I've played an OK, not huge amount of TD games in my time, but Defense Grid: The Awakening is definitely the best, as it should be, with the comparative production values and such. It is available on Steam for ~$20, and if you like TD games and losing many hours at a stretch, I highly recommend it. First run-through, I have finished the game with 2 or 3 top 100 steam scores, including ~#38 on "Flight Plan". Anyways, if anyone else has it and wants to post strat or w/e, that'd be cool.

To get my best score on Flight Plan, ~38k, I used almost exclusively gun towers along the top line to start to get both the land and aerial aliens, and slowly built up from there as needed, using a temporal for only the last line of aliens. No cores were lost, and I never had to use the big laser. Building towers near the entry point seems wasteful, as they only cross once, but I may experiment with an inferno tower there to get some early and extra burn time Waiting until the last necessary second is definitely helpful for, although I'm not sure if the "interest" you accrue is lessened with each core taken, but not lost. Also, Tesla tower kinda sucks in my limited usage, and not much beats a fully upgraded gun tower for all-purpose use and value, as there's nothing they can't hit.

There's at least a dozen good and free variations on DTD out there. What would compel me to spend $20 on one?

I've heard nothing but good things about this game, only I don't think my computer would be able to run it. :/

Master of defense was another ok one that was commercial, and ps3 has one good one PixelJunk Monsters and one ok one in Savage Moon.

T

Baller tax.

anyone wanna link other good tower defense games?

This is the best tower defense game I've ever played. It has great production values, level design, and interesting gameplay tweaks. Well worth the 20 bucks.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tower+defense+games

be more of a tool?

I would recommend:

Gemcraft
Desktop Tower Defense
Whiteboard Tower Defense
Mushroom Revolution

off the top of my head. I've played a ton of tower defense games, I love the genre. Unfortunately, most of them I play are pretty simple - there's either one valid/obvious strategy, the game is slow paced, or I finish it on the first run through. Those four rose to the top imo.

Thinking about the game, Defense Grid is really amazing. So many different aliens, different paths for air, unique towers. However, I'm not sure why I don't have as much fun as a WC3/SC defense game.

I dislike the levels where you are very limited on where you can build.

Yeah, those aren't as much fun for me either. I hate the levels like flight plan where you have a lot of spots with limited range and little 2+ way coverage,(when you can be shooting at an alien with a tower throughout your whole range and/or you get a second whack at them after they pick up a core.

I got a top 20 score a bit ago on a challenge level, I think it was Veil of Ice, "grinder" challenge, where you have to defeat 99 levels of walkers. Figured out something to go from a previous high of about 500k on it to ~1.7M. How someone got 2.4M is beyond me.

just want to add that i bought defense grid on steam for 5$ and had loads of fun with it. very addicting and easy to learn.

played this game recently and loved it every1 should check it out

It's worth a play though, I regret completing it to fast.

Wait for the sales you can get it for $5-7

I own this game it's definitly worth a play through. For free games, Gemcraft as mentioned above, pretty great game as well!

Try out Creeper world (it's free), too!

I have 49 hours in on Defense Grid according to Steam. I have a few other tower defense games that I bought during the summer sale, but I haven't touched them. In fact, I have a couple dozen games I bought during the summer sale that I haven't touched. Defense Grid has gotten almost all of my attention.

I found out that Defense Grid 2 is coming out this September, reinstalled Defense Grid: the Awakening and remembered how perfect this game was!