Tower of Defense.com Blog

Preview: City Defense - The Road

2009-12-13T12:54:00.000-08:00

I was contacted by Red Rabbit Interactive telling me about their new Tower Defense game City Defense - The Road:

"City Defense - The Road to be released in 2010 for PC and XBOX 360. We would really enjoy if you take some of your time to see this nice product. A series of innovations were added to make City Defense a very nice game."

They sent me a trailer on youtube which shows they aren't kidding.
This game looks like its going to be great with many options and high production value.

I asked for an early copy so I could potentially provide input and write a review before release, which they gladly agreed to.

I can't wait to get my hands on City Defense - The Road. Once I do, I will give and honest and thorough review highlighting its good and bad features and overall addictive quality and enjoyment or lack there of.

Here's to hoping that it turns out to be as good as what the trailer portrays!

Crystal Defenders

2009-03-27T06:59:00.000-07:00

Review of new TD game Crystal Defenders.

Available Platforms: Iphone Touch, Xbox 360 Live Arcade, Wii Ware, Playstation Online. Yes I know... no web version. booo They should at least made a download trial version for all of us PC gamers.

What is Crystal Defenders? Final Fantasy meets Tower Defense!
I may be biased in this review as I'm a HUGE final fantasy fan... and I think you can figure out how much of a fan I am of Tower Defense Games. So you can imagine I had high expectations... although my joy of the simple existence of this game likely balanced things out.

I started by playing the demo on Xbox 360's Live Arcade. The demo consists of 1 map in World 1. (Full version has 3 Worlds with 4 maps in each) And after easily beating the 50 levels it threw at me, I went ahead and purchased the full version.

Here are some screen shots of Crystal Defenders.

First thing I noticed after purchasing the game is damn the difficulty shoots up quickly. I can see a lot of new/rookie TD gamers giving up on the very next map they throw at you. But after losing and repeating a few times you come to learn your towers(in this game your characters) abilities and taking advantage of special characters like the Thief who doubles your cash earned when near a defeated enemy.

After completing World 1, I went on to W.2 that gives you the use of Crystals which can increase a characters damage, speed, or range. This makes things interesting as you now have to take a different strategy of using less towers/characters but powering them up as much as you can. At least that's what worked for me.

I'm now at the 4th stage of W.2 and its mega tough with walls that block your towers/characters missile(archer/magic) attacks. Hopefully I will solve the last map on W.2 and move onto W.3 which is described as "Advanced maps difficult for even the most experienced players" (I'm messing up, but something along those lines lol)

Visuals are really cool, with a multitude of unique characters, enemies, and even a few Summons with animation. Though it could have been higher res. especially on an HD big screen where some enemies look they they were scaled up.

The music and SFX are decent but can get annoying when your replaying a difficult map for the Nth time. I've been turning it down while I play.

Overall great game. Highly recommended
9/10 TowerOfDefense Stars

Still loving TD Games

2009-03-27T06:07:00.000-07:00

Wow its been a long time since I've made a new post.

My full time job of running Gold Sun Games has been taking up most of my time in the past few months. And I'm glad to report things are going well on that front, with a sequel to our first successful game Megaplex Madness coming out soon.

But don't worry I haven't lost my passion of Tower Defense Games. I'm still updating the Tower of Defense site with 1 or 2 new games every 2 weeks. That depends a lot on how many TD games have been released during that time. As I've noticed the number of new TD games coming out has been slowing down recently. But I'll still do my best to sift through the "inter-web" looking for free addictive little castle defense/escape the path games for your benefit. :)

Apple Defender Try 1

2008-10-19T19:44:00.000-07:00

Great simple addictive Tower Defense game: Apple Defender

Check my attempt using a rocket strategy at beating it.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Desktop TD The 100 Attempt 1

2008-10-03T16:58:00.000-07:00

Desktop Tower Defense TD

I can see a few mistakes that I can improve on but still happy with how far I made in the incredibly hard "The 100" challenge.

The 100 Video Attempt #1 part 1

The 100 Video Attempt #1 part 2

The 100 Video Attempt #1 part 3

The 100 Video Attempt #1 part 4

World War Tower Defense review

2008-07-27T18:52:00.000-07:00

DukesBox asked me to review their first Tower Defense game World War Tower Defense.

Gameplay Summary:
The game is similar to the very popular Desktop Tower Defense in how you must create a maze to make your enemies travel the most distance and hopefully perish before reaching the 2 exits to the right and bottom of the screen.

Pros:
1- A good number of weapons to choose from.
2- Unique with their random entrance points.
3- Lots of different enemy graphics.

Cons:
1- Lacks game modes / features.
2- Weapons firing seem to miss a lot. Enemies travel faster than turrets can rotate Ex: Fire Cannon.
3- Does not stick with the World War theme through out the game. I didn't know the Axis or the Allies had developed Frost and Smash technologies.
4- No Pause, Menu, or skip/advance round button to click on.

Overall decent. But they could of added a few more unique elements/features and done a lot more with the World War theme.
Check it out for yourself World War Tower Defense and let me know if I was bang on or dead wrong.

Desktop TD Triumph pt.2

2008-07-05T05:48:00.000-07:00

Looking back at my older blog posts of how I struggled to complete Desktop TD on medium kinda makes me think of how much I sucked. But I guess that's the beauty of this game. It is balanced just right that you will enjoy the game from you first time until your last.

I've beaten Desktop TD on hard a few times now. Its quite simple at this point. My latest self imposed challenge has been to complete hard without losing a single heart.
My best so far is finishing with 18 of 20 hearts.
"The 100" is great fun as well. I can't remember exactly what round (70's I think) I survived until I but I remember I scored over 8000 points. yey.
This challenge mode can't really be beaten can it? Anyone ever come close?

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

2008-07-04T18:29:00.000-07:00

How does this title apply to Tower Defense games?
Well let me tell you.

The title is a perfect description of the quality of TD games out there.
I've played through many TD games, trust me. I've played more than one normal person should in a life time.

The good: There are only around 10-15 TD games out right now worthy of this category. And you probably know most of them if your a fan. Desktop TD, Vector TD, VR Defender Y3K, Xeno Tactic 1, etc. When you get into these games they make your palms sweat and your heart race hoping that you can survive one more enemy wave so you can buy that upgrade you've had your eye on.

The Bad: Here you will find a lot of games that tried to be "good" but just didn't make it. They often look great but play badly. Not enough time and effort was put into balancing the difficulty, game play, and mechanics. Making for either a very mundane boring progression, or the opposite which is a battle that starts and ends knowing its completely hopeless.

The Ugly: Here you have the bottom feeders. Not really worth being associated with the others, but just get thrown together by association. Here its usually a toss up as to what's worse between the graphics, game play, or lack of anything unique or creative.

Thankfully "The Good" make up for the rest.
www.TowerOfDefense.com

TD Games Fix

2008-05-15T07:20:00.000-07:00

My latest Tower Defense game fix comes by way of Canyon Defence .

I think its definitely one of the best looking TD games out there.
You can pick up the game instantly, Easy Mode is joke but a great way to get beginners into the mix.

One of the elements that I found fun and unique in Canyon Defense are the "Quest's" you need to complete to unlock new weapons, buildings, and abilities.

Great game overall.

On a side note: Its funny how I still play a little Desktop TD when I get the chance. It still hasn't gotten boring yet! Now that I've completed Medium a few times I've moved up to Hard Mode. One word: Yikes!

wikipedia

2008-04-11T11:59:00.000-07:00

At one point I had a link pointing to my site www.TowerOfDefense.com on wikipedia specifically on its Tower Defense page.

I added it directly below the only other link(which I won't mention, now gone just like me) in the "external links" category. The link before me had a text description along the lines of "a forum to talk about Tower Defense Games".

So I ever so politely did not touch this link and entered my link www.TowerOfDefense.com below it with the text description: "The Ultimate Tower Defense Games Portal". My site traffic got an instant boost! But after only a few days it was gone. So I figured the person who posted the link just above me didn't like having some of his traffic diverted.

I went and re-entered it again. But this time I thought maybe I'm stepping on a few toes when I wrote "The Ultimate Tower Defense Games Portal" so I instead put something along the lines of "Free Flash Online Tower Defense Games". This time a few days goes by and I'm thinking great its going to stick this time.

But no I was deleted again! But to make things worse this time instead of just being deleted, the above link added a 2nd link in place of mine pointing to his collection of TD games!

So now it was war! I had been super polite and always posted below others and seemed to follow all the rules and this guy just keeps deleting me! So I go back and delete him and post my link with the original text description. Guess what happens next. Boom were both gone. Wikipedia removes us both. Isn't that great instead of sharing a little and he gets nothing just like me.

What have I learned from this? 1- People are greedy. 2- Wikipedia is taking control over its content. Is less user input and stricter control a good thing or bad? You tell me?

Flash Element TD 2

2008-04-03T10:35:00.001-07:00

My latest tower defense game addiction comes in the form of Flash Element TD 2.
As you know from previous posts I like my Tower Defense games to be a good challenge to complete. A game that's frustrating but keeps you coming back to try on new strategies.

So when I first heard about Flash Element TD 2 I was chomping at the bit to play it. Part 1 was one of the first online Flash tower defense games and its still one of the best today. The 2nd installment ups the ante on the cute graphics and sounds. The new element towers are cool and upgrade well.
But the biggest innovation comes in the form of the elements you need to protect. The elements sit at the end of the usual path enemies travel down and once they reach them they pick them up and begin traveling back the way they came. If they escape with all the elements its game over!

I really like this game but here's my beef: level design.
There are only 3 levels. And only the first 2 are free to play. (Easy) is way too easy. Next level is (Harder) and yes its insanely harder. I can't beat it for the life of me. My highest score is 34864. I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong? Upgrades get expensive and it seems powerful enemies give out the same amount of money as the enemies from the first level???

Well at least this time I won't go spoil my frustration by checking out a youtube.com video. ;)

Desktop Tower Defense Triumph

2008-03-24T17:32:00.000-07:00

I finally completed Desktop Tower Defense. (on medium)

For those of you who haven't played it at all or much, this might not seem like a big deal. And for those of you who are pros this isn't much of an accomplishment either right? But after hours and hours of trying different strategies, creating different paths for those evil but cute little creeps to travel along the longest distance blasting them with multiple weapons along the way. I finally did it.

A friend of mine was over watching the hockey game and with the PC close to the TV we were taking turns trying to complete Desktop TD. After several frustrating turns Kevin says "That's it I'm going to youtube to see how to beat this game!" I first protested saying I want to figure it out on my own but it was to late the video was playing and I couldn't turn away.

So I finally beat it, but I feel cheated, I didn't figure out the strategy on my own. I don't have that satisfaction that I kicked mediums ass with my cunning.
Maybe I can redeem myself by completing it on hard. Oh no the hours that will be wasted!

Traffic p.1

2008-03-15T06:17:00.000-07:00

"Hello World"

Interested in seeing how many visitors www.TowerOfDefense.com gets and where they come from?

This section will be to show what progress and/or lack of progress I achieve in promoting www.TowerOfDefense.com in hopes of greater traffic. First post of many like this I hope.

I can say that I am pleased that traffic so far has been slowly increasing on a daily basis. The 3 main sources of traffic are in order:
1. referring sites = 51% (sites like digg.com, neatorama.com and paid traffic like Adwords )
2. Direct Traffic = 30% (people that have me bookmarked or type the url and go directly)
3. Search Engines = 19% ( Google 59%, MSN & Live.com at 39%, the rest 2%)

As of yesterday I am averaging 2500 page hits / day. That translates to roughly 600 visitors / day hitting at an average of 4 pages viewed per visitor.

Hopefully through word of mouth and increased rankings in search engines my traffic will continue to grow. :)

Mini Dilemma

2008-03-11T14:10:00.000-07:00

Hi again,

Two posts ago I talked about getting people to vote for games on my site: www.TowerOfDefense.com And how this is important at ranking the best games and I will in turn put them in the appropriate order.

But here's my mini dilemma. The most played game on my site is Vector TD. Its sitting #1 on my top 5 online games which is shown on every page. It even knocked down Desktop TD for top spot as voted by the players. This is a great game to have as a #1 game because it looks and plays great. Perfect for TD fans and also a great introduction for new players.

But recently Flash Element TD surpassed it in its ratings. I should of course move it above Vector TD but I'm having a hard time because it doesn't have that polished look like Vector TD, and I want the #1 game to represent my site well. I want to make the best impression on new players that for the most part try the #1 game before any other game.

UPDATE: Oddly the ratings got reset somehow (I didn't do it I swear) for Flash Element TD. And so far all the new votes have been much lower than Vector TD. Well I guess my mini dilemma fixed itself. :)

More Games

2008-03-10T09:31:00.000-07:00

Hi,

More content is always a good thing.
I've added a 3rd page to the online games section at:

www.TowerOfDefense.com

Enjoy.

Rate Games

2008-03-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

Rate TowerOfDefense.com's games!

At the bottom of each online game at:
www.TowerOfDefense.com
you'll see a 10 star rating system.

How Rating games helps everyone:
It give me a good indication as to what games people like. And I can in turn use this data to organize the order in which the Tower Defense games are listed.
So for those who have only played a few TD games or none at all, they will now have quick easy access to the best Tower Defense games as voted by you.

check it out at: www.TowerOfDefense.com

First Post

2008-03-08T12:49:00.000-08:00

Hi,

My first blog post! yey

This is where I will be posting news and updates
for my Tower Defense games website:

www.TowerOfDefense.com

Lots to come.