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Tower Defense - Why?
Taramoor
StorytellerRegistered User regular
StorytellerRegistered User regular
I have been perusing some of the online flash game sites and am curious about something. The genre known as "Tower Defense" is a rather strange one that isn't really present anywhere else. It's not something that has really lent itself to a retail game even though it's a pretty huge genre online.
Why is it fun?
I love a very small number of the Tower Defense titles, but I'd be hard pressed to explain what it is that makes a good one. Offhand I can think of things like personal challenges, or the strategy involved in building an impenetrable wall of death, but even then it just seems like there's so little feedback from success in the game. I kind of look at it this way: If you're doing it right, you can leave the game alone and you'll win without having to play.
I'm not looking for a list of your top ten tower defense titles, or any recommendations or anything, I just want to know why you enjoy this genre if you do, and if you don't, why not?
Why is it fun?
I love a very small number of the Tower Defense titles, but I'd be hard pressed to explain what it is that makes a good one. Offhand I can think of things like personal challenges, or the strategy involved in building an impenetrable wall of death, but even then it just seems like there's so little feedback from success in the game. I kind of look at it this way: If you're doing it right, you can leave the game alone and you'll win without having to play.
I'm not looking for a list of your top ten tower defense titles, or any recommendations or anything, I just want to know why you enjoy this genre if you do, and if you don't, why not?
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Anyway, I just don't get it either. I don't see the 'fun' in it, but I suspect it has something to do with a planning thing. Maybe if people who enjoy those games ever tried a Sim City style game they'd orgasm on the spot.
pixeljunk monsters. it's fantastic - i love it because of the co-op, but that's sort of unique amongst tower-defence games, as is the character driven coin-collection gameplay. it's good because you're a lot less disjointed from the playing field than in other tower games. other than that, the attraction is probably very similar - not that i can put an exact finger on it.
At PAX I played a Tower Defence game called "Defence Grid: The Awakening", it was pretty neat. It is the first Tower defence game even with a narrative. It's being made by "Hidden Path", a bunch of industry vets, including Mark Terrano (ex-Ensemble Studios) and Dave McCoy (ex-FASA).
Here's my writeup of it if you're interested.
I was honestly not aware of that. I went through the SP Campaign, got raped by burly men in the online a couple of times, and then called it good.
Did the genre start there or something?
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A good tower defense game is rarely "if you're doing it right you don't have to play". You should always be upgrading, building, and planning. Many games have strategies that after a long enough time 'break' the game a bit, and you basically CAN leave it alone while your uber shit destroys anything coming at you. This is a satisfying feeling, though instantly kills my interest in that particular game.
Anyhow, unlike the OP postulated I don't particularly care for Sim type games, despite sounding on paper like I would. The closest to a pure 4X game I play and enjoy (thoroughly) is Sins of a Solar Empire.
Indeed.
Then I build bombers to the unit cap and bomb the enemy into the stone age.
I guess it really isn't that much of a stretch from "Zerg Rush, Johnny!" to a game comprised entirely of fending off a Zerg Rush... over and over again.
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I disagree.
A tower defense game called "Immortal Defense" which FyreWulff from the forums worked on has a story and pseudo cutscenes in it.
It's also fun.
It started in SC or possibly even earlier, actually. Not popular at all, I saw maybe a dozen TD maps in SC total, but it definitely existed prior to WC3.
Golems, now that's a custom map I miss. Went out of fashion by WC3, but I played it more than the actual game at one point.
Oh, ok.
It's the first one that both me and the devs had ever heard of.
Wanna burst some dev bubble?
I wouldn't do that, every time I hear about a bubble bursting in the news the economy goes a little further into the tank.
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But does their game involve a gay cyborg and other great characters?
Yeah so is Immortal Defense.
Actually here is the story behind it.
http://studioeres.com/immortal/story
Its a sci fi love story. With gay cyborgs.
...Aaaaaanywaaay, I've never really analyzed why I like them so much but I guess it would be the trial and error to attempt to reach a theoretical perfect defense. I like the exploration and experimentation of it, trying to find what works and scrapping what doesn't, as well as (in multiplayer ones) copying other people's ideas that seem to be working.
Bettering yourself at a pre-defined goal. It's like asking why someone would enjoy playing Geometry Wars or Pac man. Strive for the high score, elude the threat of defeat, push to be more effective and a better player. Speed runs, running the 100 meter dash, and working out all fit into this same arena.
Some tower defense games you can sit back and do nothing while others are an endless pulse pounding event. I prefer the latter myself but it's all dependent on the design and development therein.
Any WC3 unit had the ability of becoming a tower and the much more flexible map editor (compared to SC) made the genre what it is today.
Also, Pixeljunk Monsters is an amazing little game. My girlfriend loves to play it with me.
No, there were many awesome RPGs and other cool UMS games on SC. In fact, SC's RPGs were more fun than Warcraft's, IMO.
I think WC3's best ones occasionally missed the point by making them single player + other people. The sheer amount of options in elemental tower D was pretty cool though. It was worth trying several other strategies after you had found one that you could win with.
PixelJunk Monsters is really great if you want an actual console TD. The problem is that it gets sort of stale after a while when you have to work up to unlocking the same towers every single map.
EDIT: Yeah, and SC's UMS games were excellent. Protect the Queen was another fun one and so was matrix defense (basically a TD where you used units instead of towers to build walls). It also had the earliest version of the gametype that would become DOTA.
Aeon of Strife.
It takes the basic TD idea of building towers and walls and traps and stuff, but then adds in a character. Basically, to repair things, you have to actually move your character, Lock, around the map to do it. He is also able to fight baddies to help out, and when killing enemies you don't automatically gain the resources, but rather Lock has to be nearby for it to be drawn towards him. On top of that, you don't gather "scrap" (which is used to unlock new turrets/materials/traps/helpers) unless Lock is present upon the death of an enemy.
It's not -exactly- like tower defense, in that the enemies seem to attack your defenses rather than just walking stupidly by them, but I think that makes it interesting-plus, the AI adapts. If they attacked one section of your fortress and got destroyed, they'll attack differently the next round and search for a weak spot, which makes for an interesting little challenge.
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I heard Immortal Defense was supposed to be awesome but I found it boring like all the other ones. Haven't gotten addicted to a Flash/casual game in a while I guess.