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Tower defense games are a Sub-Genre of strategy games where you defend a building from monsters and/or other enemies using other buildings, sometimes with a unit or two to back you up. Similar to Multi-Mook Melee, Tower Defense games have you facing wave upon wave of "creeps"note  until a given number reach their goal, or you survive the final wave.

Creeps will move along the path that is either:

  • Static: Creeps move along the same paths.
  • Dynamic: The placement of towers will determine the paths which creeps move along. Dynamic paths usually create a strategy called "mazing", allowing the player to make long, winding paths that force the enemy to take the longest possible route to their destination, all the while being blasted by the towers herding them.

A typical Tower Defense game will have:

  • Creeps that behave differently. Some are Fragile Speedsters or Mighty Glaciers, some are Asteroids Monsters, others can fly over towers and bypass most of your defenses, etc.
  • "Boss" creeps on certain waves.
  • A strategy that requires a balance of producing more towers and upgrading existing ones. More important in dynamic path type ones.
  • Balance between different towers. Ideally, none of the tower types should be completely useless.
  • Commonly, a "survival" mode in which each level retains the towers you built in the previous level and/or the enemies get tougher as the game progresses instead of simply increasing in number.
  • Hold the Line as its core element.

As of lately, a trend in this genre has started to develop where the games will feature the ability for the player to be the attacking force pitted against the towers. This sub-genre within the Tower Defense genre has been called "Reverse Tower Defense", "Tower Attack", and "Tower Offense". Some games in the genre get to the point of devoting themselves entirely to this, eschewing the defense element altogether. It is also the basis of the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena, with Defense of the Ancients being basically born as a 5 vs 5 reverse tower defense using Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos's hero mechanics.

Another form of Tower Defense features a single tower or gate on one side of the screen, which is then beset by the Creeps marching forth to destroy it. The player is usually given one or more weapons directly controlled by them, while upgrades may add automatic defenses and defenders.

The third form of defense game is the "Tug-of-War"/Beam-O-War style. In which there are two towers or bases at each end of one or more paths, and the player(s) and AI send different units down the path to attack the enemy base(s). Opposing units that meet will fight each other, and the object is to push the enemy force back to their own side and destroy their base(s).


Examples of Tower Defense as a Full Game:

  • Castle Panic: A board game tower defense game. Can be played solo or co-op.

Examples of Tower Defense as a Mini-Game:

  • Some user-created maps for other Real-Time Strategy games follow this style.
  • Age of Empires II: Age Of Kings (and the expansion pack Conquerors) had a "Wonder Race" game type, in which you are required to build a wonder and defend it for 200 years before your opponent(s).
  • "Red's Mighty Feathers" from Angry Birds adapts the Angry Birds formula for the Tower Defense genre. The pigs are advancing upon the egg using their vehicles, and the Red Bird must protect the egg by popping the pigs with his new homing power.
  • Animal Jam has "Pest Control", in which the player uses biological pest controlnote  to prevent the pestsnote  from reaching the end of the static path.
  • Assassin's Creed: Revelations had Den Defenses, where Templar soldiers assault one of dens controlled by the Assassins. Ezio is responsible for organizing the defense by placing barricades in the streets and various types of Assassins on the rooftops firing down upon them.
  • Blizzard Entertainment:
    • The Trope Maker was the various user-made defense maps in StarCraft - "Sunken D," "Turret D," "Stacked Photon D," etc. The Starcraft editor did not allow you to create new units or buildings, so they usually made much more use of mobile units than most current Tower Defenses. See, for example, this video of "Weed D," which is recognizably a fixed-path Tower Defense game except that the "towers" being "built" are Mutalisks.
    • The Trope Codifier was Tower Defense maps for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. The editor was much more sophisticated than Starcraft's, allowing for greater variety in towers. Multiple subgenres appeared and proliferated, such as the "Wintermaul" clones. By the time the Frozen Throne expansion came out, Blizzard included an official Tower Defense map as an Alliance campaign bonus level.
  • Civilization IV came with a "Civ Defense" mod, in which one starts with a certain number of cities, spends money (rather than the usual "hammers") to add to their fortifications and defenses, and then horde after horde of barbarians come at you.
  • Club Penguin had "System Defender", in which the player has to set up cannons to stop the Mecha-Mook from destroying the EPF Mainframe computer. Interestingly, while threats could be simulated by all players, there would be live threats that could be handled by members only.
  • The action-RPG CrossCode had 2 connected sidequests (+ a challenge quest for each) in the city of Basin Keep that were basically a tower defense minigame on top of the normal combat. The heroine Lea has to defend a point against waves of enemies with the help of turrets, which can be activated in neutral and elemental modes. Additionally, all the enemies have strong shields that only the turrets in the (otherwise weaker) neutral mode can break.
  • "Englos Defense", a bonus level in DROD: The Second Sky.
  • Exodus Borealis is a combined city builder and tower defense game, where a colony of Fox Folk has to build a tower maze in front of a demon gate in order to protect their settlement, while also constructing the buildings they need for their own survival and producing the resources for those towers.
  • Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII are probably the Ur Examples:
    • Final Fantasy VI has an event similar to this halfway through the first part of the game; there's a difference in that you battle the mooks using the standard battle system, but otherwise the execution is the same.
    • The Fort Condor mini-game in Final Fantasy VII is essentially a tower defense game.
  • Game of War: Fire Age has a tower defense minigame.
  • Version 1.3 of Genshin Impact has the "Theater Mechanicus" event, in which you can plant different kinds of "towers" to defeat waves of incoming enemies. The enemies won't attack you or the towers, but will keep walking towards the "exit" which you have to defend. You can attack the enemies, but they'll take no damage from your attacks, nor will your energy get charged; however, you can still exploit elemental effects and reactions to support your towers. This can also be played with another player. Completing a level unlocks materials you can use to upgrade the towers, as well as higher difficulties.
  • The Iron Grip series is part Tower Defense and part FPS.
  • A variation of this appears in Legion's Loyalty Mission in Mass Effect 2, where Mooks must march towards you in a fixed path while you have Legion hack a few turrets around the area to shoot at them. Alternatively, you can just cap them yourself.
  • Monster Hunter: Rise has Rampage quests where you take up arms in a stronghold where you can set up armaments like ballistas, cannons, and bombs; some of these installations are controlled by NPCs, while others are controlled by the player(s). Your goal is to fend off an onslaught of monsters who are trying to destroy a heavily fortified gate on the far end of the map. As you fulfill side objectives and defeat monsters, more types of "towers" become available.
  • Path of Exile's Blight expansion introduced missions where players had to defend a purifying device from monsters advancing over multiple lanes. While particularly powerful characters can clear them without assistance, usually you'd have to construct towers to damage, debuff and/or stall enemies. Blighted maps take it further, turning an entire location into a huge defense mission with over a dozen lanes and several unique bosses.
  • Phantasy Star Online 2 has two variants of this.
    • The first is Mining Base, Emergency Quests where players are tasked with protecting towers against increasingly powerful and aggressive waves of Darkers while collecting crystals to unlock new weapons and defensive measures.
    • The second is Buster Quests, introduced in Episode 5. The first half of these quests entail protecting towers from an onslaught of enemies, albeit with a wider array of weapons and defensive measures available from the start. The players are also tasked with raiding an enemy castle and destroying the boss therein.
  • Progressbar 95 has the Progress Defender minigame, in which the bar can only be moved on the x-axis and you have to protect it from red segments and Clippy that approach it. You need to place one of three buildings on three lanes with five spots each. They are Firewalls which stop Red Segments but are damaged by Clippy, Antiviruses that shoot at Clippy but have to be updated once in a while, and Generators that make 5% progress every couple of seconds. Each building costs 5% progress and you must reach 100% to win. It is intended to be slightly harder than the main game, so you get 1.25x for completing levels in it.
  • The metagame in RimWorld, where you must occasionally defend your little colony against a raid of foes that vastly outnumber you, favors a "killbox" strategy to funnel and slow foes - perhaps via a narrow, trap-filled maze where they must crawl over sandbags to progress - into a prepared kill zone where turrets and armed colonists can quickly cut down the raiders one at a time. Of course, this only works against enemies that don't use Drop Pods to crash through your dining room roof.
  • Sunset Overdrive has seven mandatory "Night Defense" missions where the player fiends off two waves of OD from attacking multiple Vats.
  • Team Fortress 2 comes close to providing a First-Person Shooter version of a Tower Defense minigame with "Mann Versus Machine" mode, in which a small team of players must defend an objective against waves of robotic attackers. There is/was also a fan-made Tower Defense minigame mod in development.
  • Terraria's 1.2.4 Update introduced a crossover with Dungeon Defenders that provides a 2D example. When the "Old One's Army" event starts, two portals appear a short distance from a stationary objective, which the player has to defend from advancing waves of enemies. While you can fight however you wish, the player is encouraged to use a set of Dungeon Defenders-inspired items to play The Turret Master, plopping down summoned defenses to help thin out the marching foes.
  • Terraria Otherworld has segments like this, where the player needs to place down towers to defend against monsters attacking the purifying machines.
  • 3D Dot Game Heroes has a Tower Defense mini-game called Block Defense.
  • "Frontier Defense" from Titanfall, added in Title Update 8.

Examples of Tower Defense games that include the ability to play as the attackers:

  • Anomaly: Warzone Earth - Considered by many to be the first Tower Offense games. Here, you upgrade a constantly moving force to attack an enemy base/garrison filled with turrets.
  • Villainous - Also a Tower Offense game where you play as the villain on his quest to take over the lands.
  • Armored Core V - A Mecha Game where most of the online component consists of you assaulting other team's territories akin to a glorified 3D-Tower Defense game. As with everything else however, being intercepted by that territory's owner and prepare for a Team Deathmatch style game instead, with all the turrets present. Like real Turret Defense games, turrets run the gamut from "squishy little targets" to "hard as a barnacle to remove", and combinations of turrets often give even the most experienced players trouble.
  • A game literally named Anti-Tower Defense. You select versions of certain robot creeps to casually walk (argh) through a progressively harder tower network.
  • Plants vs. Zombies on the Xbox 360 has the 2-player versus mode. The zombies' side has you attacking the plants and attempting to get into the house, while defending your targets from the plants' attacks. All the versions of the game have a simpler version of this in the "I, Zombie" minigame, where you have to pick zombies to attack a pre-selected set of plants.
  • Tower defense makes up half of the gameplay in League of Legends. Towers can dish incredible amounts of damage against heroes, but they will always target creeps first; the goal is to use teamwork, strategy and your minions to take out three enemy towers on each lane, then an Inhibitor that prevents you from spawning super creeps or "winions", then two final towers and finally the enemy's Nexus. Because the other team has the same goal, you play simultaneously as attacker and defender.
  • Stronghold, a series of castle-building games which are mostly defensive except for the rare mission where you play an invading army trying to get into an opponent's castle. These also involve setting up a complex supply chain, managing taxes and morale, but for the most part, the aim is to build a big wall around your keep, and stock it with as many archers and crossbowmen as possible to pick off the approaching invaders.
  • Dungeon Defenders has an event match called 'assault' where, "in an unexpected twist, YOU have to attack THEIR crystal!"
  • Pokémon Tower Defense also features sections where your 'Mons go on the attack.
  • Doggnation was originally designed as a Tower Defense game, but this eventually changed into more of a puzzle game where you have to help the "Doggs" carry specific blocks to upgrade their castle.
  • Dead Space Ignition has a Hacking Mini Game that is a tower Offense game. You send out an unlimited number of computer viruses to break down the computer firewalls and get to the computer program before time runs out.
  • Game Mod Red Alert 3: Paradox is unique in that it has BOTH sides of a tower defense game as RTS factions.
  • Defenders of Ardania, a Tower Defense game set in the Majesty universe, has you do defense with towers and offense with units at the same time.
  • The Mighty Quest For Epic Loot, at least if you're on the defense.
  • In City Conquest, both players have a city, and each player switches between offense and defense.
  • Ghost Hacker 2 has segments where you place Mooks to collect Data cubes from a security system. In the first game, it was a bonus level. Unlike many examples, your mooks can instantly destroy the enemy towers should they run into them or their "nodes".
  • Dragon Wars, when you aren't defending your own base from being attacked. The other point is to attack other players' bases with your dragons.
  • Royal Revolt and its sequel are similar. Most of the time, you're using your Player Character king/queen to attack other players' castles.
  • A bonus game mode in Dwarfs!?, called "Base Defend". In a twist, you have to build the maze beforehand by guiding your digger dwarf properly (although the more complex the maze is, the more expensive it is.)
  • Lego Star Wars Battles is a Pv P RTS game where both sides are the attackers. Thus, you have to defend your base while also destroying the enemy's base. Alternatively, you win by having the most turrets set up at the end of the round.


Alternative Title(s): Tower Defence

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