I couple days ago, I posted a walkthrough for Helix Defense, and last week I reviewed the Casual Collective, home to the Multiplayer Desktop Tower Defense. Koopa has been reviewing Tower Defense games for quite a long time, and he’s reviewed quite a bit of them. Let’s review his reviews.

Most recently, Koopa did a review of Flash Empires 2: Christmas Crusades. He said it was “cute” and you should play it. Last week, Koopa reviewed the ever popular Fratboy Girlfriend TD. Lots of people have been playing that game, apparently. Last month, Koopa gave a walkthrough and review of Shock Defence, which he said was one of his personal favorite game.  Bloons Tower Defense is a fun game about monkeys breaking balloons, but with small replay value.
So there you have it. I hope that you enjoy these tower defense games.

Helix Defense is a Tower Defense game written in flash.  This is a walkthrough to get you to the high scores for Helix Defense, which can be found here:

http://www.helixfox.com/gamehelixdef.php

The key to the walkthrough will be relying on one Chain Turret and a couple of Slowing Turrets. The extra money will be spent on generators to get a good income and interest rate. Each wave automatically begins about 10 seconds after the previous one ends, and this is the time that should be spent building what you need for the coming wave. If you are following through this walkthrough in real time, pause it as soon as the wave ends, while your money summary is scrolling by. The money summary will continue to scroll, but the game will be paused. You can tell because the shadow ships aren’t flying by the screen when it’s paused. (there’s no other way to tell) If you have a turret selected, the pause button is hidden. So remember to deselect the turrets when you’re done upgrading them by clicking on the path the ships follow.

Without any further ado, here is the walkthrough, with building instructions for the first 18 waves.

Wave 1: Build a Chain Turret in the lower-left-most spot on the main square island in the middle. This should be able to hit ships briefly as they come down the first path, and briefly as they pass along the bottom of the screen. Also build one Generator in the very top left of the screen. Hit the START button.

Wave 2: Build 3 more Generators going down the left side of the screen

Wave 3: Upgrade the Chain Turret to +1

Wave 4: Build 2 more Generators going down the left

Wave 5: Upgrade the Chain Turret to +2

Wave 6: Build 7 more Generators

Wave 7: Build 1 Slowing Turret halfway down the first hallway on the left, on the right side of the hallway. Align in one square above the Chain Turret. Also build 2 more Generators.

Wave 8: Upgrade the Chain Turret to +3. Build 2 more Generators.

Wave 9: Build 4 more Generators

Wave 10: Upgrade the Chain Turret to +4

Wave 11: Build 8 more Generators

Wave 12: Upgrade the Chain Turret to +5

Wave 13: Build 15 more Generators

Wave 14: Upgrade the Chain Turret to +6

Wave 15: Build 11 more Generators

Wave 16: Upgrade the Slowing Turret three times to +4. Build a new Slowing Turret six squares later along the same wall and upgrade it four times to +4.

Wave 17: Upgrade the Chain Turret to +7.

Wave 18: Fill the whole map with Generators.

Wave 19 on: Build new turrets every wave.

Your point is going to be to spend your energy leaving about 600 energy left. This is how much you need, with income and interest, to refill your energy back to the cap of 1500. If you don’t spend it, it’s lost, so invest it in turrets every wave.
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And here comes Santa, here comes santa, in this flash tower defence game! Here comes santa!  Well not really.  It is santa’s evil brother, or that is what they want you to think!

http://www.addictinggames.com/flashempires2.html

This game is like Flash Empires but less complicated and bulky!  You also are trying to kill little elves and other randomness.  The game is cute!  You should play it… lets get down to the differnt towers there are!

Candy Cane Tower:  Cost 300 – Shoots candy canes at your enemies

Ginger Bread Tower – Cost 500 – Shoots ginger bread men at your enemies

Present Bomb  Tower – Cost 1000 – Shoots out presents with hidden bombs inside.

Tree Tower – Cost 700 – Strong tree tower that shoots out ornaments

Ice Canes – Cost 400 – Freezes your north pole’s candy canes so that when they hit an enemy, the enemy slows down

Uber Tower – Cost 4000 – This tower will slaughter anyone who comes near with a VERY fast fire rate

Well first off, I would like to state that I played this game at work so I did not have a chance to beat it.  I know…I know…I hate writing reviews without beating the game first.  This is rare

I would like to state my disappointment with the uber tower.  By description, it makes you believe that you place it down and it will do mass damage and no one can touch it!  I built up enough money for it, built it in a area where a lot of enemies are and watched it fall within 2 seconds.  Much crying occured! 

Also note that there is a little arrow at the bottom of the screen to allow you to switch between towers, troops and Misc.

Troops

Rudolph – Cost 250 – Guard elf armed with a candy spear.  Riding rudolph.

Toy Elf – Cost 50 – An elf spends much of his time making toys and isn’t very well combat oriented

Bow elf – Cost 100 – Elf that has been highly trained with a bow.

Guard Elf – Cost 150 – Elf that has been minimally trained for combat situations.

Santa – Cost 1500 – The pwner of all pwners.  The bruceless of all fighters.  This guy owns.

Ginger bread man – cost 250 – A very strong home made treat that can pound through the enemies

The only person I found worth investing in is santa.  He truely does kick ass. 

MISC – Self explainitory…

The game is fun and worth a play.  If you liked Flash Empires, you will like this game.  It is done a little bit better and more organized.  Game is a 8 and replay value is a 7.  Get playing guys!

Tower Defense games have become a new genre of game, and two of the pioneers of this genre have joined forces to create a new place to play online games: The Casual Collective. They are finishing up the site and it will be open to the public within a few days. The concept of the site is that you can make friends, who join your “collective” (buddy list), and then you can join groups with other people of similar interest. When one of your friends starts a game, you can see that on your screen so you can join in the fun. The site also has all the leaderboards and forums you would expect, making it very well-made.

The highlight of the site is Multiplayer Desktop Tower Defence (MPDTD). This game does to Tower Defense games what TetriNET did to Tetris. The basic concept of the game is that you have to build a maze out of towers, which shoot at creeps which try to get through or past your maze. The creeps come in waves, each wave starting as soon as any player finishes the previous wave. So if you fall behind in the game, you have to work to catch up, or start to overwhelm your maze. You get points for finishing a wave first, each creep killed, and how much life you have left, and the person who completes all 50 waves with the most points, wins. There are also many different options and variations for the game, and many players on the site have specialized in just one type. Personally, I prefer the Spawn Holepunch mode, and if you join the site, be sure to join my group, Spawn Holepunch.

The second game which was made available to us beta testers is Buggle. In this game, there are a hundred buggles, which bounce around the screen and look like single-celled organisms. They go in random directions, and then all stop, and each of up to four players puts a marker somewhere in the mix. Each buggle then turns a color for each player based on how close they are to the marker that’s placed, or to another buggle that’s changed colors. The rest bounce around until they get close enough to a marker or a colored buggle. Once all of the buggles are colored, each player places another marker, which they can use to cut off their opponents or go somewhere new. After both rounds, the number of colored buggles are counted and points awarded. There is also a SuperBuggles mode where bonus and penalty buggles appear mixed in for those who nab them.

The final game they launched before going live is Desktop Armada, a ship combat game for two players. Each player starts on one side of the screen and launches boats at the other player along one of several different routes. You spend money on ships and upgrades, earning money by controlling more of the screen and having more boats still alive. There are four different types of boats, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. You can also play with “Admirals” turned on, where you can pick a slant to put on your ships, such as extra defense, or making them faster.

Additionally, the original Flash Element TD, which is only single-player, is available on the site. Flash Element TD 2 is due to be released any day now, and will be on the site. The new upgrades today also include a single-player version of the MPDTD game for training. Also, a Desktop Armada: Missions single-player game will be released shortly. So the site is still expanding, and they are working on new games to entertain us all.

All told, this is a great site to sign up for, and is loads of fun. It offers several different games to chose from, and both single-player and multi-player games. I highly recommend it, give it two thumbs up, five stars, ten points, or however you want to rate it. Be sure to visit the site at www.casualcollective.com.

And the next game on the block is….FRATBOY GIRLFRIEND TD!!!

http://www.addictinggames.com/fratboygirlfriendtd.html

The game starts off like this…Defend your girlfriend by placing towers on the green areas to destroy enemy units as they march down the path.  The faster you kill them, the more money you will receive.  If 20 units get to the tower alive, you lose your girlfriend.  Unlock the animations by successfully defeating enemies.  Each tower has pros and cons and some can only hurt certain units.  There is time between each wave to setup – or you can use the arrow by the time line to jump to the next wave.

Archery Tower – Land & Air – Cost 50 – Basic tower, low damage but fast.  Half damage against armored units.

Cannon Tower – Land only – Cost 100 – Advanced high damage tower is god against armored units

Magic Tower – Land only – Cost 500 – Damages all nearest land units by magic field.  Half damage against magic resistant units

Air Tower – Air only – Cost 600 – This tower is the best choice for destroying air units

Trap Tower – Land & Air – Cost 1000 – This tower stops the enemy fro a moment and brings you double profit when eliminating the unit.

Pillbox – Land & Air – Cost 2000 – Very fast and expensive tower equipped with machine guns.  Half damage against armored units.

This game is your average tower defence game.  The strategy that I have taken is to place most of the units in the middle part of the green.  I found that cannon’s work well for the land units.  I used two air units to take care of the flying units.  I found the major problem with this game is that the towers and upgrades are too expensive.  The game ramps up quickly at the end levels and you find not enough money to take out the units.  The animations are rather humorous as well but not really necessary.  If you like tower games, this game is worth the investment as it is very fun to play.  I give the initial gameplay a 9 and replay value a 10!

Here is another game from addictinggames.com called Bloons Tower Defence 2.  You can play the direct link here.

http://www.addictinggames.com/bloonstowerdefense2.html

The game is your basic tower defence game.  Its niche is that all of the towers are monkey based except for a few and you are destroying balloons instead of critters.  With that said, lets go to our defence characters:

Dart Monkey – Cost 250 – Shoots a single dart.  Can upgrade to piercing darts and long ranged darts.  These monkeys are cheap and rather deadly with the piercing darts.  The piercing dart will pop 2 balloons instead of one. 

Tack Shooter – Cost 340 – Shoots volley of tacks in 8 directions.  Can upgrade its shoot speed and its range.  I did not invest into a lot of these.  I found them to be ineffective in the fight against the balloon.

Ice Ball – Cost 385 – Freezes nearby bloons.  Frozen bloons are immune to dark and tacks, but bombs will destroy them.  Can upgrade to increased freeze time, and larger freeze radius.  These are good to slow down the enemy bloons.  If you have a few cannons, it makes for even better attacking as well.

Cannon – Cost 520 – Launches a bomb that explodes on impact.  Can upgrade to bigger bombs and longer range.  As all tower defence games, without a few cannons, you are sunk.  I would have at least one or two on the board at all times.

Road Spikes – Cost 25 – Place these road spikes on the track to pop bloons.  Can pop 10 bloons before wearing out.  Road spikes only last until the end of the round.  I used this extensively but they are a waste of money.  Most tower defence games allow you to keep this weapon from round to round making it a great defence tool.  If you invest in the road spikes too early on, you will not have enough money to invest in other weapons.

Monkey Glue – Cost 35 – Monkey glue slows down bloons.  Each blob can slow down 20 bloons before wearing out.  Monkey glue only lasts until the end of the round. I did not really use this since I had the Ice Balls.  The game has “tips” and they suggest to use this.  I just didn’t need to.

Boomerang – Cost 475 – Throws a boomerang that follows a curved path back to the tower.  Can pop 2 bloons at once.  Sonic boom upgrade allows popping of frozen bloons.  I tried to use a few of these and I did not see the cost advantage.  I would not invest in this and go for more dart monkeys or cannons.

Super Monkey – Cost 3600 – Super monkey shoots incredibly fast.  Can upgrade to epic range or laser vision!  Laser vision is the same as piercing darts except that it can pierce iced bloons as well.  The super monkey is the best investment in the game.  I would invest in more super monkeys than go for the laser vision though.  Laser vision costs around 4k while another super monkey is 3600.  It is worth having more guns than pop multiple bloons at once.

Bloons – While there are a few different types of bloons, I do not exactly know what they are.  The game throws a lot of bloons at you and if you are doing a good job, you pop them before you can figure out what it does.  Lead bloons can only be popped by cannons and black bloons are immune to cannons.  Other than that, your guess is as good as mine.

I beat the game by having 3 cannons on the board and invested in 3 ice balls in a few key corners and when I could afford it, super monkeys.  I had past level 50 on easy with only 2 super monkeys, but I invested in the laser vision and I wish I had 3 super monkeys.  Make sure you save up the monkey for the super monkeys!

All in all, it is a fun game with a small replay value.  I would rather play traditional tower defence games due to the fact that the money management is a little bit better and there are more upgrades that you can invest in.  All in all, I give this game a 7 out of 10 and replay value a 4.