Tower Defense Games: A Review

[Seafoam Understone]

Does anyone else play these type of strategy games? Where you have a line of monsters/creeps/whatever! marching down a crooked path towards a base and you build towers along the path that shoot/freeze/electrify/whatever! until the monster/creep/whatever is dead/destroyed and you earn points/coins/mana from it?
I discovered this (new??) type of game about a month ago. Been playing several variants with increasing frustration not enjoyment. Either I'm doing the game wrong or the designers/creators are skewed in their concept of how the games should be won/played.
Almost all of them have the skewed concept of spending more than you earn. Meaning every time you buy something it goes up in price the next time you buy it but you still earn the same amount each time you kill something. So basically you can't catch up.
They also have a problem with making the monsters/creeps/whatever increasingly powerful each time they come out. Well that's okay but not if whatever tower you have with whatever attributes can't make a "dent" in the creature/monster/creep's armor everytime it's hit because you're waiting for the money/mana/points to add up so you can upgrade, yet by the time you get there you spend so much on the upgrade you can only do one tower at a time until you earn X amount (which is larger this time remember) again... meanwhile the monsters/creeps/whatever march closer to their destination.

These games are potentially a lot of fun but they can get very frustrating the higher levels you achieve. Worst of all... there's no way to contact the designers/creators of these games to let them know how skewed their games can be. Or like I said, maybe I'm just not playing them the way they're meant to be played.

Here are a few that I've played check 'em out. All of them have the spend more than you earn concept however.

Flash Element TD : www.pog.com/games/Flash_Element_TD This is an alright game but it's only weakness is that once you beat the final boss that's it. Otherwise if you're bored you can try different configurations just for the fun of it.

Flash Circle TD : www.candystand.com/play.do;js...26B36?id=17995 the novelty of this particular one is that the monsters/creeps go around and around in a circle until they're dead and the object is to keep the number to less than 100 or game's over. Only once have I gotten to level 75 and I can't remember how the heck I did THAT! Basically I average til level +/-35 before the fateful 100 number is reached.

Gem Craft: armorgames.com/play/1716/gemcraft This one had to been created by those designers who love playing the Diablo or Warcraft type games since this time around you're a wizard and you make towers and place different colored/powered gems/jewels on them and kill the monsters that threaten your existence. Nice part of this is that each level changes and you can go back and play older levels to build up your score/skill level, but it too is hampered by the spend more than you earn concept. At present I'm "stuck" on level 40 because the end boss at that level has something like 10,000 hit points and my towers are only shooting 14-50 strength shots at a time... do the math.

Tower Defense Games: www.freewaregames.net/towerdefense.asp this link has a whole slew of various types of these tdg's Probably the best one is Master Of Defense which has great eye-candy, various views and neat upgrades... drawback to it is on the freeware version you can only play up to an hour and then have to buy the "full-version"... considering the quality of the game it'd probably be worth it. It's spend more than you earn concept isn't as radical as the others however.
The site also offers older versions and it's variants. Some are try before you buy and others are simple types of TDG's.

If anyone plays these I'd like to hear your take on it... and suggestions on others that I haven't mentioned. If you know the secret behind these suckers then by all means share.
I like them but am getting frustrated with them. They, like I said have lots of potential to be a fun-engaging game... but presently they're written to be impossible to win. ... and that's no fun.

[White Gold Ark]

I just started playing tower defense games too, and yes they are difficult. None of them are really impossible though, except the ones programed to last forever , but you must admit they are some of the most addicting games out there.

If you can't beat any of them that means you are doing something wrong, and you have to rethink your strategy. Often times there is a trick to beating a certain one. I've played most of them out there, if you want advice on a particular one I'd be glad to help.

One suggestion for a good one is Desktop Tower Defense, you have to create your own maze with the towers. It also has many different modes of play if you play on their main website, I don't know the link, but just google "Desktop Tower Defense" and it should be the top result.

Good Luch, and keep gaming.

[Nav]

I wasn't familiar with these, I think I'm going to have to give them a try as they look like my kind of strategy game.

[The Dreaming]

Yeah, I play them all the time as WC3 mods. Is that where they started? Ive seen almost all of those tds in Frozen Throne custom.

[Seafoam Understone]

Since the OP, I've been playing (damn addicting) Gem Craft TDG and now am at level 44. Once you get past that seemingly elusive level 40 things go rather easier.
But it's still a lot of work to get to that level. Still frustrating and exasperating until you crest that level's hump.


Maybe that's the idea. ???

[Holsety]

Yeah, I play them all the time as WC3 mods. Is that where they started? Ive seen almost all of those tds in Frozen Throne custom.

In warcarft, there are also tower defense "wars" where each team summons the monsters to race down the other team's lane. Each time you summon a creature you get a fraction of it's cost (usually 1/5, 1/10, something like that) added to your income and you're slowly able to build and summon more powerful stuff.

The "fun" thing is that if you're a good player, and the enemy team also has good players, you can actually end in a stalemate where the maximum number of the best creeps summonable will always die before they reach the end of the opponent's maze.

The bad part is that because it's the players who control the summoning, and good players may build large mazes which take a long time to pass through, large numbers of monsters can clog in the game and cause a great deal of lag.

The most common "wars" is Wintermaul Wars but there are others. And there's a variation called "click" wars where you simply click on monsters to deal damage (you can also upgrade to slow them and stuff like that).

As for gem TD does that have stuff like malachite, silver, paraiba tourmarine, etc? They have that on WCIII too, it's one of the more interesting ones because each player has a large number of very obvious points that the creeps have to reach before getting to the end. I've found that the best way is to build diagonal rows of towers between two spawn points, although it doesn't give as much time spent as some mazes it allows all your towers to attack together and AOE to stack a lot more effectively. Also, for the slates you can place them so that they hit monsters 4 times instead of 2 as they go through the maze.

[The Dreaming]

I never liked tower wars, I don't like games that basically come down to who can click the fastest. (Which is pretty much what WMW and Stronghold are). Wintermaul, the original at least, is pretty close to being a perfect TD game. I always liked Cube Defense too. (Sprouts neat also). TDs where you don't maze seem kind of pointless.