Favourite Tower Defence Game?

[MrMullet]

Hey everyone, long time lurker, relatively new to posting here. I'd like to ask the forum a general question.

I am currently working on a first person tower defence game (think Sanctum) with some fellow students at my university. We've done some testing and most testers said they enjoyed the game. We are currently in publishing phase of production, and were looking for ways to make our game more appealing to a wider audience than "Uni students in Game Development Courses."

So I pose the question to all of you: What is your favourite tower defence game, and why?

The "why" segment of this question is most important, as we have been nutting out as many games as we can to see what makes them tick, but haven't gone through what is popular in this genre.

 

[Dalek Caan]

Desktop Tower Defence would have to be mine. It's a flash game you can find on most flash game sites. There's just something about the game that makes it so addictive.

Captcha: Yellow-Belly

Fuck you captcha.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It's probably Plants vs. Zombies, mostly because it has incredible charm but also because there is a surprising amount of depth in it (huge number of varied plants and zombies to match, not to mention different playmodes).
Also they don't have a "read your emails" stage, TDG usually suffer from huge portions of downtime between waves so you quickly start wishing you played something else instead.

Not sure if anything from that PvZ can be applied to your game but I suggest looking into it.

 

[Tallim]

Anomaly: Warzone Earth, although strictly it is more a reverse tower defence game. Maybe that's why I like it so much.

Edit:Oh or Creeperworld. Not sure that counts however.

 

[MrMullet]

It's probably Plants vs. Zombies, mostly because it has incredible charm but also because there is a surprising amount of depth in it (huge number of varied plants and zombies to match, not to mention different playmodes).
Also they don't have a "read your emails" stage, TDG usually suffer from huge portions of downtime between waves so you quickly start wishing you played something else instead.

Not sure if anything from that PvZ can be applied to your game but I suggest looking into it.

Yeah that downtime can be a bit of a killer, that's why we added a skip day feature to the game. It sacrifices resources you may have gotten, but in excange you get instant action. I am really interested by PvZ's take on it though.

Desktop Tower Defence would have to be mine. It's a flash game you can find on most flash game sites. There's just something about the game that makes it so addictive.

Absolutely. The best part about tower defence is that it can be repeated with different setups. This probably made our programmer curse our names in his sleep.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth, although strictly it is more a reverse tower defence game. Maybe that's why I like it so much.

Edit:Oh or Creeperworld. Not sure that counts however.

Reverse Tower Defence is an interesting concept. I think we toyed with a "You are the Mutant" mode for a while, but we will probably wait until after our current release to incorporate another game mode.

Thanks for your comments everyone, much appreciated.

 

[Zhukov]

Orcs Must Die was a surprisingly good time.

The map design got a bit frustrating at times though.

 

[Yarpie]

Right off the bat I'd say Defence Grid: The Awakening. It's fairly simple in terms of mechanics, but it is stiil extremely enjoyable. It's also got a decent story and an AI-partner with quite a it of personality, not to mention a great voice. You also got a Portal themed DLC-pack which is very worthwhile.

 

[Smertnik]

Orcs Must Die is probably my favourite one, mostly because it makes killing enemies so damn satisfying. Even though I've played a bunch of TD games over the course of years I was never a fan of the genre but OMD really hit the spot for me in terms of pace and meatiness.

 

[if_then_else]

Well, my favourite is the ONLY one I like: Plants vs Zombies.

I'm not a fan of Tower Defence games (or Zombies for that matter), but I really like that game.

Also, Anomaly: Warzone Earth, but that's actually a reverse tower defence.

 

[Soviet Heavy]

Orcs Must Die was a surprisingly good time.

The map design got a bit frustrating at times though.

I hope Orcs Must Die 2 fixes that. I'm also interested to see how they'll introduce Co-op without making the game too easy.

 

[MrMullet]

Alrighty so far the games I should look at are:

Orcs Must Die
Plants vs. Zombies
Anomaly: Warzone Earth
Desktop Tower Defence
Defence Grid: The Awakening

These will probably help a lot. I tend to enjoy tower defence games myself when I have a lot of time and nothing to do. On a good one, you can easily burn an entire afternoon before realising the jug's gone cold or you haven't had anything to eat all day.


If you're interested, you can check out the game at IndieDB. We're currently working on releasing the game in a few weeks, and then perhaps adding more to it if there is a demand for it. Feedback is always welcome, and the game will be free.
http://www.indiedb.com/games/fight-for-dawn

 

[Rumpsteak]

I'll also say Defence grid: The awakening. It's the best pure tower defence game I have played and really what I look for in the genre.

 

[pilouuuu]

Plant Vs Zombies!