History Videogame / DefenseGridTheAwakening

* LowLevelRun: The "Green Towers Only" ArrangeMode available on some missions prevents you from leveling your towers up.

* MightyGlacier: Crashers and Juggernauts. These guys can make off with three power cores at once, but due to their size and weight, they are slooooow (in fact, they are the slowest of all the aliens).

* ExcusePlot: [[TropesAreNotBad A well-done example of one.]] It's a rare thing to see a Tower Defense game with CharacterDevelopment.

''Defense Grid'' provides examples of:

** Fully Loaded: All tower types are available if the standard Story mode for this level don't have them all available.

* DisasterDominos: The most common cause of core loss- once an enemy grabs a core from the housing and begins to carry it towards the exit, you have to bring it down well ''before'' the next incoming wave gets up to it, otherwise the fresh enemies from the new wave will pick it up when the first enemy drops it and immediately turn back, taking it further out of your reach, possibly into the ''next'' wave and so on. A core dropped in the middle of a pack of enemies is all but lost unless you can nuke the entire pack with the orbital laser, as it gets passed from enemy to enemy in a relay. It can be catastrophic when a Racer picks up a core and carries it back at high speed, being brought down to drop the core right in front of a fresh ''Crasher,'' which would normally require the firepower of your entire Grid to destroy.

* DeflectorShields: The Bulwark uses these to protect itself. The Spire's can protect other aliens. The already unfair [[MightyGlacier Crasher]] is given these to make TheJuggernaut. Inferno and Laser towers can barely scratch them, while Tesla towers are SuperEffective.

* MeaningfulName: Almost all the {{Mooks}}.

Hidden Path gave the sequel ''Defense Grid 2'' [[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/hiddenpath/defense-grid-2?ref=live the Kickstarter treatment]]. Though they didn't get enough money to fund it, the project [[http://www.strategyinformer.com/news/23002/report-single-investor-helped-back-defense-grid-2-crowdfunding was funded]] by AscendedFanboy Steven Dengler, who also helped co-produce various DoubleFine projects. It was finally released on September 2014.

Developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and released for the PC in December 2008 (and XboxLiveArcade in September 2009), ''Defense Grid: The Awakening'' is a TowerDefense game that's been hailed as one of the best in the genre.

** For Tower Defense genre in general, '''especially''' in ''Defense Grid 1''. You might want to spend your resources as soon as you can and build as many towers as you can, but if you do it there you probably '''won't''' earn a Gold medal even if you win with all cores in the base. The game encourages the player to use as less resources as possible and play conservatively using them only when really necessary; the more resources you have, the more you will earn via interest, and in the end it might be the difference between a Silver or Gold medal in the rank. Both games also have "rewind" button which allows players to go back to a previous checkpoint, encouraging even further players to test tactics using as less towers as possible.

* AirborneMook: Darts and Mantas. Both of which do not take the usual route which the other mooks do, and instead travel another fixed path and if they manage to steal one of the cores, they're considered to be lost immediately and can't be recovered even if you manage to shoot them down before they escape.

* DungeonBypass: Later levels have you build TheMaze yourself using towers. [[AirborneMook Flying enemies]] go right over it, and instantly leave the map when they reach your power cores.

** Command towers act as a counter StealthExpert revealing enemies with stealth within its range allowing towers to attack them earlier and also increases the resource income.

** Professor Briel's skill, it transfer 100 resources instantly on the use which is quite useful especially early on.