impact as did remaining resources.  In a way it created a whole new level of optimisation to make levels interesting.