Since the begin of time, humanity has pondered the relationship of towers and defense. A stationary object intermittently lobbing projectiles at incoming waves of aggressors has proven an effective military strategy throughout history. Leonidas I of Sparta is famous for positioning towers for maximum attack radius exposure, causing the Persian military to take heavy losses before achieving victory. The American Revolutionary War was a rebel victory due to a clever strategy of selling towers as they become less effective, and in turn using the funds to build more towers more suited for the current wave. British Generals, with their conservative view on selling towers, were taken off-guard by the tactic.
Early man's towers were crude and not suited for stopping the speedy kobold waves.
When interactive electronic entertainment was invented by Professor Vídeo Gamen in 1968, it was only a matter of time before the excitement of tower-based strategy could be at last be safely simulated for the family. Sadly, these dreams were shattered with the pong craze of the 70s, followed by an outbreak of Pac-Man Fever in the 80s that left millions dead and lead to the North American market collapse of 1983. While Nintendo picked up the slack in the late 80s with its home console, developers played it safe with plumber-based platformers and duck torture simulators. While there is evidence of tower games on older consoles, these have largely been lost to the winds of time (wind erosion being a common enemy of older, stone-based towers). For the most part, however, the landscape of 80s and 90s was not dotted with various defensive structures. It seemed like the dream of digital tower defense would stay in the slumbering heads of players forever, protecting our dream fantasies from nightmares, but leaving our digital realities unguarded.
It is a little-known fact that General "Stonewall" Jackson, of the infamous Confederate States of America, was a tower.
The advent of the millennium sprung the real start to the tower revolution. Several strategy games tried their hand at the tower gig, what with towers being a crucial part of any real tactics game. This opened a small window of opportunity, and all we had to do was wait for an enterprising developer to dive in. Blizzard Entertainment, fresh off mild successes such as the adequately tower-filled Starcraft and questionably tower-deficient Diablo 2, released Warcraft 3 in 2002 in a quiet launch. While intending to usher in an era of tower-based gaming, a risk-averse parent company was having none of it, so Blizzard hatched a plan. Warcraft 3, in appearance, would be a fairly generic real-time strategy game, but underneath was a powerful tool for unleashing towers upon the world. Players soon discovered this tool, and the dam had that been around for so long had at last burst. The tower rush was on.
Finished in 1889, the Effel Tower was built to help the French government defeat flying enemies.
The great genre of tower-based defensive simulation was initially slow to catch on, but a few things fell into place to help it along. One was a number of digital distributors lowering the barrier of entry for cheap games, thus eliminating the big publishers and their decades of tower discrimination. Steam in particular has allowed hundreds of tower-filled games to fill the market. It was developed by Gabe Newell after he fled Nazi Germany, helping us win World War II by training our troops in proper tower-based combat. Indeed, without Steam, we'd be speaking German and considerably more vulnerable to alien invasion on account of weak tower-management skills. After Steam, similar companies followed foot such as XBLA, PSN, and other acronym-titled programs.
A failure to upgrade was one reason Nazi Germany failed to stop the Normandy invasion.
And that leads us to the present. We are in a golden age of tower gaming, where developers experiment with defense simulators in numerous ways. Military of countries such as the USA have used these games to help win the War on Enemies That Move in Predetermined Paths. In some darkened corners of the war, there are even faint whisper of the black science known as tower offense, but the technology could be years away. For now, use this thread to enjoy a genre that has taken 40 years to arrive in the glorious artform we have today. Discuss old favorites, and hype the upcoming releases. Chat about the various career paths in defensive tower technology (personally, I'm majoring in towerology, and can always offer some help for those interested in the field). And, as always, enjoy yourselves.
These are Tower Defense games I recommend.
Orcs Must Die 1 and 2
Type: Fixed placement with character avatar. Mild grinding for unlocks.
The Gist: Use traps and weaponry to fight orcs who are trying to get to rifts that lead to your world.
Rorus Comment: Really satisfying combat that focuses on thinking up nasty combos like using springboards to flip orcs into acid spray. The sequel has co-op, but many have complained that the maps in the sequel are on the large side, so you may have to do lots of running if you go single. I'd start with the first game if you're going it alone, as it is cheaper and has DLC to last you for a while. Then grab the sequel if you are hunger for more (you will be).
Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten
Type: Fixed placement with leveling "towers." Experience/Money gains can be adjusted to ease grinding.
The Gist: You place as a woman who has POWERS that places your party into a "half-way world" which is another way of saying "tower defense." Your towers are characters you hire and can level, and these characters kill mobs before they can get to your player character (who is mostly defenseless). Player character has spells, but is immobile.
Rorus Comment: The game is built for everyone. It has four difficulty levels, so you can crank it down for just the basic story, or crank it up for a challenge and some extra money/loot for your troubles. You can tweak cash/exp gains to your liking, so it isn't a huge grind. There's a LOT of content here for 15 dollars, including a New Game+ that adds new twists to enemies and opens side quests that weren't in the original playthrough. I find the story charming in a goofy kind of way, but I know it might turn off some people. Art is a mixed bag.
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Type: Fixed placement.
The Gist: You have to protect the land from bad dudes. There's an AI that has a mysterious backstory or something. It's very basic tower defense here.[/b]
Rorus Comment: This game is very traditional tower defense, but does it really damn well with polished gameplay and a pretty engaging story as you go through it. There is also a metric ton of DLC that you buy if you enjoyed yourself, and there's even a free Portal map that will kick your ass.
Plants vs. Zombies
Type: Laned placement
The Gist: Zombies are attacking your house, and all you have is a bag of seeds and a green thumb. Utilize different plant types to hold off the undead in multiple enviroments.
Rorus Comment: I'm surprised more games didn't rip this one off. Basically you have five lanes and zombies want to get to the end. They will eat your towers (plants) to get to the end, so well-placed defenses can be easily lost to a well-timed horde. Since you get ONE mistake to make per lane, the pressure is generally on at all times. The game twists things up by changing the map to, say, night (your plants are all asleep, so you have to rely more on cheaper-yet-weaker mushrooms) or your backyard (the pools forces you to plant lilypads or use aquatic plants). I know zombies are played out, but this is pretty charming.
Lock's Quest
Type: Free placement with character avatar.
The Gist: You're some kind of technowizard trying to protect people from evil robots. Build up defenses, plop down towers, and uh...defense.
Rorus Comment: This is from 5th Cell before they decided to do nothing but Scribblenauts and Drawn to Life sequels. It's just for the DS, but I found it pretty engaging even if the story was pretty eye-rollingly bad. I think the neat part is that you set up a fort and then arm it with towers, so it's not a "create-a-maze" like other tower defense games tend to be when your placement is freer.
Dungeon Defenders
Type: Free-ish placement with character avatar. World of Warcraft has less grinding.
The Gist: The heroes are away when the castle is under attack. As an apprentice of these heroes, you have to do your best to protect the place.
Rorus Comment: I'm actually not a huge fan of this game. Combat is floaty and doesn't feel very good, leveling characters can be uneven so your party is like three level 10s and a level 20 in spite of playing together since the start, and balance is fucked up. If you relax, however, and stick to the easier difficulties with three friends, it's a decent time. There's also a metric ton of DLC, including new characters to keep things fresh. The classes also offer a ton of variety in gameplay. Try to tackle the hard stuff or (god help you), 100% the game, and this game will be your worst enemy.
Anomaly: Warzone Earth
Type: Reverse Tower Defense with player character
The Gist: Aliens have invaded, and your squad of men with poor British accents have to stop them. But they've taken over local buildings and turned them into nasty towers, so suit up.
Rorus Comment: You are the bad guys this time, leading a squad of men into the heart of enemy territory. You pick the routes, buy and upgrade units, and use special skills to help protect your troops as they demolish towers and make their way to the end. Definitely a unique experience, though admittedly NOT really tower defense.
LET'S GET EXCITED.
August?
- Plants vs. Zombies 2: This is FINALLY getting a sequel and...it's technically already out in the dreaded KIWI ZONE. Aussie and NZ app stores can pick up this bad bummer for free! A wider release is supposed to be in August. Maybe. The game seems solid with the exception of a LOT of suspicious pay-for-power type stuff (which runs contrary to their dev videos).
2014- Defense Grid 2: Had a weird Kickstarter where they needed a million but only set a goal of $250,000 (which they barely made). Kinda seedy, but it attracted an investor and is set to release. Will have multiplayer, new towers, better graphics, and all that good stuff.
That's it, but remember...![3dX0rnV.gif]()
