Tower defense games are usually considered to be a subgenre of strategy games. These games task you with strategically setting up resources and units to successfully defend against waves upon waves of enemies. Surely a fun permutation of the thinking man’s video game genre.
These kinds of games are a terrific way to pass the time and pass the time away. Not only are tower defense games thrilling, but some of the finest current tower defense games are also visually appealing, have killer music, or require you to use strategy.
This means double the fun and good times. Often, a tower defense setup will involve the creation of buildings, defensive towers as the name implies, and smashing artillery pieces with which you can obliterate enemies in style! Of course, you’re going to love this genre, if you’ve got the patience that is.
15. Bloons TD6 (PC/Mac OSX/iOS/Android)
It’s appropriate to start off the list with a kid-friendly and cute tower defense experience of high quality that is the ultimate release in a long-running series. Bloons TD 6's primary gameplay is similar to that of previous games in the Bloons Tower Defense series.
Bloons TD 6 is a tower defense game like the others in the series. Bloons TD 6 features 3D graphics, however, the game is largely played in a 2D perspective. This is a rather common trope in many tower defense experiences. Bloons TD 6 introduces new gaming mechanics that were not included in prior games.
Heroes are special types of towers that automatically level up as the game advances, making them stronger, however, the player can only place one Hero every game. Every round, heroes acquire a certain number of experience points, which level them up automatically, or they can be actively leveled up using in-game currency. It’s not a difficult game at all and in fact, it’s great for winding down after a hard day of work or study. Sometimes you just need a couple of balloons to shoot at.
14. Wrack: Exoverse (PC)
This is a unique take on the tower defense genre, as you play it from the first-person perspective. In Wrack: Exoverse, you must defend your Beacon. To successfully defend it, you must construct a maze of towers, blast waves of opponents, uncover powerful resources, and do all of this in randomly generated areas that are always changing.
Make a maze out of tower bases and add turrets to the top to guide enemies to their deaths. Upgrade your turrets for increased firepower, then finish your maze by adding controlling fields and exploding mines.
Aside from the towers you build, you also have access to a variety of weapons. Use your array of weaponry to get in there and take down the enemies yourself, from pistols and shotguns to extraterrestrial weapons. It’s fun, although you may find the level design and gameplay to be a tad bit repetitive. Nonetheless, it’s a fun romp for when you have some time to kill.
13. Sleep Tight (PC/Switch)
As kids, we all built our very own forts and fortresses with pillows and blankets. What if we built them to actually defend from enemies? Sleep Tight is quite the high-octane arcade-style twin-stick shooter with base-building aspects and nostalgia wrapped around it.
Construct your most powerful pillow fort during the day to protect your bedroom from hordes of monsters at night. It’s another unique entry on this list since it combines top-down shooter mechanics with uniquely themed base building mechanics. Of course, you have to employ both your own guns and those of your buildings to win. This makes for a hard-to-master gameplay loop, but it also works if you want to chill out.
12. OTTTD: Over The Top Tower Defense (PC/Mac OSX/Linux/iOS/Switch)
How ‘alien’ can an alien species be? Well, that’s a question well answered by this game. The types of aliens you have to fight are well and truly wild. OTTTD stands for Over The Top Tower Defense, and once you play it, you'll understand why.
You play as a commander for HEROCORP, the galaxy's fourth-largest private military corporation. Because the company's coffers had been depleted by a long period of peace, the research section produced Trans-Dimensional Rifts, which opened up lucrative prospects for war in other dimensions. Do you sense a statement here? I surely do.
To form up your squad of three battlefield employees in OTTTD, you can choose from seven different hero classes. The more action they see, the more XP they gain, allowing you to level them up through bespoke skill trees and unleash devastating combat powers during the fight.
There are more powers, skills, and weapons than you can count, so plan on spending a lot of time in this game! Let’s not spoil any information about the game’s enemies at all. You truly have to believe it when it’s claimed that the magic is finding out for yourself. Trust me, you’ll be beyond surprised and satisfied!
11. Aegis Defenders (PC/Mac OSX/PS4/Switch)
An expeditionary force makes its way to a land of long-lost abandoned civilizations. They begin to extract all the knowledge but are attacked by a wide variety of alien creatures trying to stop them. Wouldn’t this setting make for an excellent tower defense game?
That’s what the developers of Aegis Defenders thought. Explore the land of Elam, a beautiful yet perilous lost world. Dangerous creatures, forgotten ruins, and potent relics are scattered all over this world. The setting is also wonderfully portrayed, with sharp and focused pixel visuals and excellent color utilization.
In most tower defense games, it's difficult enough to defend one point, but that's only the beginning. In Aegis Defenders, you'll have to defend moving targets, targets with dynamic abilities like opening doors/weapons, and even targets who don't want to be protected as the game goes on.
Perhaps the best thing about Aegis Defenders is that you can easily link up with a buddy to play it co-op. Having that extra hand may end up being necessary because the enemies in Aegis Defenders simply do not let up at all! Good luck.
10. Grim Nights (PC)
If you’ve watched Seven Samurai, you’d know that the premise involves a Japanese peasant village defending themselves against bandits through strategic placement of barriers, traps, and fighting men. Imagine the exact same scenario but involving monsters.
That’s what Grim Nights is! A survival strategy indie game with side-scrolling and pixel visuals. Gather resources, expand your settlement, look for hidden treasures underneath, and train soldiers to defend against undead hordes. There are eleven different unit types to train, as well as a 7-8 hour single-player story spread across three different maps.
A prominent warning on the game’s Steam page states that it’s very hard and that you will die a few times. That is true, it’s quite hard. So be ready to invest quite a bit of time to get to grips with the mechanics of the game. It’s going to be necessary.
09. Kingdom Rush Frontiers - Tower Defense (PC/Mac OSX/Linux/iOS/Android)
The developers consistently market the Kingdom Rush Frontiers series as the ‘world’s most devilishly addictive defense game’. They probably knew full well what they were making. Command your forces on an epic adventure as you defend exotic areas of the game’s setting against dragons, man-eating plants, and terrible subterranean zombies - all while using flashy towers, skills, heroes, and other gear to whittle down your foes.
For returning fans of the franchise, the core gameplay is still intimately familiar and the new additions are fresh. It’s filled to the brim with rousing pieces of music, great thematic graphics, and more. There is more than enough to keep you entertained as you log in hours into this game fighting its several dozen different types of enemies.
Combat management isn’t simple, however, and like some other entries on this list, you have to spend some time to get to grips with it. The story and lore are not as deep as some may have liked but the in-game encyclopedia is more than good enough to satiate your fill for immersion and learning.
08. Infested Planet (PC)
Mythical beasts, zombies, demons, and the like as enemies are fine and well. One type of enemy that never gets tiring is alienkind. The absolutely unredeemable types of aliens. You are in battle against a 100,000-strong alien army, commanding a team of five elite troops.
You must outmaneuver and outsmart the adversary while being surrounded on all sides. The enemy attacks relentlessly from all sides while making short work of your turrets and defenses. A lot of the gameplay will necessitate falling back or repositioning and setting up defenses all over again.
Your alien foes can adapt to your capabilities by growing bulkier and getting thicker skin. Assemble your squad and arm them with flamethrowers and laser rifles. Begin constructing a siege gun to provide fire assistance.
It may sound complicated and hard to learn but it’s actually presented quite simply, in an easily digestible manner. Alien adaptation mutations are truly random and the levels are also procedurally generated, so you’ll be on alert all the time. It’s a strong, immersive experience and well worth your time.
07. Space Run (PC)
This entry combines base building with tower defense in a way rarely seen ever before. You’ll be surprised by its depth and the way it pulls off such a complex concept. Space can be a perilous environment. You're a Space Transporter, a dangerous job that entails delivering precious cargo from one location to another across deadly space.
When you factor in dense asteroid fields that regularly cross the space lanes, armed-to-the-teeth pirate starfighters and spaceships eager to shred your spacecraft for your cargo, and the other Space Transporters you're up against, this ostensibly easy operation becomes complicated.
As your reputation increases, take on more challenging missions: delivering more valuable goods to its destination will reward you credits, which you may use to unlock new ship modules and upgrades that will help you survive.
A scoring system is boasted by this game, which means you can compete with your friends to see who gets higher scores on each individual mission. Sadly, co-op is not available because the crisp and fun gameplay would have made for a great co-op experience.
06. X-Morph: Defense (PC/PS4/Xbox One/Switch)
What if you could play as an alien species and fight humanity’s combined forces in a life-or-death effort to subjugate Earth? X-Morph: Defense has got you covered. A one-of-a-kind combination of a top-down shooter and a tower defense approach.
You are the X-Morph, an alien race that has invaded Earth in order to plunder its resources and terraform the planet's surface. Build your strategy by carefully picking several types of alien towers in the build mode, or get right into the action in the fight mode. Create mazes for incoming adversaries in a setting that allows for a great deal of planning flexibility.
To aid your defense or simply to enjoy a spectacle of enormous destruction, demolish buildings and collapse bridges. You'll be able to deploy a variety of alien weapons and defense methods that you've never seen before in this genre. You will mainly be defending huge X-Morph structures known as ‘Harvesters’, from oncoming waves of human forces.
The game's surroundings are meticulously detailed and nearly totally destructible. From modest picket fences to massive skyscrapers, there's something for everyone. Any bridge or building in the game can collapse, and the collapse is dynamically recreated with realistic physics. The damage has more than just an aesthetic impact; it can also have a considerable impact on the battlefield's layout.
Unique gameplay scenarios are created by combining dynamic terrain, laser barriers, and real-time calculated opponent routes. All this combined, it’s especially great that split-screen co-op is available. Endless hours of fun await you and the friend you bring.
05. Bad North: Jotunn Edition (PC/Mac OSX/PS4/Xbox One/iOS/Android/Switch)
This is a banger in the all-familiar village tower defense genre. Instead of fighting demons, ghosts, and zombies, you fight crazed Vikings out to plunder your village. Your home is under siege. The king has been killed by Viking invaders. It will be up to you to stage your defenses as you climb to assume your father's place as monarch.
But, the fight is a fight for survival and the game’s challenging nature makes it sufficiently clear. Position and reposition your men to combat the Vikings, who each have their own counter-measures to the threats you bring. Choose your battles wisely and carefully organize your evacuations! If you lose a commander, it's game over; if you lose everything, it's game over.
Beautiful procedurally-generated islands and adorable warriors are set against the blood-stained realities of war in this sweetly deadly game. You direct the war's broad strokes, issuing high-level orders to your soldiers, who do their best to carry them out in the heat of combat. It's deep and accessible, with simple player inputs concealing a dynamic combat simulation that welcomes newcomers while challenging veterans.
04. Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break (PC/PS4/Xbox One/Switch/Stadia)
Rock of Ages 3: Make & Break is a competitive tower defense game from ACE Team, which has honed and polished its quirky, Monty Python-esque humor into a completely polished experience for the 2020s.
Create and share your own levels to compete with friends and strangers online in a real-time combination of furious tower defense and massive boulder-racing arcade action, or jump into the expansive, gut-busting story featuring odd and irreverent interpretations of classic characters from history.
The objective is to rush to the enemy's base's far end and destroy it with your boulder. In up to 4-player online multiplayer, or head-to-head in 2-player split-screen action, construct defenses and race to demolish your opponents' base. It’s a more than a fun combination of dead-pan humor and hilarious visuals that will keep you and your friends entertained for long hours.
03. They Are Billions (PC/PS4/Xbox One)
Steampunk zombie apocalypse? Yes, please. They Are Billions is set in the late 22nd century in North America, following a global outbreak caused by a mutated form of rabies known as Rabies Z, which has resulted in a zombie apocalypse, particularly in the world's megacities.
While the survivors sought to build settlements and even fortresses to stave off the zombie hordes at first, their technology finally failed them. A few thousand humans remain, united under the leadership of General-turned-Emperor Quintus Crane, and construct and protect themselves in Empire City, which is built beneath a crater that the zombies are unable to access.
The apocalypse, on the other hand, has resulted in a significant technical regression, with technology currently at a level comparable to that of the nineteenth century. They Are Billions immerses the player in a steampunk-themed, zombie-infested environment that is generated at random.
The player's purpose is to construct a defensive base by planning the layout and defenses, exploring the area, gathering resources, and expanding while combating the local zombie population. Infected settlements, known as Villages of Doom, can be pillaged for resources, albeit this can result in a backlash of zombie swarms.
Though zombies attack at random but slow intervals throughout the game, vast hordes of zombies will attack at specific periods, focused on one side of the base until a final wave of zombies attacks from all angles and in massive numbers.
In order to keep zombies from penetrating base defenses and infecting non-defensive structures, the player must keep them out of confined spaces. There’s a spiraling story to discover…maybe you’ll find out what caused all this?
02. Dungeon Defenders II (PC/PS4/Xbox One)
The action of Dungeon Defenders II takes place in Etheria, which is under siege. Create powerful defenses to freeze, burn, and destroy your opponents, then take a sword and join the fight. Build a band of heroes, equip them with loot, and defeat the hordes solo or in four-player online co-op! In order to save Etheria, you'll need to enlist the help of a cast of characters.
Wizards, robots, and thieves are among the heroes who bring unique talents and defenses to the battlefield. Create a lethal grid of laser beams. Submerge your opponents in quicksand. You sicko, build a wall of flamethrowers and watch the world burn. You have a vast range of defenses at your disposal, and you'll need them all to keep the Eternia Crystals safe from the army of the Old Ones.
Of course, you'll have to engage in fighting yourself sometimes. To blast through hordes of opponents, grab a sword, a bow, or a laser shotgun. You'll find loot and Shards to equip and modify your heroes as you progress through the game.
You'll go through ancient woodlands, gigantic castles, spooky temples, active volcanoes, and dungeons, as the game's name suggests. With such variance among protagonists, of course, there is co-op support. Get into the action!
01. Plants vs Zombies (PC/Mac OSX/PS3/Xbox 360/Windows Phone/Android/iOS/Blackberry)
This is it, the game that kicked off the popularity of tower defense games in the current gaming era. Most of you reading this have probably played Plants vs Zombies at some point in your life. For those who don’t know, Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense game in which the player must protect a home against zombies.
The player's house is on the left side of the lawn, which is separated into a grid. Different sorts of plants are placed on separate grid squares by the player. Shooting, bursting, and blocking are all diverse ways for plants to defend themselves. Varied types of zombies have different characteristics and are vulnerable to different plants.
The player can only choose a limited number of plant varieties from seed packets at the start of each level and must pay to place them using the "sun" currency. The player collects light by clicking on the sun that appears randomly on the lawn or by using plants that produce sun, such as Sunflowers and Sunshrooms. Each plant type recharges at a different rate between each placement.
A shovel can be used to dig up a plant if the player wants to remove it. When a zombie reaches the left edge of a lane, it activates its Lawnmower, which kills all zombies in that lane and depletes after one usage.
The player must restart if another zombie reaches the end of that lane. This recipe turned out to be a smash hit with gamers and casual gamers all around the world and the name Plants vs Zombies became a household name.
The franchise continues to this day but I decided to include the originator for simply that, being the originator. For returning players, experience the magic all over again. For new players, experience a new magic.
