Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch my Gems! is a flash Tower Defense game by Iriy Soft. You play an Evil Overlord, and trying to prevent your gems from being stolen by adventurers, you use three different types of "towers" inhabited with Always Chaotic Evil minions to slay them, assisted by various spells. The game consists of replayable stages, and has RPG Elements in the way of skills enhancing your towers or spells in some way, which are purchased with Experience Points.
It can be played here
or at there. There are two sequels: Cursed Treasure Level Pack!, which is Exactly What It Says on the Tin, and Cursed Treasure 2, a total revamp with a greater variety of enemies (including full-fledged bosses) and a new, "cute" aesthetic. Cursed Treasure 2 was also released on Steam.
Not to be confused with Cursed Item, which is a trope about items that inflict negative side effects on their owners.
Both games provide examples of:
- Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: Enemies grab a gem and then run back to the edge. The upgraded crypt can also cause enemies to run away in fear.
- Chain Lightning: The Fearful Crypt's and the Shattering Crypt's projectiles jump to a second enemy before they disappear.
- Chill of Undeath: The Undead final skill tier gives all crypts a chance to freeze opponents. In the sequel upgraded Frost Crypts can generate an ice charge that is guaranteed to freeze whatever it hits.
- Chromatic Arrangement: The three races, towers, and tiles they're placed on follow a green-blue-red scheme. Orcs' Dens are green, Undead's Crypts are blue, and Demons' Temples are red.
- Critical Hit: Upgraded Orcish Dens can strike them. A skill upgrade in the sequel provides an extra chance for all Orc towers to strike them.
- Damage Reduction: Knights and Amazons possess a slight one.
- Disaster Dominoes: Even once you buy the upgrades that allow stolen gems to drift back towards the nest, it's still possible to end up losing one or more of them to some fresh wave rushing in to where the gem is just as your towers kill the weakened units that were carrying it.
- Fantasy Character Classes: Almost all the Mooks.
- Fragile Speedster: Rogues, Ninjas, Assassins are faster than most units but tend to have lower health. Adventurers (Champion Rogues in the sequel) have lower health than other champions but are fast and can even use a speed boost to get faster.
- Geo Effects: Each tower class can only be built on tiles of the corresponding terrain type. Additionally, there are high ground tiles (which increase range and damage and allow every kind of tower to be built on them), forests (which block a tile until you cut them down), and mana well tiles (which increase your mana gain, but can only be built on in the first game).
- Giant Mook: "Champions" are oversized versions of normal enemies (who also Took a Level in Badass). God help you when you encounter a Giant Ninja (who also moves faster!).
- The Goomba: Peasants, who have no special abilities whatsoever and only appear in the first few waves.
- Gratuitous Ninja: Ninjas can appear and can become invisible from all towers for a set amount of time once they get it.
- Invisibility Cloak: Ninjas and Iron Guards use one as soon as they're hit. Thankfully, they can only do this once.
- Mana: Used by the Player Character for cutting wood/taking over structures, temporarily increasing firing rates (or causing mass fear in the sequel) or releasing deadly meteors on your enemies. Enemies in the first game use this for Status Buffs.
- Mook Medic: Priests in the first game. The second game has Monks (heals others), Wizards (heals and provides a speed buff to Mooks around them), Priestesses (healing aura affects all units around them) and Cooks (can heal or give foes a Booze-Based Buff).
- No-Damage Run: In order to get a Brilliant rating for a mission, you cannot let any enemies touch a single gem.
- No-Sell: Paladins, Templars, and enraged Berserkers are immune to secondary status effects (excluding being disarmed by
Banshee Crypts in 1 and chicken transformation in 2 for Paladins and Templars). Iron Guards are immune to fear. - Our Souls Are Different: The orbs fired by crypts are souls turned into projectiles by some sort of Necromancy.
- Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies: If you have all your enemies in a small area and enough mana, you can take them out with a meteor.
- RPG Elements: You get experience points for finishing a level. They can be spent for skills, which upgrade your towers with special powers, increase ressource generations, or have other beneficial effects.
- As well, towers gain experience points and can take levels, allowing you to upgrade them during a round.
- Rule of Three: There are three tower types (Crypts, Temples and Dens), each with a race powering these towers (Undead, Demons and Orcs), a corresponding terrain (Snow, Rock and Grass), spell (Frenzy/Fear, Meteor and Cut Out) and skill tree. Also, you gain three skill points per level.
- Skill Point Reset: You can reset all skill points which you have spent for absolutely free.
- Splash Damage: The ballista dens. Catapult Dens take this up to eleven- the projectile explodes into more exploding projectiles.
- Burning Temples burn all enemies around them.
- Ifrit Temples hit all enemies within a small radius of their target.
- Splash Damage Abuse: Stealth Bypass type — If a visible enemy is within range, the Burning Temple will also hit - and probably One-Hit Kill - ninjas in its range.
- Squishy Wizard: Averted. Wizards' special skill is a replenishing shield, which basically results in ridiculous amounts of hitpoints and being able to Walk It Off.
- Also averted in the sequel. Wizards and Priestesses are surprisingly more durable than most other enemies, including guards, knights and barbarians!
- Support Power: Your Meteor, Frenzy and Fear spells.
- Status Buff:
- Bards can provide temporary haste to allies, making them move twice as fast. This is very bad if used on Ninjas. Rogues and Adventurers in the sequel can give themselves haste, Wizards can haste and heal a whole group around them, Cooks can Haste and grant temporary fear protection.
- Frenzy was changed into this for the sequel. Even time a tower kills an enemy, that tower gets an attack speed increase of 25%.
- Bards can provide temporary haste to allies, making them move twice as fast. This is very bad if used on
- Status Effects: Inflicted by mid- to high-level towers of certain types, or scrolls. As well, for each tower category there's a skill which gives you a chance of inflicting another, special one.
- Fear causes the victim to retreat in disorientation and panic.
- Radiation increases the damage the victim takes from other attacks.
- Poison Cloud deals damage over time to enemies (including stealthed ninjas) that pass through it.
- Freeze freezes an enemy on the spot.
- Blaze incinerates an enemy, dealing damage over time.
- Stasis prevents an enemy from moving/attacking for a short time.
- Polymorph transforms an enemy into a chicken, removing all abilities except flight. Does not work on bosses.
- Charm is a status that Amazons inflict on your towers, preventing the tower from attacking for a while (originally 8 seconds, reduced to 5 seconds in later patches).
- Unstable Equilibrium: The more a tower attacks enemies, the more experience it gets. This makes towers near the cave get less experience and causes them to be less likely to defeat enemies that penetrate too deep. The sequel averts this via the Home Front skill, which makes all towers gain passive experience over time so even those near your cave can get stronger.
- Updated Re-release: Both the original Cursed Treasure game and its Levels Pack have been ported to HTML5 (a faster and more supported engine than Flash) in 2019 with some minor additions while Cursed Treasure 2 was ported to Steam with additional content in the form of a dwarf-themed set of three levels complete with new enemies, champions, and boss fight.
- Villain Protagonist: You play as an evil overlord and have to stop heroes from stealing your gems.
Cursed Treasure provides examples of:
- Anti-Magic:
- The Banshee Crypt can "disarm" an enemy, which means removing their special abilities.
- Paladins are immune to all Status Effects.
- Area of Effect: The Burning Temple.
- Artifact of Doom: The gems themselves will deal damage to enemies for each second they hold them if you get the Scorching Treasure skill.
- Beam Spam: Especially at the beginning of an enemy wave, when all the gathered crypt charges are released at once.
- Damage-Increasing Debuff: The Evileye Tower's 'Radiation' effect increases damage taken by those afflicted with it by a percentage. Initially, it's 25%, but you can upgrade this up to a 50% increase. This does make enemy assassins easier to beat (and trivializes the rest except ninjas even more)
- Evil Laugh: If you build a temple. Also, enemies break out into infuriatingly arrogant laughter if they manage to steal a gem.
- Game-Breaking Bug: On the eBaums World version, there is an ad which sometimes pops up in the middle of the game and automatically ends it.
- Grievous Harm with a Body: The Beholder's Temple lets an enemy it kills explode after death!
- Instant Runes: The Evileye Tower's radiation takes the form of a pentagram.
- Last Lousy Point: Getting a 'Brilliant' rating in some of the missions where you are spammed with ninjas. And especially those with Ninja Champions in it.
- Mana Shield: Wizards have one, which regenerates over time. Pile on the DPS if you want to take them down.
- Mighty Glacier: Warriors, Knights and Paladins. Warriors are generally slow and have a large amount of health, Knights are this due to their damage reduction ability and Paladins nullify negative status effects and also have large health pools yet are generally slow.
- No Ending: No ending is shown upon beating the last level. It's just the "mission completed" screen as usual.
- Oh, Crap!: "AAAH! NO! NO! NO!"
- Regenerating Shield, Static Health: The regenerating shield is the wizards' special ability.
- Smoke Out: The ninjas' special ability. And it takes a long time to wear off, long enough to bypass most parts of the smaller maps unharmed.
Cursed Treasure 2 provides examples of:
- Airborne Mook: Certain enemies can fly over water paths, allowing them to take a shortcut to your gems. Of course, they can't fly back to the exit while carrying a gem. This even extends to Iron Guards.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: You can now use Cut Out to take over enemy structures. This trope applies to the Mook Maker structures- once taken over, the mooks stop and you get an income of gold every few seconds (unless it's a pirate ship, which sinks but gives you a lot of gold).
- Animorphism: Kite Druids will turn into birds to move over water. The Eagle Druid is a champion version who transforms into an eagle.
- Asshole Victim: The Archmage. If his flavour text is true, he's killed countless colleagues to rise to his position.
- Asteroids Monster: Pirates release a parrot when killed. Smugglers release a monkey and two parrots when killed.
- Bad Boss: The King will happily send his entire population to get slaughtered so the queen can have her five jeweled rings.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Invoked by you. Kite Druids and Eagle Druids wished to become birds. The chicken spell can be really unpheasant for them.
- The Berserker: The Berserk Champions. Once their health drops to 60%, they go into a rage, becoming immune to fear and side effects while becoming faster.
- Brawn Hilda: The Barbarian Queen.
- Brutal Bonus Level: The Steam release adds three more levels after the base game, but these levels amp up the difficulty with tougher enemies and lower resource income. Players will struggle even with a maxed-out upgrade tree.
- Chainmail Bikini: It's hard to see, but the Amazons wear midriff-baring armor.
- Chef of Iron: The pirate Cooks, which have a lot of health and heal/buff their friends in battle.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Bosses are immune to the "Bury Alive" skill and are also immune to chicken transformation. Champions are not.
- Cool Ship: The Pirate Flagship, which launches out Smoke Bombs to support its troops, as well as submerging to deploy divers. Once its health gets low enough, it "sinks", then appears upside down, launching three smoke bombs at one go.
- Disc-One Final Boss: Downplayed. The King sends all the heroes to steal the gems for 15 stages and the first 12 stages are about getting to him, then he's defeated and you take over the kingdom. However, since you have the kingdom, the barbarians start raiding it and try to steal gems, continuing the game. The game tries to hype the fight with the King as the final battle, but there are achievements and the world map that show there's more to the game beforehand.
- Distracted by the Sexy: Your towers can get charmed by Amazons once their armor breaks, preventing them from attacking. Use a Fear Spell to remove this quickly. Later versions of the game weaken this somewhat (reducing the Charm duration and having the Terror spell render the towers immune to Charm for a few seconds)
- Druid: One of the enemy types. They turn into birds to fly over water. The Arch Druid can turn himself into an invulnerable leafy tornado and send out eggs which hatch into Mooks.
- Dungeon Bypass: Flying enemies can fly over water, taking a shortcut to your gems.
- Early-Bird Boss: The General, if you're going for a Brilliant rating. Appearing in the third stage, you probably have not enough skill points to take him on without leaking an enemy/defeating him once he Turns Red. Unless you grind, of course.
- Elemental Embodiment: Thunder Elementals and Water Elementals. The former are fast, while the latter regenerate over time.
- Fire, Ice, Lightning: Demon towers use Fire (and have a skill to set enemies on fire), while Undead towers use either Ice or Lightning (depending on individual tower upgrades as well as skill upgrades).
- Flesh and Bombs: With the right upgrades, your towers can convert the corpses of slain heroes into poison clouds, explosive mines or lightning traps, depending on which tower scored the kill.
- Fog of War: Night levels have darkness cover the level, making towers unplaceable in the dark areas. The field of visibility is increased by the ranges of all towers which have been placed.
- Forced Transformation: Clicking a yellow scroll turns all non-boss enemies around it into chickens, disabling their special abilities except for flight.
- Game-Breaking Bug: The game sometimes lags so badly that roughly half the spell scrolls go to waste (i.e. by the time the click is registered, everyone's moved on). Furthermore, it makes the pirate flagship boss at the end completely unwinnable.
- Grievous Bottley Harm: Taking over a tavern will cause it to throw empty bottles at nearby enemies, slowing them down.
- Healing Factor: Water Elementals regenerate health over time.
- Instant Plunder, Just Add Pirates: The Pirates of the Last Sea expansion level contains them.
- Level Grinding: Vastly downplayed compared to the previous game: since experience is calculated on a percentage of the level's experience (which get increasingly higher), the easiest way to get skill points is to lose the highest level over and over, getting a level up every two or three attempts.
- Lighter and Softer: In terms of artstyle at least, as many things are made to look cuter and colors used are brighter.
- Lighthouse Point: An annoying enemy structure found in the Pirates of the Last Sea expansion. These can provide a speed buff to 3 enemies within a large range. Seizing it makes it hurt up to 3 enemies within range via continuous fire beams.
- Luck-Based Mission: Level 20 if you're going for a Brilliant Rating. Two Mook Maker ships with LOADS of hitpoints, two speed-increasing lighthouses with a lot of hitpoints and a water path extremely near your cave for Divers. If the enemies fail to drop enough potions for usage of Cut Out, it's impossible to complete with Brilliant.
- Maniac Monkeys: Upon death, Smugglers release a monkey that is hell-bent on stealing your gems. Said monkey is fast and has more health than any normal enemy!
- Mecha-Mooks: Iron Guards. These Champions are immune to fear, can fly, and have a cloaking ability like Ninjas! Fortunately, by the time they first appear, you're probably many levels up skillwise.
- Monster Compendium: A section of the Evilopedia contains information on enemies, including their health, speed, and special abilities.
- Mook Maker:
- Certain structures can spawn Mooks at the start of a wave. Taking over most of them will allow you to gain gold every turn while stopping the Mooks.
- Dendrologists can create dendroids, small walking trees.
- Motive Decay: The whole point of feudalism is that the rulers are supposed to protect the people, not send them to their deaths needlessly!
- Not Completely Useless: The Infernal Magnet Skill drags your gems back to your cave if they are moved, which shouldn't happen if you're going for a Brilliant rating. Then you face the Barbarian Queen, who has an ability that drags your gems out of your cavenote .
- The Steam version subverts this by making it so that to get Brilliant, it's okay for a Hero to touch your gem, as long as you keep all 3 of them.
- One-Hit Kill: The "Bury Alive" Skill Tree gives all undead orbs a small chance of instantly killing an opponent. This even works on Champions, but not bosses.
- Pirate Booty: The pirate levels have a treasure chest hidden in each one of them. The last of these is on a destructible pirate ship.
- Pirate Parrot: The pirate enemies have one, which they release upon death as a separate enemy.
- Random Drops: Enemies can drop gold, mana potions or various area-effect scrolls.
- Recursive Ammo: The Catapult Den has this, which allows it to deal a great amount of damage.
- Shed Armor, Gain Speed: An explicit ability of Knights, Amazons, the General, and the King, called the Final Rush. Berserkers have a similar ability, but they only remove their helmet and drop their shields rather than losing all their armor.
- Shout-Out: Multiple examples:
- Knights lose their armor once their health gets low, then start running around in their underwear.
- "Winter Is Coming" and "Fear cuts deeper than swords" for the frost and fear crypts, "His gaze pierces cloud, shadow, earth, and flesh" for the temple of the overseer, and "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" for the burning temple.
- The badge you get for killing the Archmage is called Avada Kedavra, which is the name of the Killing Curse in that series.
- Smoke Out:
- Engineers will throw a smoke bomb ahead, which stealths all the units inside.
- The Pirate Flagship's bombs also cause a similar smoke bomb effect if not clicked in time.
- Tactical Suicide Boss:
- If the High Priest didn't sic his Templars to attack you, you'd never be able to break his invulnerable sanctuary via the Templars' swords.
- The Pirate Flagship's own smoke bombs can be sent back to it for a good amount of damage.
- Tennis Boss: The Pirate Flagship. It fires out bombs onto land, which explode into concealing smoke. Click the bombs before they blow up to send them back to the ship and damage it greatly. And hope the game doesn't lag.
- Too Awesome to Use: The Steam release adds Skulls, a rare resource that can be accumulated between missions and are used to purchase powerful boons. Spent Skulls are not refunded when restarting a mission, so it's not unusual to find oneself continuously saving their Skulls.
- Took a Level in Badass: The Demon Skill Tree. in the previous game, a number of its skills were useless if you were going for a No-Damage Run, due to being used for retrieval of crystals (when you shouldn't need to have any retrieved). The sequel fixes this, by giving it additional skills like Frenzy and experience boosting.
- Valkyries: One of the enemy types. They can fly over water.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: The General. He sports a Damage Reduction armor, summons Valkyries and Knights, buffs them with an armor spell, and once his health gets low, he loses his armor but makes a mad dash to your gems. You'll need towers strong enough to deal with his mooks, as well as the General once he Turns Red.
- Warm-Up Boss: The Blacksmith who's the first stage's "boss". By this time, you'll have enough Mana to cast two meteor spells, dealing massive damage to him.
