2 posts tagged “games”
There's a whole genre of online games out there that I have recently discovered called Tower Defense. I know, they've been around for a while, and for me to "just discover" them now puts me pretty far behind the times, but still, that's how it is. They are some pretty cool games, though.
Their basic premise is simple enough: waves of bad guys want to get from point A to point B, and you have to stop them. There's pretty much an infinite variety of plot devices, from 'defending Area 51' to stopping the revenge of the stickmen, but they're all basically the same game, in one of two variations.
The 'normal' variation has a maze, with an entrance at one end and a target at the other. The player defends the target, and waves of bad guys, 'creeps,' advance through the maze to destroy the target. The player has a bank of money, which can be used to buy defensive towers that kill creeps. The bank is replenished by a bounty on every creep killed. The creeps get stronger with every wave, but they also pay higher bounties. As the game progresses, you can buy upgrades to strengthen your towers against the ever stronger creeps.
In the second variation, there is no maze. You have to build it yourself, by placing your towers. The creeps will take the shortest path to their goal, but they can't go through towers. The trick to winning this type of tower defense is to build a zigzag maze that forces the creeps to stay on the board for a long time, under the guns of the towers.
Some tower defense games are open-ended; that is, they simply continue, with the creeps getting indefinitely stronger, until your defenses are inevitably overwhelmed. The object here is to last as long as possible. Other games are closed; they have a specific number of waves to defeat, in order to win. They'll usually have between 35 and 50 waves of creeps.
Finally, there are several types of creeps: normal creeps, fast creeps, flying creeps, creeps that split in two when you kill them, and boss creeps. Bosses are the dangerous ones. They are a lot stronger than regular creeps, and much harder to kill. They are worth a lot of points, money, or gold (depending on how the game keeps score), so they're worth getting.
And that's the genre. I'll look at some specific games later. In the meantime, here's a link to a collection of Tower Defense games:
There's a whole genre of online games out there that I have recently discovered called Tower Defense. I know, they've been around for a while, and for me to "just discover" them now puts me pretty far behind the times, but still, that's how it is. They are some pretty cool games, though.
Their basic premise is simple enough: waves of bad guys want to get from point A to point B, and you have to stop them. There's pretty much an infinite variety of plot devices, from 'defending Area 51' to stopping the revenge of the stickmen, but they're all basically the same game, in one of two variations.
The 'normal' variation has a maze, with an entrance at one end and a target at the other. The player defends the target, and waves of bad guys, 'creeps,' advance through the maze to destroy the target. The player has a bank of money, which can be used to buy defensive towers that kill creeps. The bank is replenished by a bounty on every creep killed. The creeps get stronger with every wave, but they also pay higher bounties. As the game progresses, you can buy upgrades to strengthen your towers against the ever stronger creeps.
In the second variation, there is no maze. You have to build it yourself, by placing your towers. The creeps will take the shortest path to their goal, but they can't go through towers. The trick to winning this type of tower defense is to build a zigzag maze that forces the creeps to stay on the board for a long time, under the guns of the towers.
Some tower defense games are open-ended; that is, they simply continue, with the creeps getting indefinitely stronger, until your defenses are inevitably overwhelmed. The object here is to last as long as possible. Other games are closed; they have a specific number of waves to defeat, in order to win. They'll usually have between 35 and 50 waves of creeps.
Finally, there are several types of creeps: normal creeps, fast creeps, flying creeps, creeps that split in two when you kill them, and boss creeps. Bosses are the dangerous ones. They are a lot stronger than regular creeps, and much harder to kill. They are worth a lot of points, money, or gold (depending on how the game keeps score), so they're worth getting.
And that's the genre. I'll look at some specific games later. In the meantime, here's a link to a collection of Tower Defense games:
