Highlights
- Tower defense games have become saturated over the years, but indie games are finding ways to blend the genre with other mechanics for a fresh experience.
- Games like 3 Minute Heroes and Block Tower TD offer unique twists on tower defense by incorporating elements like RTS, deck-building, and city-building strategies.
- Dungeon Defenders and Isle of Arrows add new dimensions to tower defense by combining it with third-person action gameplay and puzzle mechanics respectively.
The tower defense genre has seen many adaptations throughout the years, even since its heyday during the Flash era on websites like Newgrounds and Armor Games. However, due to the sheer saturation of games in the genre, tower defense games can feel very familiar.
Recently, indie games have begun to use this familiar tower defense concept and blend it with other genres and mechanics to create something fresh and interesting. Some of these games stretch farther from the tower defense genre than others, and may even entertain players that don't normally enjoy tower defense.
9 3 Minute Heroes
This game combines the tower defense of games like Plants Vs Zombies with RTS and rogue-like elements, as well as deck-building mechanics. The game takes place over twelve rounds, in which the player must use their heroes and towers (in the form of cards) to defend against various factions of enemies for three minutes at a time.
3 Minute Heroes features over 400 cards, some of which only appear in the game's hard mode, making for plenty of build variety and strategy. Furthermore, the heroes have cards specific to them, keeping the large pool of cards from overwhelming beginners.
8 Block Tower TD
This rogue-like tower defense game focuses on city-building aspects in which players build the level out of different blocks that affect the game in different ways. This adds an extra level of strategy to the game and allows players to have more control.
Block Tower TD also has resource and economy management that must be managed successfully in order to succeed in the late game. This is done by carefully placing towers and leaving certain blocks free to gather the resources there. Furthermore, towers level up over time, meaning that they benefit from being placed as early as possible. With all of these elements to manage, Block Tower TD is an extremely strategic tower defense that gives the player many decisions to make, keeping each game interesting throughout.
7 Dungeon Defenders
Released back in 2011, Dungeon Defenders is primarily a third-person action game that, when combined with its basic tower defense elements, makes for a unique experience. The game features cartoony graphics and a 4-player co-op mode, a rarity in the tower defense genre that Dungeon Defenders manages to pull off thanks to its character-based gameplay.
In Dungeon Defenders, players are tasked with defending a crystal from increasingly difficult waves of enemies. The game features multiple unique classes, each with its own abilities, equipment, and upgradeable defenses that can help players protect the crystal.
6 Tiny Tactics
By combining maze-focused tower defense with auto-battler mechanics (specifically, Auto Chess), Tiny Tactics provides a unique take on the tower defense genre. The game tasks players with carefully considering the path of the enemies, placing and upgrading "units" (towers) accordingly, and managing different auto-battler style synergies across 86 levels.
Tiny Tactics has 107 different units, providing plenty of variety across the game's lengthy campaign, which features progression in the form of unlocks and power-ups. For those who really enjoy the game and want more after completing it, there's even a challenge mode.
5 Rogue Tower
Rogue Tower is unique for its variety and in-depth progression system. In a game of Rogue Tower, players will build towers to defend their base like in any tower defense game, except they must also choose which direction the enemy's path expands in, adding an extra layer of strategy and maze-building.
As players progress through Rogue Tower they will unlock a variety of new towers, buildings (which can help with the game's economy and unique mana system), and defenses. There's also an element of randomness to the game in the form of card draw, which is how the available towers are presented to the player, meaning the player can't just immediately place their favorite turrets and buildings.
4 Isle Of Arrows
This tower defense game blends puzzle game mechanics into its gameplay in the form of tile placement that has players attempting to min-max the limited space available on their island. Isle of Arrows tasks players with defending a crystal, with enemies marching toward it from one or more paths in a classic wave-based format.
Fans can play one of the various factions, each with its own unique towers, and the game also features resource management in the form of bombs and bridges, which allow players to destroy tiles and build tiles on water, respectively. Available buildings and towers are given to the player in the form of a deck of cards, injecting a heavy amount of RNG into the game. However, Isle of Arrows is designed with this in mind, giving players plenty of options to puzzle out each move and strategize around their card draw.
3 Tower Tactics: Liberation
This rogue-like deck-builder uses tower defense as its combat system, using an FTL-style node system for traversing the game's map, and tasking players with making decisions through events, also similar to FTL.
In each combat scenario, Tower Tactics: Liberation has players building out their defenses using a deck of cards, which is customized and expanded on throughout each run. The game follows a rogue-like structure and features several game-changing relics similar to games like Slay The Spire, as well as 18 starting decks that each promote different strategies.
2 Tower Escape
This "reverse tower defense" has players control the enemies, tasking them with guiding their minions through mazes of defenses, collecting various keys and items, and reaching the exit.
Tower Escape has players building their team of customizable minions and managing abilities to get them to the exit in each of the game's procedurally generated mazes. The game also allows players to switch the order in which enemies are spawned to create a fully optimized wave. Tower Escape has a great, retro pixel art aesthetic that makes the game a joy to behold.
1 Mindustry
This factory-building game has players creating supply chains to resupply their turrets with ammunition and collect materials that will allow them to construct buildings and units to defend their base from waves of enemies.
Mindustry combines its tower defense gameplay with RTS elements, allowing players to control mechanized units to attack enemy bases and expand their territory. Furthermore, the game features both single-player, cross-platform co-op and PvP modes. This blend of mechanics creates a truly unique tower defense game that plays similarly to factory-building games like Factorio but with more focus on combat and base defense.