Games: Tower Defense

Today I am going to talk about one of my favourite game genres: Tower Defense

Although usually when I have some free time you can find me reading a book or hanging around social media or other book blogs on the internet, beside that I also love gaming. So I decided that gaming would be great topic for my second saturday with non-book content.

One of my favourite types of games are Tower Defense games. Tower Defense is basically a type of games where there are enemies who are trying to reach your base and you have to kill them before they reach your base. And you kill them by building towers and building a maze, so it takes them longer to reach your base.
Or to quote wikipedia:

Tower defense is a subgenre of real-time strategy video games. The goal of tower defense games is to try to stop enemies from crossing a map by building traps to slow them down and towers which shoot at them as they pass. Enemies and towers usually have varied abilities, costs, and upgrade prices. When an enemy is defeated, the player earns money or points, which are used to buy or upgrade towers, or upgrade the number of money or points that are earned, or even upgrade the rate at which they upgrade.

The choice and positioning of the personal towers is the essential strategy of the game. Many games, such as Flash Element Tower Defense, feature enemies that run through a “maze”, which allows the player to strategically place towers for optimal effectiveness. However, some versions of the genre force the user to create the maze out of their own towers, such as Desktop Tower Defense. Some versions are a hybrid of these two types, with preset paths that can be modified to some extent by tower placement, or towers that can be modified by path placement.

Okay so now we all know what tower defense games are all about, let me tell you about some of my favourite tower defense games!

• Sanctum by Coffee Stain Studios
  When I think about Tower Defense games Sanctum is one of the first to come to mind as it’s one of my favourite tower defense games. Not only does it combine tower defense with first person shooter, it also has a multiplayer option so you can play it with in total 4 persons. Beside that it offers the ability to build a maze with maze blocks and then on those maze blocks you can build towers. I love building mazes and when playing with others I always claim to be the maze builder. In some other tower defense games the towers itself function as the maze, which limits the maze you can build, so I really like the aspect of being able to build your own maze in sanctum and then place towers on them. I also love how the backgrounds and the world in which it takes palce looks beautifull and you can explore the levels between waves and even find some secrets. And the monsters have so called weka spots and if you hit them there it does more damage.
• Sanctum 2 by Coffee Stain Studios
  After having played all the levels in sanctum I was beyond excited when I heard there would be a sanctum 2. Sanctum 2 is even better than sanctum, it gives more power to the shooter part of the game, while also introducing new characters, so not only the first player looks greta, but the other too. And all the characters have different strenghts and weaknesses and preferred weapons, I don’t know why, but I love being able to choose form different characters in the game. The gameplay in sanctum 2 is even better than in sanctum and all the complaints I migth have had with sanctum where solved in sanctum 2. I still haven’t played a lot of the expension levels as my boyfriends computer couldn’t handle the game anymore and sanctum is much more fun when played together.
• Shad’O by Okugi Studio
  Shad’O is such an original tower defense game, there is a story and the monsters look realy unique. It’s about a boy who can’t remember certain events and has to fight the fog in his brain. I haven’t finished this game yet, towards the end it get’s really difficult. I also like that the towers look so funny, they are some weird pluche/pillow/living creature combinations and they look adorable. I just foudn out the company isn’t making any new games anymore, which makes me sad as I really enjoyed Shad’O.
• Defense Grid by Hidden Path Entertainment
  Defense Grid is a more stereotypical tower defense games than the others listen here. It’s got a slightly boring setting, with many metal and you have to build towers and defeat monsters. There are a lot of different levels and even expansions and you spend a lot of time playing this game. Unfortunately you do have to build your maze with towers, which means it can be really difficult at first to know where to palce your towers so they damage the monster before your maze is done and also do damage when your maze is in place. And you also visualize how you want your maze to look like, you can’t just try it out and see if it works en then start over.
• Pixeljunk Monsters by Pixeljunk
  One of my most recent new games. Pixeljunk Monsters is a cute tower defense games in which you play someone from a weird tribe who has to protect his kids (the base), while attacking monsters who try to kill (or maybe eat) your kids. You can’t build a maze in this game, but there is still a lot of freedom of where you place your towers. There are lots of trees on the map which you can change into towers. Beside that you can collect gems to unlock other towers. You do have to unlock these towers in each level anew.

So those are a few of my favourite tower defense games. Do you play games too? Which games are your favourites? Which game genres are your favourites? Have you ever played a tower defense game? And if yes, which ones are your favourite?

And if you have a Steam account, please let me know your username so we can connect on steam. I love meeting new gamers!