Tower Defense

The Tower Defense (often shortened in TD ) is a type of Video game often played in the strategy games in real-time like Warcraft III or Starcraft, and which appears now on Internet in the form of plays in flash.

The objective is to defend a zone against successive waves of enemies moving on a route, while building and improving gradually of the defensive towers.

Origin

The origin of this kind of play is dubious. This type of play existed already at the end of the years 1990 pennies of the plays such as Age off Empires but without really democratizing in spite of one (relative) success near these players. The play Starcraft made it possible to pose the bases of the play, this one being named at the time Turret Defense .

It is only with the play Warcraft III that TD will be renamed Tower Defense . During the development of Warcraft III beta , two developers were credited to have re-examined the bases of this type of play: Mr.123 and Evilseed (pseudonyms), but it is only about speculation, the concept of this play existing quite front.

However, since the play Warcraft III , the plays of the type TD diversified and democratized.

Current rise

Nowadays, the phenomenon Tower Defense is particularly widespread, in particular in plays like Warcraft III. These plays having the characteristic to let the players create news " easily; maps" (charts of play) and to specify there their rules thanks to an editor of play.

Moreover, thanks to technology Flash (Adobe-Macromedia), this type of plays was largely democratized while going more accessible (exemption from payment, facilitated use, any required installation, etc) to meet fast needs Net surfers.

Principles

The turns are used to eliminate from the enemies while drawing on each adversary with their range. Each killed enemy reports “points” which will be used with construction or the improvement of turns on the chart as play. The turns are often differentiated by:

the damage which they cause;
their type of attack;
their speed of attack;
their cost;
and certain specific capacities (for example to slow down the displacement of the enemies).

Types of TD

There exist two types of Tower Defense: with or without labyrinth ( mazing ).

in a TD with labyrinth, the player can place his turns on the route of the enemies who circumvent them. The strategy is then to create ways which force the waves of enemies to remain more the possible for a long time under fire of the turns.
in a TD without labyrinth, the turns can be placed only along the route of the enemies. The goal is then to find the placement optimal and the best combination of turns.

Examples

Desktop Tower Defense, a play in flash with labyrinth
Vector TD, a play in flash without labyrinth
Flash Element Tower Defense, a play in flash inspired by the world of Warcraft III without labyrinth

Sources

World-Editor
Battle.net
ElementTD
Digg.com

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