Tower defense games

Apart from Kingdom Rush/Origins and Dungeon Warfare I discovered Infested Planet over the steam sale. I've actually had my eye on it for a long time but they recently added a campaign generator as DLC.

It's a neat game, you control a squad of soldiers and have to clear out alien hives that spawn a constant stream of enemies. The tower defence part is that you also have to balance your soldiers between protecting your own capture points while clearing out more hives. How much you can build at once is determined by your Build Points, and uniquely you can recycle items, soldiers and upgrades at will. This allows you to tailor your forces to (often rapidly) changing situations.

I've put 5 hours into the game so far and I am about 75% through the story mode and just unlocked all of the final abilities. However I haven't touched the daily challenge maps or the random campaign mode just yet.

Been looking for a new TD for awhile. Tempted to buy this just on your recommendation. All DLC necessary, or is just the base game sufficient?

The base game is sufficient. But I have heard really good things about the DLC. I am sure you can pick up all for not much more than the base game so why not at that point.
I've got about 20 hours in. I basically stopped because the missions get harder within the mission. Sometimes I feel this is to a point where it is going to take you 30 minutes to do the last 10% when it took you 15 minutes to do the first 90%. And there are sometimes where I feel you are at a stalemate that would make the mission unable to be beaten for eternity.
Don't let that discourage you. The game is great and it will just require more strategy than I am looking for in a time waster TD game after halfway through the campaign.

Teneman wrote:

Been looking for a new TD for awhile. Tempted to buy this just on your recommendation. All DLC necessary, or is just the base game sufficient?

If you buy the all-included bundle you get an extra discount on top of the sale prices. But for starters you could just get the main game and the trickster arsenal DLC. The Trickster stuff adds a lot of new features and mixes up the alien abilities too.

If you put some hours in and decide you like the game you could get the planetary campaign too, or save that for a future sale.

fangblackbone wrote:

And there are sometimes where I feel you are at a stalemate that would make the mission unable to be beaten for eternity.

Yeah. The game does unlocks by paying you money after each mission, but even if you lose a mission it gives you a partial payment based on your progress. Also once you get past the tutorial missions you can do randomly generated "hunt" missions of increasing difficulty whenever you want, these pay out large amounts of money. Doing side missions and getting all the unlocks is what got me over the hump, there is a big difficulty spike in the middle of the campaign before you unlock new weapons for instance.

You can also use spare money to buy one-mission upgrades like extra soldiers or weapon crates, that can make missions much easier if you get stuck. But for the most part you don't need them.

Will check it out. If you guys haven't tried the Creeper World trilogy and are looking for something new they are pretty good also. All three hold up very well and from what I remember the dev's site has a bundle discount.

Teneman wrote:

Been looking for a new TD for awhile. Tempted to buy this just on your recommendation. All DLC necessary, or is just the base game sufficient?

I've put a fair amount of time into both - I'd really recommend the DLC after you beat the campaign. It's unnecessary until you've beat it and are looking for replay value (of which the DLC adds a ton).

Base game was $3 or something, DLC was $8. I happened to have $4 in my Steam funny money account from selling cards, so base game it is! If I really enjoy it I'll spring for the DLC as well. Thanks for the suggestions!

Tamren bringing it up made me realize how much I loved playing Infested Planet. So I fired it up and got another few mission completed in the campaign.
I would love to see a sequel. I would love to see some Mechcommander 2 elements brought in like perhaps capture point variety... (different "size" bases that take longer to take down, bases that give you different passive bonuses for capturing them, an in mission or campaign based leveling system for your marines or starter base, classes instead of weapon selection during the mission, less single mission buffs and more passive unlocks or perhaps a commander skill tree)

fangblackbone wrote:

I would love to see some Mechcommander 2...

Or just a new Mechcommander...

Not sure if anyone here would be interested, but Tom Chick and I talk about Infested Planet on his podcast.

Well, to be honest I think we just chat more than we talk about Infested Planet, but we do get to it eventually

Infested Planet is pretty darn good for anyone on the fence and the campaign DLC is also worth it. It adds a simple campaign map and randomization of threats, but it does add some good decision making to the game. I do like some good tower defense games, and am no longer a big RTS player (which Infested Planet definitely borrows from) and enjoyed this quite a bit. The small squad side keeps if very manageable.

I saw Dungeon Warfare II just came out. I bought the last one on both iOS and Steam and put at least 60 hours into it so I am about to go purchase the sequel. The first one was pretty good tower defense that was a smidge on the too difficult side for me as you got deeper into the missions, so we'll see how this one goes.

Any other new tower defense games you all have been playing in the past year or so?

So after an hour and 4 or 5 maps it is pretty good. The sequel really expanded most areas of the game and layered in more systems. It has a skill tree now and an item system. Overall a great upgrade I think. Some of the things aren’t explained immediately so there is a nice discovery curve as well.

Don’t let the graphics put you off. If you like tower defense at all this is a good buy at $12 right now.

I’ve been playing some Bloons TD 6 lately. It’s more Bloons TD if you’ve played it before, but adds some nice persistent progresssion.

Also, Cursed Treause 2 on iOS is the TD I put the most time into for the last while. Again, persistent progression helped hook me in and made some grind worth it to make later boards more doable.

Oooh, thanks for the tip. I was waiting for Dungeon Warfare 2.

Cursed Treasure 2 is free on many flash web games sites. It does not have the 3 extra levels but those are nigh impossible and they mixed up the gold and mana unlocking system.
So the mobile and steam versions are still really good TD games but the additions are a wash. And the difficulty ramps much better on the flash version.
I really wish they would release Cursed Treasure 3 but that has been stuck in developer limbo for years.

I've never heard of Cursed Treasure, will check it out. I haven't used my iPad in probably almost a year...

There are a few versions:
Cursed Treasure 1 - a decent game and the roots of the franchise
Cursed Treasure 2 (flash)- my favorite version, I have completed this 50+ times with several hundreds of hours played
Cursed Treasure 2 (Mobile/steam) - Some enhancements to CT2 Flash that disrupt the difficult progression some. 3 more levels that are fun but off the charts hard. (nigh impossible to 3 star)

DUngeon Warfare 2 looks really good. I don't really mind the graphics but they could use a facelift to be more accessible.

I definitely liked Bloons TD 5 and many other versions of Bloons TD. So it will be interesting to try out Bloons TD 6.

Bloons: Adventure Time is free on iOS.

Bloons 6 has been on my wishlist for a while. I'll try the adventure time skinned version, if it's good I'll get premium Bloons rather than struggle with any f2p poop continuing with AT.

Cheers for heads up.

Yeah, I downloaded Bloons: AT, but quickly deleted it after being bombarded with 6 different kinds of F2P currency. I bought Bloons 5 for $3 to replace it. Much better.

Have there been any real innovations in tower defense games in the last couple years?

jrralls wrote:

Have there been any real innovations in tower defense games in the last couple years?

Depends on what you define as "tower defense" I'd suspect. Like DOTA and LoL probably don't count, but were originally spawned from the tower defense modding soup.

There's stuff that has elements of tower defense, like Factorio (and I think some of the other survival games) but that's not quite the same.

I'd count stuff like They Are Billions as tower defense, though. That's pretty innovative.

jrralls wrote:

Have there been any real innovations in tower defense games in the last couple years?

Creeper World is an old game, but the latest incarnation is taking it's fluid dynamics into the realm of 3d and introducing a boatload of new mechanics in the process.

Dungeon of the Endless? That was reasonably innovative?

I feel like there's something on the tip of my tongue that's a recent tower defense / some other genre crossover, but I can't quite get there....

Deathtrap was reasonably fun for a middling quality, 3D-action / tower defense crossover. Likewise for Sang-Froid - Tales of Werewolves.

I suspect there's some interesting stuff happening in the F2P PvP space on mobile. Can't quite remember the name, but there's a series of them, tower defensey, PvP, you send boats in with troops to attack other people's villagers, and build up your own village to resist your opponents ones... EDIT - Boom Beach! That's what I was trying to remember.

For that matter, it doesn't have towers but Bad North on the Switch has the same defend an island from waves of invaders vibe.

Kingdom Rush: Origins just released on Steam. I can't speak for the original mobile version but the PC ports have all been stable and nicely HD. I got a 25% off coupon, for owning previous games in the series I think.

Given how oversaturated the front page of Steam is these days giving out coupons seems to be a good way to let people know things are out since it goes directly to their message notifications. I got a coupon for AI Wars 2 as well.

Best tower defense game for kids?

How old?

Bloons, probably.

7 & 9.

My phone autocorrected "Bloons" to "Blooms" which I've now fixed.

Bloons is definitely the brightest looking tower defense game I know of. There's probably a Stickman TD game too since they've created games of every genre for that series, but dunno.

Not sure I know of any actual kids TD games, so I'd try Bloons.