Time to pop some bloons, hero style!
The bloons have invaded the land of Ooo and it's up to Finn, Jake and the monkeys to stop them! Bloons Adventure Time TD is an awesome crossover between the award-winning animated series Adventure Time and the #1 Tower Defense game, Bloons TD!
— The soft-launch App Store description
A Crossover of Bloons Tower Defense and Adventure Time called Bloons Adventure Time Tower Defense, which had soft launch access for those selected continents* on July 14, 2018, and was released worldwide on August 28 of the same year, with a PC release hitting Steam on January 16 2019. Unlike the regular BTD games, it features heroes that can only be placed once on the map, allies that can be equipped to specific heroes (alongside trinkets and weapons), three new Bloon types (Shielded, Zombie and Ghost, the former of which was only previously seen in Bloons Super Monkey 1 and 2), a new story with a voice cast, and 3D MOAB-class Bloons. See the trailer for it here.
This game provides examples of:
- Allegedly Free Game: Unlike the other BTD games, this game is this trope. However, unlike most games, it very much is possible to play them without spending a single penny, but they will tell you about the premium items and currencies frequently. You can actually unlock everything in the game without having to pay, including the premium alternate forms of Finn, Jake and Marceline (they can sometimes be bought from the Martian Shop for Crystals won in the Martian Games, although they cost an immense amount, and you have to be lucky enough to catch them on the random rotation).
- Aloof Ally: In-story, Sai doesn't hang with Finn and company, disappearing shortly after her rescue from Lemongrab. Max does assure that she'll be around whenever there are bloons attacking, which explains why she's in your party.
- Area of Effect: Several characters have this, and high pierce attackers technically.
- Anti-Frustration Features: Martian Games banning allies exceptionally allow the Monkey Farmer ally to be used, so people with the farmer still do not have to collect blimp loot manually.
- Artistic License – Physics: On underwater maps, you can place water exclusive towers anywhere. This includes both of Cassie's ships and her crew (who wear inner tubes), which shouldn't realistically work. This is lampshaded with the hidden achievement "That's Not How Boats Work!" with the image of her pirate ship turned upside down so the hull is sticking up out of the water.
- Assist Character: Allies, who serve as extra "towers" in addition to your Heroes whom they have to be "equipped" to to be deployed. Unlike Heroes, some of them (such as the Dart Monkey and Business Men) can be deployed multiple times (between 2 and 4). Certain Hero upgrades can increase the number of multiples of Allies you can deploy.
- Asteroids Monster: As always, all blimps split into multiple bloons of the next tier down when they're destroyed, as do a number of smaller types like white and black bloons. Polymorph or disintegration effects can prevent this from happening.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Most character-specific activated abilities. They're quite powerful and in some cases can turn a bad situation around with a well-timed use, but they're insanely expensive to unlock, and the very fact that they're activated and have a cooldown limiting their use (unlike passive upgrades which always benefit you once you buy them) makes it very hard to justify blowing such huge amounts of cash on them.
- The Bard: Jake, Marceline and Tuxedo Jake equip musical instruments as their weapons, although they don't attack with them (Tuxedo Jake doesn't attack at all). They give them auras which buff nearby allies (or allies near the speaker Marceline uses as a deployment marker while she flies around the map).
- Beam Spam: Besides Supermonkey's Eye Beams, this is also Sam's basic attack.
- CCG Importance Dissonance: It's not a CCG, but since it's a gacha game the trope still applies, with a couple of rather mystifying examples. Perhaps most oddly, Clarence (a one-off character who only appears in a single episode of no relevance to the greater story) is a legendary-tier ally who could only be acquired from a special event or bought from the Martian Shop for an exhorbitant amount of crystals, while Martin (Finn's biological father) is only epic-tier. Even more strangely, Ghost Princess (the other central character from the same episode as Clarence) is only rare tier.
- Changing Gameplay Priorities: With each tier of difficulty you move up to as you get more powerful, the shape of the game changes. At Normal difficulty, you mainly have to focus on getting enough attackers on the field to wipe out the hordes of normal bloons, with the biggest threat being regrow and camo bloons. When you go up to Hard difficulty, common bloons are fodder and you have to shift your attention to dealing with more advanced bloon types like purple and zombie, as well as getting enough DPS to deal with the MOABs in the final few waves. By the time you're up to the challenge of Extreme, MOABs become routine and all sub-MOAB bloons become a complete nonissue (unless you screw up your early deployment by not getting a non-pierce stealth detector out before a wave of camo lead bloons, or a non-energy stealth detector before a wave of camo purple bloons, comes through and they No-Sell your defence), with your only real concern being finding an answer to the multiple BFBs in the later waves and the ZOMG at the endnote . And finally, any Impoppable run is basically 74 stages of setup for the BAD that comes at the very end, with everything else that comes before it (with the possible exception of the ZOMGs) being just a source of cash for that one Damage-Sponge Boss- by this stage, normal bloons shouldn't even register to you, while MOABs are as trivial as common red bloons were on Normal. Incidentally, this is the reason that life-restoring trinkets and abilities, mildly useful at low levels, become completely useless and irrelevant from Extreme on- with all bloons of MOAB size or larger being a One-Hit Kill, restoring lost health is meaningless, so if you can't handle normal bloons, you don't have a chance in hell of holding off waves of blimps (while on Impoppable you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder anyway).
- Combination Attack: BATTD allows for characters to work together with other characters are in close proximity in the form of upgrades. Some also count as a Double Unlock since your characters need to be at certain Star levels for them to even be available. Also, only one for each character can be used at a time. For example, Finn cannot have Bound by Word if he already has Bro Fist and vice-versa.
- Bro Fist: Finn and Jake* : At the end of a round, lives and cash are earned. Needs Finn at Level 3.
- Bound by Word: Finn and Princess Bubblegum: Finn's attack speed gets a massive boost when a life is lost.
- Royal Promise: Finn and Princess Bubblegum: Finn's Bound by Word boost becomes permanently active (as long as both characters are in play), but leaking a bloon or selling either character will result in a 50 life penalty, deactivating Royal Promise in the process. Finn even gets unique lines.
- Privateer: Captain Cassie and Princess Bubblegum: Cassie's upgrades and her equipped allies get a 20% discount and an attack speed boost.
- Student of Ice: Sam and Ice King: Sam's beam attack becomes ice-elemental.
- Student of Fire: Sam and Flame Princess: Sam's beam attack becomes fire-elemental.
- Mounted Mauler: Commander Cassie and C4 Charlie: Cassie's missiles become MOAB Maulers.
- Jake Suit: Finn and Jake: Jake "becomes" Finn's suit, enabling new attack options. Needs Jake at Level 7.
- Gumballs: Juggernaut Max and Princess Bubblegum: Max's spiked balls become covered in gum, allowing him to bog down bloons in it.
- Snowballs: Juggernaut Max and Ice King: Max's spiked balls become covered in snow, allowing him to freeze bloons.
- Great Balls of Fire: Juggernaut Max and Flame Princess: Max's spiked balls become lit up in flames, allowing him to burn bloons.
- Convection, Schmonvection: Nobody in the Fire Kingdom levels get burnt up (unless they're over the stoves in the Flame Kitchen level, and even that just temporarily disables them) despite… you know, its nature. Only Flame Princess, Flame King (being fire elementals), and Cinnamon Bun (having the blue hue that comes with the Flame Shield spell) are exceptions to this trope.
- Cool Boat: Cassie, whether she be a pirate captain or a fleet commander, will always be aboard a ship when fighting the bloons. Naturally, barring certain trinkets, this means she needs to be placed on water to be of use.
- Covered in Gunge: Besides Princess Bubblegum's attack, which covers bloons in gum, there's also Slime Princess's... slime, and some trinkets that allow for shooting glue or webs.
- Crossover: Of Bloons Tower Defense and Adventure Time.
- Crutch Character: Abracadaniel is an easy to get Ally (only uncommon) that can boost your progress considerably when you're just starting out. His attacks are slow, but transform whatever they hit into a butterfly, instantly killing it. Not all that useful on its own, but if you fork out for his expensive 2nd upgrade "Mother Of All Butterflies" (a combined cost of $3680) he can also do this to MOAB-class bloons (also preventing them from splitting into an overwhelming horde of lesser bloons). Place him near the start of the track and set his targeting AI to "always target strongest" and he'll pick them off with no fuss at all. As mentioned under Changing Gameplay Priorities, the biggest obstacle in moving up from Normal to Hard difficulty is being able to muster the damage to bring down the MOABs that spawn near the end, which Abracadaniel completely trivialises. Once you've mastered Hard, though, his usefulness drops off since he can't deal with any of the larger blimp sizes, and if you're ready to deal with BFBs or the ZOMG at wave 60 then common MOABs aren't enough of a threat for you to need Abracadaniel any more. The Grassy Wizard is similar to Abracadaniel (albeit rarer), but has better utility as he transforms bloons into razor-sharp fields of grass instead, giving him some anti-swarm potential.
- Depth Perplexion: Wouldn't be BTD without this. Melee characters such as Finn are still able to attack high-flying MOABs.
- Developer's Foresight: If you bring a character's two variants and put them both on the map, the second character will have a special dialogue (usually talking about how there's another self of them).
- Dump Stat: Pierce is a stat controls how many bloons a single attack from a tower can hit. However, pierce is absolutely not a stat to care much about. Bloon density, in comparison, is much reduced compared to mainline Bloons Tower Defense games (hyperdense rounds like 78 and 98 simply have no BATTD counterparts), and pierce does not affect damage against blimps (which have hundreds to thousands of health each, and come in very small groups). In order to combat blimps more effectively, players tend to equip damage and speed-boosting items, which still effectively fight off multi-bloon rushes that pierce may be useful for.
- Enemy Mine: In a way. Most of the antagonists of the showwhich ones can be allied with the main protagonist to help them against the Bloons.
- Excuse Plot: The plot is essentially as follows; "The Bloons went through a portal to the land of Ooo and are causing havoc. Stop and pop them."
- Expy: The following Adventure Time characters behave like the following BTD towers.
- Princess Bubblegum for the Glue Gunner, while also borrowing the Engineer's Cleansing Foam and transferring it's ability into her primary attack.
- Warrior Bubblegum has a mix of the Monkey Engineer's summoning abilities and Finn's short-range attacks.
- Ice King for the Ice Monkey, while also adopting the Tack Shooter's aimless 360-degree multi projectile attack with the Ice Shards upgrade.
- Marceline for the Heli Pilot
- Eye Beams: Supermonkey has these, but you have to upgrade to them first. In the meantime, he will toss darts at breakneck speed.
- Fanboy: The Super Fans return as Allies equippable only by Supermonkey.
- Gameplay and Story Integration: Certain "tower" placement limitations (or lack thereof) do make some sense.
- Ice King either freezes the water or cools the lava into solid rock depending on where you put him.
- As a fire elemental, of course the lava won't be an issue for Flame Princess or Flame King.
- When you get her, Princess Bubblegum provides some "SPF 10000000" sunblock for Marceline, allowing her to be around in daylight levels without burning up.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation:
- Despite occasionally floating, you can't normally place Supermonkey on the water (or lava), yet you can do the same with Laser Butterfly.
- After completing the "Loch'd and Loaded" mission for the first time, C4 Charlie praises Jake's bloon popping skills, regardless of if he was present or not.
- Golden Super Mode: Supermonkey's Sun God form, which is only unlockable on Star Level 7 and consumes 4 Super Fans.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: Ricardio uses a pair of broken bottles to attack the bloons with. Gunter also tosses these until you upgrade him to Orgalorg.
- Hero Unit: A total of eighteen, though only ten at a time can be assigned to the party, six are technically alternate versions of a character, and three of those are paid content.
- Heroes Prefer Swords: Finn, natch. And Warrior PB. For some reason, axes also fall under the Swords weapon type.
- Hold the Line: The Hotdog Knights (as a power-up or a feature of a specific track) and Banana Guards (allies only assignable to either Princess Bubblegums) get placed directly on the track, so they basically do this. All get easily overwhelmed, but the Banana Guards fare slightly better by being upgradable, recovering their health between waves, and when overwhelmed, they get back up after (not on) the next wave (leaving you without their protection for one wave).
- Humongous Mecha: Subverted. While the Technological Terror makes a return appearance here, it's merely the same size as any of the monkeys you have.
- Kill It with Fire: Besides Flame Princess, there are also the following allies: Scorcher, Flame King.
- Lethal Joke Character: Gunter (whose final upgrade Orgalorg massively boosts his attack speed and changes his attack type from sharp bottles to plasma) and downplayed with Abracadaniel (he's a slow one-shot attacker, but his upgrades allow him to even affect MOABs, though not the stronger ones).
- License-Added Game: It's a game in the Bloons Tower Defense series featuring characters from Adventure Time.
- Making a Splash: The Water Nymph. Can only be placed in water, but buffs all allies placed in there with her, as well as increasing the damage of her own water attacks for each one.
- Meta Power Up: For cash pickups, in place of Banana Farms, you get BMO, though he more like accumulates it until you choose to collect it. He's even upgradable for faster cash generation.
- COBRA makes a return appearance from Bloons TD Battles and on top of being able to attack, he also drops medkits and suitcases of cash ranging from $50-$100 without being an upgrade first. He stops shooting while making calls for drops, however.
- Tuxedo Jake is a straighter Monkey Village Expy, but he's paid content.
- The Minion Master: Most of Warrior PB's upgrades involve summoning temporary allies special to her and enhancing them. She can also make buying her Allies cheaper, be able to place down one more of each, and (though costly) apply this to everyone's Allies.
- One-Hit-Point Wonder: You on Impoppable difficulty, unless you use up a Prismo's Artisanal Pickles power-up, which gives you 75 extra lives and a chance for a free wish orb.
- Original Generation: While technically representative of the BTD side, there's Max, Cassie, Sam, Sai the Shadow, and C4 Charlie. The only main hero taken directly from BD is Supermonkey.
- Power at a Price: Princess Bubblegum's Royal Promise upgrade gives Finn a massive speed boost. The kicker is that if you sell either him or Princess Bubblegum, or if a bloon gets through the track, you instantly lose 50 lives, which can easily cost you the game depending on the difficulty. The game even warns you before you can proceed with buying the upgrade.
- Purposefully Overpowered:
- Supermonkey (and to a slightly lesser extent, Commander Cassie) are ridiculously powerful compared to almost all other units, easily capable of soloing entire waves by themselves once they've bought their upgrades (and in Supermonkey's case, equipped him with some gear that allows him to detect Camoflage Bloons). However, they're just as expensive as they are powerful, both to deploy and upgrade- you have to pay for what you get.
- Supermonkey's Sun God upgrade takes this up to ridiculous levels, being by far THE most overpowered but also pricey thing in the entire game, bar none. You need to max out his attack speed and eye beam upgrade trees before you can unlock it (the Sun Avatar upgrade alone is $13,500!), and once you do it is THE most expensive upgrade in the entire game (base cost $40,000!) meaning without cost reductions the entire thing costs $62,400! But that's not all- to use it you also have to place 4 of his Super Fan allies nearby (which have a base cost of $1000 each, although this can be halved by equipping Supermonkey with his unique Dr Monkey's Secret Weapon Epic dart), which are consumed when you activate the ability (the game even gives you a warning about this when you attempt to purchase the Sun God upgrade). Without extensive use of cost reduction effects (most notably Marceline's Hambo to reduce the base cost of the Sun God upgrade by 50%) it's all but impossible to even earn enough money to unlock Sun God at all- but if you do, it'll show you why it cost so much, as Supermonkey unleashes absolutely insane DPS, enough to annihilate almost anything. You can take it even further if you equip him with the Dark Temple Idol, which gives his Sun God form doubled range, +5 damage per hit (on an attack speed that approaches the game's Cap), and a second beam stream. Not even a BAD can stand up to a Dark Sun God Supermonkey if he's positioned well enough.
- Among allies, the Technological Terror is the most expensive unit in the entire game, costing $12,000 just to deploy, and another $7,300 to fully upgrade. However, being an ally you can't enhance it with items to overcome its weaknesses (namely its inability to detect Camo Bloons or damage Purple Bloons). Orgalorg is also an upgrade for Gunter that costs an insane $30,000 but boosts its power to incredible levels (although possibly not enough to justify the ridiculous cost).
- Supermonkey (and to a slightly lesser extent, Commander Cassie) are ridiculously powerful compared to almost all other units, easily capable of soloing entire waves by themselves once they've bought their upgrades (and in Supermonkey's case, equipped him with some gear that allows him to detect Camoflage Bloons). However, they're just as expensive as they are powerful, both to deploy and upgrade- you have to pay for what you get.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: When a MOAB-Class bloon shows up, there's a chance Princess Bubblegum might say, "Whoa... the Bloon-o-Meter is reading crazy threat levels!"
- Snowlems: Ice King's Monsters of Snow power summons a couple of these to help pop bloons.
- Stop Poking Me!: Every main character has one of these lines when you tap them too many times in a row.
- Spikes of Doom: Sai's Tetsubushi upgrade allows her to plant caltrops on the track. These disappear at the end of every wave, however.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: When unlocked, Ice King is accused of being responsible for the Bloon attacks and asked to join the heroes to redeem himself. He's innocent but plays along, using the opportunity as an excuse to hang out with everyone.
- Support Party Member: Tuxedo Jake (who can't attack at all, unlike regular Jake). Lemonhope as well, but exclusively for one character (from any distance), but can be upgraded to two.
- Video Game Weapon Stats: Only four plus two: Speed (how fast your character can attack), Range (how far they can reach), Pierce (how many bloons can they hit at once), and Damage (how many bloom layers they can penetrate) along with Weapon Type (Swords, Darts, Instruments, Guns, Wands, and Bombs) and Damage Type (Sharp, Explosive, Ice, Energy, etc.).
