Forget Beetlejuice, you're the ghost with the most! And you'll have to prove it in this strategic game if you ever want to get out of Hell. Easy to pick up but hard to put down, Hell Tour's addictive, board game style gameplay lacks polish and real punch, but is still devilishly entertaining.
The popular Battalion series continues with Ghosts, your solution to the daily ain't-go-no-tank blues. It's turn-based strategic warfare at its pixelated finest as the story continues. It's puns, explosions, and tactics galore. Will you emerge triumphant from the ten stage campaign? Or is it back to boot camp for you?
From the Discovery Channel comes a casually-oriented strategy game of tactics, battle, mining and exploration. The world's energy reserves have run out, but a new element called helium
Drawing inspiration from popular "castle defense" games like BowMaster Prelude, Elona Shooter adds a serious helping of Asian-influenced, tactical RPG mechanics. You not only get to defend your castle from swarms of oncoming monsters with a satisfying array of weapons and skills, you won't have to go at it alone; an entire tactical RPG-styled party of helpers comes to your aid, eventually.
Descend deep beneath the earth in this free RPG based in a realm of danger and fantasy. Create a character and join a scouting team sent to explore the realm of dwarves. When disaster meets your party, leaving you the only survivor, you'll have to rely on your wits to survive as you travel deeper into unraveling the mystery. Gain party members, train your skills, and battle fearsome beasts in your quest.
NinjaKiwi's Bloons Tower Defense 4 is here at last, stepping over Bloons Tower Defense 3 and adding much more of everything we love! New units, new maps, better upgrades, and more evil bloons to pop! While some may complain about the addition of mochi coins, BTD4 can generate hours of fun without ever having to go near the purchasable content. So kick back, peel a banana, and begin the balloon popping fun!
Cake Pirate is a tower defense game in which you add elements (ingredients) to your towers (cakes) to make different power-up combinations. The twist here is that your lives are also cakes, and you can sell those cakes for money to upgrade your cake towers. And it has a cake that shoots bees!
If you are looking for a break from the standard RTS fare, or just want to play through a really well-made game, then look no further than Shadez II: Battle for Earth. This 2D side-scrolling title is extraordinarily well-made from top to bottom, providing enough strategy, explosions, and alien killing machines to keep most RTS fans busy for some time.
Combining the visual presence of flOw with a few casual real-time strategy and shooting elements, Deep is an intriguing hybrid game that's friendly to a variety of playing styles. You control a single cell-like critter who can move and shoot in any direction, but you're also in charge of a thriving colony of warriors who want nothing more than to eliminate the enemy. Play it like a shooter, play it like a strategy game, or play it like a little bit of both. Either way, it's an interesting dive under the sea.
Battalion: Arena is a grand way to get the morally questionable thrill of outwitting a fellow human being with miniature tons of steel and explosives at your command. The multiplayer chapter of the Battalion series may not stray far from its Advance Wars roots, but then, Advance Wars is a great game.
The Metalix have hidden their power source deep within their lair, and it's up to you to seize it! If only you weren't so... naked. Dungeon crawl the night away in this addictive roguelike from Point Zero as you search for gold, items, weapons, and, yes, clothes on your way to stop the Metalix. With randomly generated treasure and dungeons, steel daddy-long-legs, giant eggs and killer babies, you're in for a long trip.
Colony is a tribute to Starcraft from Jakrin "Krin" Juangbhanich, the developer behind the successful Sonny series. Crush your opponent's base with soldiers, tanks, helicopters, and walking mechs, while a computer-controlled AI acts as your partner and even speaks with you through a chat box. Plus, online multi-player!
Finally, a game that allows you cheer that most cherished of subjects: math. With a shiny new facelift, exploding tiles, and the ability to rotate the board 90 degrees, Drop Lift v2.0 is a major upgrade to the original. Link together chains of numbers that add up to nine in this awesome block-dropping puzzler.
Third floor; housewares, garden, home repair... CARNAGE. In this clever little tower defense game, hold out over multiple levels against incoming creeps as you strive to protect that symbol of mankind's courage, freedom, and ingenuity; the elevator shaft. Purchase new elevators (yay!), upgrade your weaponry (huzzah!), and repaint the corridor.
We are grateful to James Prucey for this marvel of a game;
With its mix of luck and strategy, it's never quite the same;
Though it used to need an iPhone, now we all can praise its name;
Oh Lock 'n' Roll, ROCK ON!
In the original Pandemic and its sequels, you were responsible for widespread sickness. In Pandemic: American Swine, you're trying to keep it back. Play from the other side of the fence in the latest installment of germ warfare as you manipulate the media to keep the public calm, institute curfews, keep your borders clean, and try to find a cure.
We wanted a harder game with a stronger story, and that's what developer David Scott has given us. This sequel/mission pack to The Space Game offers a larger variety of missions, spread across three sub-plots that have you protecting valuable military hardware or facing never-before-seen threats from the pirate army. The tight, balanced gameplay is the same; it's just more engaging this time.
Relive history's most brutal battles in 1066, a game of medieval strategic warfare. Despite possessing a difficulty curve that could leave you feeling like a hamlet in the path of a marauding viking clan, 1066 has high production values and a complex battle system with several minigames to master. Think you could do a better job than viking leader Harald Hardrada? You've got some pretty big boots to fill. Literally.
It's mightily easy to care about your tiny walking soldiers in Warfare 1944, the new real-time strategy game from Con Artist. They fall prone under fire, they take solemn aim, they dolphin tragically through the air when a mortar strikes. Your mind's mission may be to win the war, but your heart's mission is to protect your men. That's quite an accomplishment for a little Flash game.
Bubble Cannon 2 is what the original game should have been, with tighter goals and more thoughtful gameplay. Eliminate balls by colliding them with their similarly-colored mates, but take your time, because each ball is important! Engaging and very addicting!
As the head of Castle Corp, you're watching all your business go across the hillock to Happy Family Shields and Accessories Incorporated. So what does a failing business do to get itself back on its feet? Why, employ a crew of knights with rocket packs to blast your rivals to medieval smithereens, of course!
It's survival of the fittest as seen through a microscope. Genetically engineer the perfect virus in your lab to combat those created by your predecessors. Discover new elements and splice genes in an increasingly hostile environment. Just... remember to wash up before you shake someone's hand.
Tonypa has a well earned reputation for developing games that at once exhibit simple elegance and deceptively deep gameplay. Lacotipa, a tile-based puzzle with roots that extend back to Pipe Dreams, is yet another simple, beautiful, and addicting game for us to obsess over.
Starcom is a top-down space shooter and strategy game, with subtle RPG elements like a well-paced story progression and "missions." You are stationed aboard a Galactic Command Starbase (space station), playing the role of a space fighter pilot with a starting mission of fending off alien attacks. Starcom really shines, revealing story elements at just the right moments while incorporating it all into the gameplay progression.
Armor Games' John Cooney enters the bunker-warfare genre with Fox Fyre, a stylish strategy-shooter game with an old-school vibe, heralding back to classics like Scorched Earth and Death Tanks.
Do you like shiny things as much as we do? Metalix TD, besides being a top quality tower defense game, is undoubtedly very, very shiny. Each wave of shiny enemy robots takes a different attack path at random, so it's a good thing that your shiny defense towers can move around. Yeah, it's pretty shiny.
Moon Rocks is an impressive little shooter-defense game that's pretty challenging and fun. Loosely inspired by the classic arcade game Missile Command, you defend your little chunk of the planet's surface from an onslaught of asteroids, ice comets, enemy ships and plenty of other things that threaten to turn your base into Swiss cheese.
Coated in pixelated graphics and pipingly sharp music, Mars Tower Defense, by Japanese developer Taro, will appeal to those with a flair for retro and a penchant for strategy. Defense your mars colony from walking octopi and disembodied bouncing dogs heads!
Prince Peep is the last of the Whistle Knights, who have guarded the legendary Arrow of Time for generations against all invaders. Help Peep keep the Arrow safe in the new defense title from Super Flash Bros: The Arrow of Time.
The Great War of Prefectures plays like a cross between Risk and an RTS, with Japan's prefectures (analogous to other countries' states or provinces) serving as the territories you fight over. Despites some interface flaws, this game has that elusive quality that will bring you back for more even after you thought you'd had enough.
Desktop TD Pro is a substantial new update to one of the grandfathers of tower defense, with new shiny graphics and menacing new "hopper" and "decoy" creeps. With the new Scenarios, Sprint Mode, and a completely customizable Sandbox Mode, this is a strong contender for Best Tower Defense Game Ever.
Look! Off in the horizon! Ships with flags with skulls and crossbones! And tons of peg-legged men hobbling right this way! We've got pirates on our hands, and the need to defend against them! Pirate Defense is Hero Interactive's (Storm Winds, Bubble Tanks) take on tower defense games, with a steep slant toward traps and chain reactions. Give those pirates the worst day of their pillaging life.
Puzzle Defence is a charming mash-up of the SameGame play mechanic with RPG elements. Scary, adorable monsters are attacking your castle, and the only way to defend yourself is to match them together, puzzle/strategy-style. You just want to hug this game and tousle its hair.
Acting as a prequel to the original, Gemcraft Zero tells the story of a wizard who has become so entangled in his search for the fabled Gem of Eternity that his colleagues have cast him out. Any fan of tower defense games shouldn't miss this one, but even those who may not normally be interested in them should at least give it a try.
The Leon Wars is a solid gem of a turn-based strategy game, set in a fantasy world where monsters war against humans. It's surprisingly long and can be pleasantly challenging at times, and the tidy, gore-free presentation is easy on the eyes. If you've ever wanted to order a giant flaming sentient orb or a griffon rider into battle, this is the game for you.
Orbital Decay pays homage to the Super Nintendo era of 16-bit graphics by incorporating some really cool and interesting strategy elements into the formula of a classic side-scrolling shooter. As the commander of a massive battleship, you must upgrade various weapons and fire your main cannon (the Ultragun!) to defend yourself against waves of crazy-looking alien ships.
These puzzles are the same type of chess mind-benders that still appear in some newspapers next to the word jumble and bridge game brainteasers. Given an endgame position consisting of a few pieces, try to produce checkmate in a given number of moves. The difficulty curve eases you in gradually, and if you're good enough, you can tackle 650 unique puzzles. Regardless of your Elo rating, you'll find a challenge that will suit you with MateMaster.
The graphic presentation is fairly simple, but this is a deceptively deep Dr. Mario-style puzzler with a unique color-matching mechanic. Whenever you make a match, you leave behind a ball of a new color, and your job is to work your way up to the top of the rainbow scale. This adds a lot more gameplay dimension than you'd expect, and once you get into it, you will be hooked, trying to make that last couple of levels. Definitely give Combine a chance.
Hex Empire is a casual turn-based strategy war game, occupying a comfortable spot between the simplicity of Risk and the number crunching of the Avalon Hill-style board games that inspired the whole soldiers-on-hexagons thing. It lets you jump right into battle without much fuss, and offers enough tactical depth to be addictive even after several wars have ended. A bit of a treat, really.
Wizard Defense is a Web-based tower defense game with a rich back-story and polished UI. You play a young wizard who resides at the Espeon School of Wizard Defense, hand-picked to defend the land from evil magic forces and monsters. Multiple path routes and a variety of tower and spell abilities later in the game offer plenty of strategic fun. Rooted by its rich story and dazzling presentation, it's something that every casual gamer should check out.
Bloody Fun Day is a refreshingly original turn-based strategy game from Urban Squall, built around the character of a cute little nihilistic, selfish grim reaper. Your objective is to score as many points as possible by reaping the Cuties, who populate their hexagonally gridded island like dense, colorful game pieces. Their crime is incessant happiness and adorability. Their punishment is a gratuitously violent death. Deceptively well-crafted and deep, Bloody Fun Day is a bloody good time.
Mofuya Defense is an excellent addition to the tower defense genre, featuring an upgradeable base that can defend itself, and a balanced power resource management system. With cute pixel graphics, a comfortable learning curve, a good number of weapons at your disposal, and additional features not found in other tower defense games, Mofuya Defense is definitely worth investing some time in.
Dinowaurs from Intuition Games shows us that stone-aged humans were well-versed in the art of strapping large implements onto the backs of dinosaurs for their own advancement. At its core, this is a projectile game in the vein of Worms or Scorched Earth. The goal is not only to destroy your opponent's dinosaur, but also to take over their villages. The art style is fun and care-free, the music is catchy, and the weapons are weird. If you're looking for an escape from the ordinary projectile game, and a chance to interact with actual human beings, give Dinowaurs a go.
Sin Mark is a Bowmaster Prelude-inspired side-scroller by Con Artist of Armor Games, featuring subtle strategy elements and lots of magic arrow, spell-weaving fun. It's meant to be played with your hero as mobile as possible, unlike many of the static, turret-defending bow-and-arrow games in this genre. Progressing through a series of levels battling waves of Middle Earth-type monsters, you'll extract magic from "Rune Stones" to build a larger arsenal of offensive and defensive spells, all of which are cast from your trusty bow.
The latest real-time strategy game from tower defense master David Scott sets you in deep space, defending your asteroid mining operation from humongous swarms of space pirates. The freedom of building in two dimensions gives you a lot of room to experiment and find your own strategy, and the sheer scope of the massive battles make it feel like quality space opera. Constant tension plus simple controls plus nearly unlimited mathematical depth equals awesome strategy game.
Mushroom Revolution is a cartoon-styled strategy game rooted with the tried-and-true tower defense formula, with a simplified elemental tower system similar to last year's hit, GemCraft. A sequel to the obscure Mushroom Farm Defender, Mushroom Revolution is actually more of an updated an improved version of the original, with better graphics and bigger gameplay.
Not satisfied simply to have won second place in our last competition, game designer Lars Doucet has been busy reworking, researching, and refining his entry, the strategic defense game Super Energy Apocalypse. We are proud to announce that the full-fledged game has now been released!
A Flash translation of Cuarenta (Forty), a popular card game in Ecuador. You must reach 40 points before your opponent by capturing cards and scoring points through skillful play. The sound in this game is what really sells it. Every time you win or lose a point, a choir of excited voices cheer or jeer you!
A new retro-styled puzzle game from Ryan Chisholm and Bennett Foddy, Evacuation puts you in control of the fate of a space station invaded by aliens. Click on escape hatches to open them and evacuate the aliens to space without sacrificing any of the human inhabitants of the station. Randomly generated levels provide enough reason to keep coming back to this one.
Viking Defense is a close cousin to Canyon Defense, a re-think of the tower defense genre that was released earlier this year. Game elements are introduced incrementally through a quest system. Once you build certain temples to the Norse gods, you get to use rechargeable powers, like the nuclear super-strike of the hammer Mjolnir. Fans of Canyon Defense will be happy that everything has been improved--the artwork, the map layouts, the weapon variety, and the overall game balance.
Warfare 1917 is a rather excellent World War I strategy title from Armor Games that concentrates on the use of trenches as strategic choke points. The gung-ho cries of your troops make it hard to lose them, and if you waste too many lives, you run the risk of losing the battle to low morale. It's a real gem of a wargame that works on more levels than just pew pew pew KABOOM. Though certainly it provides that as well.
Minions is a Flash version of the ridiculously popular Defense of the Ancients mod, but instead of medieval fantasy warriors, you control little tank-bots with powerful weaponry and big muppet-like googly eyes. Created by Flash tower defense gurus David Scott and Paul Preece.
A dice game of luck and strategy, race against the computer (or a friend) to 10,000 points. Earn points by rolling 1's and 5's, or by rolling 3 or more of a kind, or several other special configurations worth big points. Also known under a variety of different names, Zilch is definitely one of those games that's "easy to learn, hard to master."
Talesworth Arena: Death Watch, by Mr. Jinx, is an RPG with a strong focus on one-on-one combat and a cool industrial fantasy setting. Choose one of three characters (Engineer, Psionic, or Juggernaut) and battle your way through 10 levels of deadly gladiators with a combat system familiar to anyone who has played a MMORPG.
A clever world domination simulator, in the form of a humble real-time strategy game, in which you can test your schemes and stratagems without the nagging twinge of guilt that comes with executing legions of henchmen. The game has some of the highest production values you're likely to find in a Flash game, with some decent animation, a healthy dose of humor and a startling amount of high-quality voice acting.
Play as a weakly little microorganism in a big world (a Petri dish?) filled with other microbes and bacteria, and it's survival of the fittest in there. This is Darwinian fighting style at its most primeval. Binding to proteins, self-replication through division and eating other microbes... these are your signature moves.
Japanese Mahjong is a completely different game from the tile-matching Mahjong Solitaire. A cross between Gin Rummy and the fictional Dragon Poker, this is one game that will definitely take a while to learn, and even longer to master.
Say hello to Campaign, a mud-slinging, fact-spinning, smashmouth brawl of a turn-based strategy game where victory is achieved only through beating your opponent into submission. Diplomatically, of course.
Battalion: Nemesis is a respectable attempt to translate the fast, accessible brain-play of Advance Wars to the realm of free online games, without directly treading on Nintendo's intellectual property. The gameplay is like a complex version of Rock-Paper-Scissors played out on a chess board, with major emphasis on positioning and choosing the right unit to do the right job.
Bloons Tower Defense 3 has finally been released after months of anticipation from all the hardcore Bloons fans out there. Picking up where Bloons TD 2 left off, the new game features even more tracks (eight in all!), new monkeys (towers) and upgraded gameplay mechanics.
Play as a row in a database where your objective is to fight the other rows to decrease their numbers and increase your own. It's a numbers game, pure and simple, and by not pretending to be anything else, mySQLgame has managed to take the ubiquitous browser-based MMO and distill it down to the very essence of the genre.
It doesn't take long to get addicted to Pixel Field, Tonypa's perilous pixel pointing action strategy game. If you remember playing the original, you'll be even more excited about this latest evolution to hit your browser, as the game has been totally revamped with a new soundtrack and 30 all-new levels added.
A sequel or upgrade to the original Protector, a tile-based tower defense strategy game focused heavily on upgrading. In fact, Protector 2 has only two basic units; a mage and a warrior (although both can be heavily upgraded into different classes). The mage and warrior both have strengths and weaknesses, the most prominent being the low damage but high range of the mage (and vice-versa for the warrior). But through an amazingly deep system of experience levels, class choices and skills, these two units can be configured into many different sub-types.
In this whiteboard strategy shooter, pilot a helicopter to defend against the red army's tanks, planes and other heavy artillery that shoot the crap out of you. Bomb the war factories for the sake of all markers of every color! There's something that takes off in the imagination when playing games like this that look like pen and paper—something has come to life that you're used to seeing static.
When the head of the Weardd Academy's School for Responsible Reanimation mysteriously dies in a fire, the students blame each other and take up sides. They summon up the undead and dispatch them into battle. Welcome to Corpse Craft: Incident at Weardd Academy, a new zombie game from the makers of Whirled that mixes real time strategy with block clearing to create a unique new game experience.
Developed by Dark Realm Studios, Pandemic 2 is the sequel to the morbidly fun original Pandemic, a game in which your goal is to eradicate the human race with the perfect disease. While the original game didn't go on to become hugely popular, Pandemic II is more an improvement upon its predecessor than a sequel, with an improved interface and more features.
Any avid Jay is Games reader will have, at one point or another, paid a visit to game hosting site Kongregate. The site features hundreds of developers, and has a veritable smorgasbord of games. But until now, the folks behind Kongregate had not created a game of their own. Finally, after months of development and a lengthy private beta, the site has thrown its proverbial hat into the ring with Kongai.
A marble placement, turn-based strategy game. The goal is to be the first player to place five marbles in a row. The rows can be vertical, horizontal, or diagonal. The game is a bit like Connect Four, but with a twist. Pentago is an award-winning board game from Sweden, and this Flash version allows you to play in a browser.
Even if you think Boomshine is fine just as it is, you'll want to check out Linkaball from UK developer OMGames. Rather than attempt the futile task of beating Boomshine at its own game, Linkaball takes the gameplay in a new direction, with a new collision mechanic as well as activating power-ups and a repellent force-field.
Land lubbers best be cowerin' below the decks, thar be a Mutiny going on! Some sea dog called Nitrome has riled up the crew with tales of booty and adventure, so grab yer peg leg and cutlass and prepare for a fight, Worms style!
Gemcraft brings a lot of innovation to the tower defense genre, quite an accomplishment considering how crowded it already is. The new gameplay mechanics create a lot of strategic depth, and the game adds replay value by keeping track of your high score for each level, allowing you to go back and replay them for much higher scores once your wizard has leveled up and is more powerful.
Monsters' Den: The Book of Dread is Flash RPG of extraordinary depth. It is essentially a turn-based, tactical dungeon crawl, and it understands your insatiable clawing lust for magical super-trinkets. If the promise of powerful enchanted do-dads gets your blood pumping even a little bit, then Monsters' Den will have its generous claws in you for quite a while.
If you've ever longed for a game to bring it on with animal-on-animal warfare, as in the tradition of Red Wall, you've come to the right place. Brute Wars is a turn-based RPG tactical strategy game where you pit your team of six creatures against opposing squads. The placement and order of their attacks adds up to a highly nuanced and rapid game of tactics that you won't want to miss.
Proximity is a classic turn-based strategy Flash game that is somewhat like a cross between Risk and Go. It is surprisingly simple to learn and takes about 5 minutes to play. You can play against the computer, or against a friend at the same computer.
Super Energy Apocalypse, 2nd place prize winner in our 5th game design competition, plays a bit like a tower defense game, in that most of the time is spent getting ready for the next wave, and the player is offered no control over the targeting of the enemies. Planning for the battle is the critical strategic element, rather than the battle itself. The zombies come out only at night, so use the daylight wisely!
It's just not a proper week without a new jmtb02 game. But if you're expecting the usual jolt of hyperactive skull-smashery from John Cooney—like the previously reviewed TBA or Grid16—you'd better slow down, Miss Sally Brown. Compulse is John's attempt at a tightly packed zen experience, and it's 98% adrenaline-free, with extra soothing strategy flavor.
Canyon Defense is, not surprisingly, a tower defense game with nice pixel art and that does things a bit differently. First of all, there are no upgrades. What if I told you this heresy against form also has time-based special abilities? And support buildings? If you want some fresh TD with a Mad Max aesthetic, try Canyon Defense.
In his ongoing, mad quest to give us all nightmares about geometry, Tonypa has unleashed Cobacoli upon the world. It sounds like a deadly bacteria, but no, it's an elegant puzzle game based around 2-dimensional ball physics, although in many ways it qualifies as an infectious disease. Symptoms include intense concentration, swearing, and the inability to pry your hand away from your mouse. Updates include a level select screen and better high score memory.
What do you get when you put Global Warming, Peak Oil, Nuclear War and good old-fashioned oligarchy in a blender? You get Fallout meets Elite ...in a browser! Caravaneer is a game by Dmitry Zheltobriukhov that has you playing a caravan leader in a post-apocalyptic desert, trading goods from town to town while fending off hungry raiders. It's got turn-based tactical fighting, strategic economic decision-making, and a political storyline! Tactics, economics and politics!
The goal of Fluke Ball is to throw objects into the mysterious waves of force surrounding the office microwave, and knock out your opponent's objects when necessary. It's essentially shuffleboard, but sideways and with gravity. It sounds complicated, and it is at first, but it feels instinctive after some experimentation. And once you break through the layer of initial confusion, you'll have an whole miniature world of strange physics to explore.
Chess is a classic, easy to learn and hard to master. What would happen if chess was bitten by a zombie and then rose again as an undead shadow of its former self? You'd get Tomb Chess, an intriguing variation on the dynamic, where two ghoulish armies battle across a graveyard.
In his ongoing, mad quest to give us all nightmares about geometry, Tonypa has unleashed Cobacoli upon the world. It sounds like a deadly bacteria, but no, it's an elegant puzzle game based around 2-dimensional ball physics, although in many ways it qualifies as an infectious disease. Symptoms include intense concentration, swearing, and the inability to pry your hand away from your mouse.
David Scott has just released a sequel to the stylish tower defense game, Vector TD, appropriately titled Vector TD 2. Using Vector TD, a computer simulation of Vectoid attack scenarios, deploy and upgrade towers to zap foes as they walk by, preventing them from reaching the end points on each map. Earn cash by defeating foes and keep your defenses strong to stave off the increasingly powerful hordes!
Whether you're going for the gingerbread transmutation or the old fashioned stew, you gotta respect the rights of satanic magick users to extend their lives indefinetly by robbing life from the young. If you're on board with that proposition, you'll like Witchhunt: Nooboo Mary, a time-based defense game where you defend a witch's house from an angry mob of villagers.
As odd as it may sound, Skyrates is a game about human-like animals flying biplanes between floating continents. Think Star Fox meets The Kingdom of Zeal from Chrono Trigger. You're a young pilot out to make an impact by trading, performing missions, and fighting pirates. Here's the catch: flying between islands takes at least an hour of real-time. The game was designed by a group of then-CMU grad-students to explore sporadic play, something you check like e-mail a few times a day. The result is not only interesting, its good enough to thread its way into your life.
The first Flash Element Tower Defense was a kind of revolution. It single- handedly brought tower defense games out of the realm of Warcraft mods and into the world of free online gaming, kick-starting a new genre practically overnight. Now that Dave has teamed with Paul Preece to create Novel Concepts, he has built Flash Element TD 2 according to the Casual Collective aesthetic — the audio/visual style pioneered by Desktop Tower Defense and perpetuated by Buggle. In other words, it's totally cute.
Tarnation is a clever real-time strategy game by Brad Merritt that bears some resemblance to a tower defense title. You control a garden with rows of seeds ready to sprout into flowers that will dash off and dispatch incoming bugs. The bugs are made of Tar, you see, and if they reach the stream in front of your flower bed, they start to gunk up the water. Merely defeating all the bugs is enough to pass, but real excellence comes by releasing only as many flowers as you need.
The game of Buggle pits 2 to 4 players against one another to see who can befriend the most buggles (which are sort of like ambulatory cloudberries with faces) over the course of 10 rounds. Each round begins with 60 of the little nippers bouncing around in a rectangular play field. Eventually, they will pause and wait for you to pick a location for your control point, which is your primary means of buggle recruitment.
Desktop Armada is a tour de force of action strategy that successfully combines the grand sweep of naval warfare with the joy of pushing around a plastic tugboat going "TOOT TOOT". Take command of your very own fleet of model ships and send them across a forbidding wooden ocean to destroy the enemy base, while the opposing commodore tries to do the same to you.
Ballistic Wars is a fast-paced, turn-based strategy puzzle game from our 4th game design competition that earned it the third place prize. Work your way through 15 challenging levels against a mad professor bent on blowing up, well, just about everything. Simply click on your "troops", represented by camouflaged balls of varying sizes and special abilities, to launch attacks against the opposing forces.
When Orcs Attack is a tower defense game that... towers over other tower defense games. The first title made by Mr. Joy (a.k.a. John Frisby, WOA, pronounced "whoa!") uses the powerful Unity engine to give you powerful 3D characters and particle effects in-browser. Not only does When Orcs Attack play smoothly, but this is a huge technical step-up for web games.
Like an updated version of the classic Lemonade Stand game, Coffee Shop puts you in a young entrepreneur's shoes with the power to make or break your budding business. Buy ingredients, adjust your secret recipe, and set the price per cup to sell as much coffee to passers-by as you can. Strike a balance between customer satisfaction and profit and you're on your way to java-induced bliss.
MoonMaster: RahKon is the latest from Lost Vectors, creator of BowMaster Prelude. Gone is the resource management and medieval setting, but in its place you'll find a space-themed setting along with a similar physics engine under the hood. You play the role of a ball on the moon shooting rocks and a UFO with your lasers. The goal? Try not to get smashed to pieces.
A casual-ified Alpha Centauri-type simulation management game that is so much more fun than it sounds. You play the president of a colony of human refugees who have escaped the calamity of Earth to found a new home on a planet whose orbit keeps it on the opposite side of the sun. Hence the name "Via Sol", which means "through the sun" in Latin.
Taking a light-hearted approach to a normally serious and complex genre, Strategy Defense is a casual tactics game along the lines of Ogre Battle or Final Fantasy Tactics. It's your job to defend the king from the incoming enemy. Move your character on the field, attack enemies, raise your stats and buy new weapons with an easy-to-use interface. It's a bare-bones tactics game that is inviting even for non-strategy fans to enjoy.
Hot on the heels of the original Bloons Tower Defense game comes a sequel that delivers more of the same explosive fun the original packed, and yet with 3 new difficulty levels and more tower types than ever before. Like the new Road Spikes that you can use to pop any remaining bloons if it looks like some will escape. And the update promises to provide a greater challenge than the first one did.
New from Hero Interactive, creator of Bubble Tanks and Light Sprites, is a unique combination of tower defense and role playing genres (with a little BowMaster Prelude thrown in for good measure) called Storm Winds. Defending the last fort against an oncoming enemy, you must purchase and place turrets on the structure and keep them in good working order. As enemy waves fly in, select a turret and start firing. It's an intruiging combination of game types that's both strategy-oriented and action-packed.
Toytown Tower Defense is yet another game of the tower defense genre that provides a decent amount of polish and a twist or two. It is otherwise more of the same, but still fun if you're a TD fan. You place towers and upgrade them with money you earn from killing enemies marching on a pre-set path toward your castle, if twenty reach there you lose.
It should come as no surprise to hear that great things often spring from the simplest of ideas. Gimme Friction Baby is one such simple idea turned into an award-winning arcade game of strategy and skill that will keep you coming back for more long after your first play. First place and audience prize winner from our 3rd game design competition, and now part of the elite selection of games to be called Best of 2007. Another exceptional game design by Wouter Visser.
The Four Color Problem is a simple turn-based game in which the goal is to color in as much space on a map as you can, while a computer opponent tries to do the same. The catch is that no two adjacent areas can be filled with the same color. Can you dominate the majority of the map with your color?
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