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Back in high school, I used to play a lot of Starcraft, which is why I’m fairly excited for the upcoming Starcraft 2 game. In Starcraft, there was a popular type of game called “Turret Defense” which involved building turrets (or other structures) in order to stop a horde of enemies from invading your base.

This type of game was so popular it made its way to Warcraft 3 and became known as “Tower Defense” (or Tower Defence by some). It gained immense popularity and is now emulated by a lot of Flash games.

Tower Defense involves a lot of strategy, thinking, experience and a bit of patience. Same type’s of qualities necessary to succeed in other genres such as casino games and poker.But what’s more fun than watching a whole bunch of stuff blow up? Tower Defense games in Flash have been around for a while but they’ve recently picked up a lot of steam with very well made ones like Desktop Tower Defense (who is earning the maker almost $10,000 a month in advertising income!)

Here is my list of what I consider to be the best Tower Defense games right now (I try to link directly to the creator’s site because stealing content isn’t cool!):

Onslaught 2
Onslaught 2 has the unique concept of joining different types of towers together to create new attacks. The use of computer icons for enemies is neat too and the countless different weapon combinations you can create will keep you playing for hours on end! Onslaught 2 was recently released and includes a new tazer tower with a whole bunch of new attacks including the ultimate black hole so make sure you check it out if you were a fan of the first Onslaught! Also make sure you read the instruction manual before you start playing so you know what you’re doing

Desktop Tower Defense 1.5
Update: Version 1.5 released the day after I made this post. This game generated a lot of buzz and really brought Flash Tower Defense games to the forefront. Its ability to let you compete with other players in getting a high score on a particular level made it a very addictive game. It involves a concept called “mazing” where you can manipulate the path of the enemy to your own advantage. It also comes with many different levels of difficulties including a “Fun Mode” where you can have some fun with tons of money or spawn only specific types of monsters. With six nine different types of towers, several many types of enemies and the mazing concept, it’s no wonder this game is so popular!
Update: DTD has gone multiplayer but is currently invite only!

Ant Buster
Ant Buster puts a comical twist on the Tower Defense genre. In this game, you have to defend your picnic (and your cake) from invading ants! There are tons of upgrades and different guns. The ants also don’t follow any set path (seems like they have a bit of AI) so there is a little bit of mazing involved. One flaw with this game is that there doesn’t seem to be a limit on the number of levels, so you can play on forever and eventually the ants get so strong it’s kind of ridiculous. The best part about this game really is in the amount of different towers you can upgrade to.

VR Defender Y3K
I’ve always dreamed of diving into my computer and combatting computer viruses like that old cartoon, Reboot. This game lets you do just that. As a network administrator, you try to defend your firewall against an onslaught of viruses. Although not as complicated as some of the other Tower Defense games on this list, this one is good in that it retains the Starcraft/Warcraft feel of the game in terms tower upgrades and strategy. It also has a choice of maps that change the difficulty of the game. (Hint: get Flamethrowers!)

Vector TD
This one was a highly anticipated game created by David Scott who has also created two other great tower defense games, Flash Element TD and Flash Circle TD. The interface for Vector TD is very slick and there is a very high re-playability factor, especially with the number of difficult maps. Each tower has a specific enemy weakness and strength which isn’t present in a lot of Tower Defense games. If you like this game, make sure you check out David’s two other games which have a similar game play but in a different environment.

RPG Tower Defense – Honorable Mention
This game is still in beta but it looks like it can have a lot of potential. The graphics are kind of poor (said to be upgraded for official release) but the gameplay is unique. There appears to be a lot of upgrades available but it seems like the game still needs a bit of balancing. Keep an eye on this one!

Other TD Games
Expect this list to grow as Tower Defense games become more popular! Here are the games that didn’t make the list:

• Turret Tyranny
• Tower Defense (not a very creative name)
• Picnic Panic
• Flash Element TD
• Flash Circle TD
• Turret Defense
• Flash Craft
• Defender
• Xeno Tactic (Futuristic Desktop TD clone)
• Starcraft Flash Action 3 (Not to be confused with FA 4 and 5 which aren’t TD)
• Elemental Turret Defense
• Budapest Defenders – thanks Seth
• Stalingrad – WW2 Tower Defense
• Revenge of the Stick
• Anti-TD (Reverse TD, you’re the enemy!)
• Bloons Tower Defense
• Turret Wars
• Spira-Defence
• *new* Bloons Tower Defense 2
• *new* MetalIX TD
• *new* Stalingrad 2
• *new* Gem Tower Defense
• *new* Picnic Basket Defense
• *new* Destroy the Toy
• *new* Vector TDx
• *new* Turret Wars
• DtD Tower Defense (Requires installation – Freeware)
• Master of Defense (Requires installation – Free demo)
• Immortal Defense (Requires installation – Free demo) – thanks Monkton
• *new* Wicked Defense (Requires installation – Free demo)
• *new* The Lost Castle (Requires installation – Freeware)
  
• *new* Curator Defense (Requires installation – Freeware)

Finish playing all those games? Check out the previous Game Break post or the best Defend Your Castle games.

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2007 at 10:06 pm and is filed under Entertainment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.