Immortal Defense

[tuftears]

I've made the acquaintance of a new genre of 'mini-games' lately that I find rather interesting - 'Tower Defense'. You build towers along a set path along which your enemies are forced to advance; your towers can hit the enemies, but they don't usually have the ability to hit you back. They attempt to get through the path to the end, where they can assault your undefended base/civilians/treasure; you try to destroy them all before they can overwhelm you with speed or numbers and strength.

A good introduction to the genre is David Scott's Flash Element TD. At first the struggle is merely to survive; then when you notice other people's high scores, you'll wonder my gosh, how did they get so many points? and start thinking about how to improve your score, by minimizing the amount you spend on your towers while still being able to defeat the enemy.

Turns out there's a space-based version of Tower Defense, Immortal Defense. It works an anime-styled story into the Tower Defense genre, neatly explaining why the enemies would move along the paths helplessly, unable to strike back against your towers.

In this variation of Tower Defense, you don't just defend your path with the towers you build - 'Points', or emanations of your willpower in Immortal Defense. Your very cursor itself is a mobile tower which can bombard the enemies rapidfire, or you can click the right mouse button to charge up a super attack, then release it.

You don't keep your Points from one mission to another; instead, you're given a set number of Points, different types, so in one, you might have several Circuit Points, which fire a destructive line between the nodes, in another you might have an assortment of Strategist Points, which do a percentage of an enemy's health instead of straight damage, making them weak against small ships, but strong against large ones. This reinforces the 'puzzle game' aspect of Tower Defense, where you need to figure out how to allocate your resources to beat the enemy.

The higher your score on finishing a mission, the more money you enter the next mission with, and your score is essentially reset between campaigns. If you replay a mission, you keep the highest score you achieved.

If you like puzzle games and real-time strategy games, this is a great combination! The demo gives you two of the six campaigns to play, and the full version costs $23, but you get a lot of gameplay out of just the demo.

Comments

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

Flash TD bookmarked. My work efficiency is already suffering };>.

-Deuce

[rinku.livejournal.com]

Hi, I made this game (and just saw the link to my site from this), nice to see a fellow LJ user playing it ^_^. Sorry if this is intrusive.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Nice to hear from the author! Yes, it's a great game.

I've noticed I get an odd sense of vertigo from playing it too much though, I suspect the visual blurring effect may be partially at fault. It's very... Well, trippy.

[rinku.livejournal.com]

Some people like it enough to set the effects to 100, some dislike it and set the effects lower -- if you set effects to 0 you get hardly any of that. I kept it on 30 as a compromise, but it seems to have displeased both types of player :D

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I'll have to try that. I do like the effects on an aesthetic level.

I wonder if some of it is because I was tabbing between ID and WoW? Going from 2d thinking to 3d and back, as it were. I'll write in if changing the effects helps or not. :)

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

I first found "tower defense" games via nodwick.com (where the author/artist of the comic regularly posts "links to cool stuff" with each update). Interesting stuff. I wish I could MAKE games like that. It seems like it ought to be within the realm of possibility, if only I'd invest in whatever tools I need, and put the time into it. Once upon a time, ages ago, making simple video games was my big hobby, but that was back when computers routinely came with everything you needed to make your own games (and for stuff that didn't come with it - such as a compiler for the C-64 - it wasn't hard to get).

Yeah. Commodore 64. Unless you count text adventure games in college - and that wasn't much closer on the timeline - that's been a pretty long while ago. ;)

Oh well.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I keep thinking I should make some small games... And that Java should be, theoretically, an ideal cross-platform browser-playable gaming platform for it.

The problem is getting or writing a nice Java gaming library and then, of course, lining up all the pieces together.

[stryck.livejournal.com]

My first TD games were all custom maps on battle.net using Warcraft III.

Lots of fun, but also lots of people who haven't a clue. *sigh*

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, I thought all those Tower Defense games had a sort of "Warcraft RTS" vibe going on. =)

[rowyn]

Hee! First thing I thought was 'A whole *game* designed around tower-rushing. Well, I guess it's not a sleazy tactic if that's the entire point of the game, at least.' :)

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

So addictive. I managed 11K on it so far on Tower Defense. :)

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

I'm still trying to just survive to the endgame =^.^=.

-Deuce

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Few arrow towers, then when you get to your first research point, a fire tower in the center will do great damage! After that, a water tower positioned well can bunch the enemies up for the fire towers to do more damage. You will never need an earth tower, by the time you can make them, you can also make rocket towers, and those do amazing damage.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

That's been my build pattern- a cannon tower in the mix early is helpful as well. Air towers help if it'll be an air wave, but don;t build them before; and really as you get a fire tower on level 8 if you go that route, that works fine.

A Water tower on early map-points is helpeful. Upgrade that one instantly to max out the splash damage.

After you get rocket towers, make sure to sell back all your arrow, cannon, air towers. Money in the bank will get you interest, and they stop having good value.

--Chiaroscuro

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

The rocket tower was fun (by "I haven't reached the endgame" I mean "I got to level 36 but not 39", not "I'm dying early"). However, I didn't upgrade it enough for it to mow down all of the super-tough creeps in the later stages.

The hint guide on the site suggests building as few towers as possible early, getting as few types of tower as possible, and plowing the trees into interest increases to build endgame towers (fire, usually).

My own approach has been to line ridges (overlooking two paths) with cannons (meat and potatoes, being fast and splashy) and a handful of arrows (for air levels), water towers in the middle of the ridge emplacements, and going for fire and rocket towers from midgame to endgame. My problem seems to be that I spend too much money, so I'm not able to build enough heavy-hitting towers at the end of the game. YMMV.

[foxmagic.livejournal.com]

Hey, guess who found me on Facebook.com?

Priscilla Louie.

Now there's a name from the past, eh? :)

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

Indeed! How is she doing?

[foxmagic.livejournal.com]

No idea yet - the only contact was her friending me on it. I sent her a message earlier this evening asking her if anything's been going on since the last time we caught up. :)