I haven’t played in forever, so they drop your scores after a while?
No idea. Sometimes my Series X has issues with 360 BC games and logging into the xBox live service. Maybe you need to load it up once on an updated console?
I spent a bit of time going through the old OO thread on DG:A and it’s fun seeing so many people enjoying this game so much. Such a classic, and even better with the leaderboards/competition for high scores.
Seriously in my personal game hall of fame.
I just loaded it up, and went to leaderboards. Looks like you, me and Xaroc are on all the leaderboards still, even for the map pack levels, even for the weird modes like 40k resources, 20 tower limit, etc. Looks like we did it all.
But it looks like there was an expansion released after I stopped playing called “You Monster”, it’s $5, and portal themed, and it’s got several achievements associated with it that I don’t have. Hmmmm, so this is no longer a “complete” game for me where I had all the achievements.
I did the You Monster expansion on Steam and it was really good, tho GladOS sucks! Not quite as satisfying as Awakening, but a welcome addition.
Also, I don’t seem to have Xaroc on my friends list - do we have a thread for those gamertags?
Best TD game I’ve played in the past 5 years
Just a quick bump as the Spirits game recommended by Tman is on sale for 20% off.
I’d love for more people to get this. Let me expand on why this is such a good TD game.
First off, I like that you can create your own paths - each map is very different and allows for many different pathing opportunities.
Secondly, there is a bit of randomness element to each playthrough as these special tiles (hellements) spawn in different locations and these hellements (wind/fire/lightning) each enhance weapons significantly and as these get upgraded (through cards you can choose) they get REALLY powerful. This randomness combined with your choices really give each map a unique playthrough which makes it high replayability.
This game is HARD. It has 4 different difficulties and the difficulties are significant - while the typical TD game increases monster health, this one does that as well as the number of lives decreases (100/75/50/20) as you go up the difficulty levels. I really like that it doesn’t matter how many lives you lose as long as you have 1 at the end, you win the round. So you don’t have to strive for perfection. Although the most difficulty, Diablo, also has modifiers which make it even more crazy brutal - and one of those modifiers is a single life so if you like to strive for perfection you can do that easily.
As the game starts out with a few towers and doles them out with experience, along with more powerful traits for the towers that you can choose, I really recommend playing the 2nd chapter on the the 2nd out of 4 hardest difficulties, Marauder, (75 lives) as this game really is different, and since you can always come back and replay a level later when you have all the toys.
The towers themselves is why I think this game shines because a) each tower has 3 upgrade paths you can choose when you’re playing and b) the towers really are meant to played with synergy. There is one tower, Divine Spirit, which is really weird - you can place it pretty much anywhere and it projects a set of hexes in a circle and you can choose whether to accentuate the towers these hexes touch, or you can cause more damage for the creeps that go over these tiles.
And like the all the rest of the towers, how you choose to upgrade this through play can dramatically influence either one.
There is another tower, the Curse Spirit, which curses creeps so they take more damage, but has a special ability if you place it on a wind hellement, which allows all towers to fire at flying enemies - this is probably the best example of how the tiles that are on the battlefield, and if you can get them upgraded, can really change how the map plays out.
So this is radically different than any TD game that I’ve played in recent memory, it allows you to get your feet wet with lower difficulties and the tutorial levels (two of them in Chapter 1) I think do a decent job at explaining the basics of the game. The game really gives high replayability in all these hellements and how you choose to upgrade them along with how to upgrade the towers.
I am having some difficulty with Hellements as it is very challenging on the normal level and I am not sure what path to upgrade to since there is so much choice. The tips on using Curse Spirit tower on Wind Tile so everything can attack air monsters that is a huge! I kept placing the wrong towers to fight air only to learn they didnt attack the hard way (I suspect that I placed a Curse Tower on a wind tile early on and didnt realize that is why towers were able to shoot at Air Monsters.
And it’s going to be doubly difficult at the beginning because you only have 1/2 the towers and you only get new ones as you complete maps - and then while you may have a tower, you won’t have all the upgrade paths available to you. And which upgrades do you pick? There are so many it’s overwhelming. So don’t beat yourself up. Do the easy difficulty - you gain XP, you get to unlock stuff, and you can always come back when you have more towers / upgrade paths.
Here are some early tips before you get all the upgrades:
Start out with one Forest and one Explosive. If you have a fire tile and you can path close to it, the explosive spirit will do a LOT more damage. Doing the elite tree is a godsend.
You may need to upgrade the range on the Forest, but save up your $$ to get enough for the either the Gatling or the Sniper.
If you have a wind tile that the fliers go over, put the Gatling spirit on the wind tile as it allows it to target fliers.
If you have a wind tile but it is no where close to the path of the fliers, put the sniper on this - it gives you unlimited range, so you can ignore the range upgrades and focus on the power. It can hit the entire map.
Then save up your $$ until you can afford the Laser Spirit. If fliers are a problem, put the laser spirit up front next to the spawn and the first upgrade allows it to target fliers.
Otherwise, if it’s available, a lightning tile is phenomenal for the laser spirit - it gains rotating lasers that sweep around in a circle. Then further down the upgrade tree, you can clone it and you get a solid laser between the original and the clone! This just melts creeps.
Here are some other good combos:
The cyclone spirit on a wind tile where you can path the creeps in a full 270 degrees absolutely devastates all the small guys.
A curse spirit on a lightning tile causes 100 damage to all enemies of a certain type that is not elite - if you can get a long path, this is just hilarious to see all the smaller enemies just die at once (on about the 3rd or 4th invocation of the voodoo doll)
Here are upgrades I would prioritize:
Laser: Double Trouble
Curse: Bane
Explosive: Elite Hunter
Cyclone: Mini Cyclones
Divine: The Chosen
Forest: Root Network
Sniper: Stopping Power
Gatling: Giant Slayer
Mushroom: Eh, I don’t really use these except near my base as a last resort.
I’ve been playing Rats, Bats and Bones this past week and it’s been great. I’ve not played Dungeon Warfare yet (bought them together), but I really like the presentation and readability of Rats. The music is also superb. Really gets me pumped up to construct a meat (or bone, or ectoplasm) grinder. It’s been a long time since I played any pure TD. I used to love the genre but Kingdom Rush killed my enthusiasm for it some years back. It’s good to be enjoying it again!
Kingdom Rush crushed your enthusiasm? Because no one could outdo it or because you didn’t like it?
I never heard of Rats, Bats, and Bones but looking it over quickly it reminds me of Dungeon Warfare. Thanks for posting it. Not sure if it was ever mention above in the thread if it was I missed it.
I always liked the idea of tower defense games, both computer and board but just never found any that held my attention for long…will definitely try Spirits of the Hellements though…on my new steam deck tomorrow…I hope.
Definitely let us know. I was thinking of getting for the deck too but I was worried about the size of the text size and play area.
Which Gemcraft does everyone prefer? Chasing Shadows or Frost Born and why? I have been thinking of replaying one of them but not sure which one is better.
I am always disappointed eventually because the performance at endgame seems to be poor in both versions with the screen slowing down too much when too many enemies show up.
For some reason I returned to Ancient Planet a couple weeks ago and got hooked. Just achieved 100% and I’m happy to have this monkey off my back! Fun little game.
Let’s say I’m in the mood for some Tower Defence. What should I get? I could just tell you my entire steam library and you lot figure out what I get next … but what about if you TD aficionados produced your own top 10s, and I could just work my way through those? :)
So top 10 TD games?
Gemcraft Chasing Shadows (the most intellectual of the bunch)
Dungeon Warfare 1 & 2
Defense Grid 1 & 2
AI War 1 & 2 (there could be a debate over this choice but I view AI War as a TD game)
Kingdom Rush
Spirit of the Hellements
Infinitode 2 (The grand master of grinding)
(forgot to list originally & was reminded by DarthMasta)
Plants vs Zombies
Defenders Quest
If you like grinding in your TD games Gemcraft and Infinitode are probably the best choice. Gemcraft is probably the best TD game I have played as there is quite a lot to learn. However it suffers from Performance issues in endgame when too many enemies on the screen cause huge lag.
Dungeon Warfare has a big fun factor and is the best 2D version with towers only of Orcs Must Die. I favor TD games that use only towers and no heroes that run around etc.
Spirit of the Hellements is hard (and very good) and I am in the middle of getting my head around it.
The TD games that I find myself replaying every year or so are Gemcraft CS, Infinitode 2, Dungeon Warfare & Plants vs Zombies