Desktop Tower Defense

Nintendo exclusive

One of the most played online games is now coming to DS!! Highly acclaimed and awarded, Desktop Tower Defense has been played over 66 million times. This highly addictive game is true to the original game style while adding compelling new features that utilize the DS's innovative technology!

Released: 3 March 2007
Platforms: Nintendo DS
Genres: Real-time strategy Strategy Tower defense
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Themes: Comedy
Engine: Adobe Flash
Country: United States
Age ratings: ESRB E

About

Desktop Tower Defense is a Flash-based tower defense browser game created by Paul Preece in March 2007. The game had been played over 15.7 million times as of July 2007, and was one of Webware 100's top ten entertainment web applications of 2007. Desktop Tower Defense is available in an English, Spanish, German, French, or Italian interface. In May 2009, a commercial Nintendo DS version became available.

Keywords

tower defense
death
boss fight
upgradeable weapons
touch controls
difficulty level
in-game achievements
one-handed gameplay
static defense

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

Desktop Tower Defense is played on a map resembling an office desktop. The player must stop a set number of enemies, known in the genre as "creeps", from reaching a set point on the playing field. This is accomplished by building and upgrading towers that shoot at, damage and kill the enemy creeps before they are able to reach their objective. Unlike many other tower defense games, the path of the creeps themselves is not set; instead, the towers built determine the path of the creeps, who take the shortest path they can find to the exit.

The game does not allow the player to make an exit completely inaccessible, but key strategies revolve around guiding creeps into lengthy, meandering corridors. The creeps come in waves at set intervals. Each wave of creeps has different characteristics, such as immunity to certain towers, extra resistance to certain towers, and the abilities to spawn new creeps, move faster than normal, or fly over the towers instead of following the maze. For each wave, the game rotates among the types of creeps.

Development

Paul Preece got the inspiration for Desktop Tower Defense in 2006. He noticed a lack of tower defense games that allowed proper "mazing" (controlling movement of enemy forces by placing towers in their path). Preece did not immediately start work on Desktop Tower Defense because he considered Flash to be too difficult to learn. It was only after an acquaintance created Flash Element Tower Defense that Paul started work on the game.

Starting from the "Autumn Tower Defense" map created for the real-time strategy game Warcraft III, Paul Preece created a simple tower defense game that could be played using only a browser. com

Reception

This game was featured on Attack of the Show! and the Lab with Leo on G4TechTV. It was also in the March issue of Game Informer, with a positive review. As of July 2007, the game had been played more than 15 million times since its inception in March of the same year.

The game makes approximately $100,000 per year, according to its creator. Most of the revenue generated by the game is through the online ad-service AdSense.