Monster Castle Defense is a retro-styled 2D tower defense game with cute little pixel graphics and a level of difficulty that will certainly get your attention. In order to keep the princess (queen? lady in a towel?) safe, you must deploy a series of creatures to fight off ever-advancing evil soldiers. Upgrade your warriors to bigger, badder fighters, and keep the hallways clear as you try to survive wave after wave of attacks!
We're all quite familiar with the tower defense concept by now, and even though Monster Castle Defense ditches the top-down perspective in favor of a side view, the principles are pretty much the same. Use the mouse or keyboard to select any of eight creatures from your inventory on the right side of the screen. Each one has its own unique ability, such as close-range melee attacks, fireballs, slow gel, or even attack bees! Buy a unit and set it on one of the glowing spaces on the floor. Creatures automatically face the right direction, all you have to do is decide what to place and at which moment to do it.
When an enemy saunters by, your creatures attack. Wear down streams of evil soldiers, nasty priests, demented hikers, and not-so-nice kamikazes to earn cash, represented by skulls. Use the money to buy more creatures (naturally), or upgrade existing ones when their XP bars are full. You can also increase an individual unit's effectiveness for a small fee, and if you've decided someone isn't pulling their weight, sell them off and put in something new. After all, it's your responsibility to defend the lovely lady at the top of the castle, not some crummy skeleton's.
Units not doing a good enough job? Why not summon one of your spells to give them a hand? Fire, lightning, tornado and blizzard are at your disposal, each costing a hefty chunk of change and offering a one-off attack to deal extra damage to a foe. They're best reserved for emergency situations, so save them for just such an occasion and spend your skull money on upgrades and new units instead.
Analysis: Strategy is the name of the game with Monster Castle Defense, and everything in the game is chiseled down to allow for fine-tuning of your own personal tower defense philosophy. Instead of dealing with flying enemies, fast enemies, walking enemies and other gimmicks, Monster Castle Defense tosses creeps your way that can heal themselves, climb up through the ceiling, or even attack your own creatures! This allows you to focus on your strategy, not worrying about whether or not you can defend against a flying monster that's immune to fire damage. Balance is still key, but you're a bit more free to customize your attack plan in this tower defense game.
Monster Castle Defense isn't necessarily one of those games you can just pick up and play right off the bat, even if you're a tower defense expert. You're presented with an information dump before the game begins, running you through everything you should know before you start to play. Enemy abilities, keyboard shortcuts, info on how to upgrade units, and even your own creatures' abilities are shown in a quick slideshow, with a few pointers and the same tutorial available from the in-game help menu. It's a lot to digest for a casual browser game, but at least you have a few waves to experiment before the heavy fighters start to roll in.
Four castles in all, each with a variable difficulty level, offers a good deal of challenge for browser tower defense fans. Even on easy, however, you'll have a bit of an uphill battle trying to survive each wave of enemies. Distilling your own plan of attack is absolutely essential to winning this game, so practice makes perfect. And memorizing the help screens never hurts, either!
The interface could be a little clearer and the learning curve a bit more accessible, but Monster Castle Defense provides a solid strategy experience with a distinct focus on actual strategy, not luck. Plus, it's hard to say no to a game with pixel art this gorgeous!
I tried it a few days ago, but it was too difficult for me.
I love it. I've compiled a short unit guide but the comment rules says no link dropping...
[You may post your unit guide here in the comments, and we encourage you to do so, please. :) -Jay]
I still don't get what the corpse does?...it just squirts blood and doesn't attack. Can anyone help me out?
phelios27: Corpe gives you extra skulls/cash for each kill.
Anyone have any tips for the fourth tower on extreme difficulty? I can only make it to the 10th wave or so
When I saw this, I literally kneeled up from the bed and wailed while flapping my arms in excessive happiness.
Really fun game, although I'm getting a little frustrated with some of the later levels - too many enemies on the screen at once cause my computer to freeze up, and by the time I've regained use of my mouse I'm usually dead. Annoying! Any ideas for a fix?
I'm having the same problem as Twinkie23. I get lag and eventual freeze frame even on stage 2 normal. I like the game and it's fun but it needs better optimization... They're just sprites people come on! JK great job by the developer, just need a bit more tech.
A solution for the lag is to use firefox as explorer, IE is really lagy.
Thanks Jay,
here you go people
[Edited. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I said you may post your walkthrough here, not a link to it. We do not allow links to external walkthroughs since we aim to have walkthroughs for every game we review here on JIG. -Jay]
I had messaged the creator fliptic but there's no word from him :|
sure no problem. I need to work on it before I can post I think, as my guide is on their attributes. Should be ready in 3-4 days.
Have anyone seen the effect of a level 3 Mudman? Does it really push all the way back?
Is there a level 3 Demon?
GAHHHHH!!!!
36/40 on Castle 3 Extreme. :(
That's pretty depressing.
Level 3 Mudman pushes back more, but not all the way to the beginning of the row (nothing amazing like that). It looks pretty cool though (like a samurai robot shooting cannonballs out of its midsection).
Oh, and level 3 demon turns into someone who looks suspiciously similar to Princess Peach.
I was freaking out because
A knight had reached the queen and I was thinking he was going to rescue her... that was before she bit off his head XD
Yay, I beat Castle 3 on extreme!
@Joran: scratch my comment on the level 3 demon. I think it might be level 2 that turns into the princess.
@ballin:
I only got to 35/45 in Castle 4 on extreme, so this probably won't work as an end game. But for what it's worth, this was my general progression:
1) Skeletons in the first two spaces.
2) Plants in two left spaces on second floor.
3) Plants in two right spaces on third floor.
4) Plants in two left spaces on top floor.
5) Swap out plants on second and third floors for slimes in front of dragons. Life will still suck until you can upgrade those dragons, but with a few well-timed freezes, it shouldn't be a problem.
6) Fill out rest of top floor with a slime-dragon-mudman-demon.
7) Start building copses in remaining free spaces (6 altogether).
8) At some point, you can switch out the skeletons on the first floor for two slimes. If you've fully upgraded your two plants, you can get nice damage on low hp units as they struggle to fight through the slimes (climbers and mages should take quite a bit of damage just walking across the first floor).
9) You should be amassing huge amounts of money if you've gotten this far. Since you have limited spaces for your attacking units, you will have to rely heavily on upgrades and spells.
10) The main enemies you have to look out for are suicide bombers, guys with swords, and mages (in that order). Don't let suicide bombers through. Freeze them and use fire to kill them off. You've spent a lot of money upgrading your units so you have to protect them. Sword guys won't attack your slimes, but will kill your dragons, so you need to make sure they don't get close enough. A few freezes should keep them stuck in the slimes in front of your dragons. Lastly, mages have low hp. Let them petrify your slimes (the slimes will still slow down enemies), but as soon as you see that, start freezing the mages so they can't petrify your dragons.
11) When the bigger green guys come out (with the huge hp), start relying on the green tornadoes + freeze to slow them down near your dragons. It's going to take a lot of spells, but you should have a decent amount of money to work with.
Good luck!
It looks like I might be the only one still actively playing this game, haha. Up to 41/45 on Castle 4 extreme. Getting closer.
@Joran: Lvl 3 demon turns into the princess, only instead of a dress she's wearing a bikini and doing some kind of one-armed (stripper?) dance. It takes a lot of XP to jump from lvl 2 to lvl 3, but two lvl 3 demons next to each other can hold a huge group of enemies in their vicinity for a really long time.
Okay, so since Corpses gain experience over time, I tried to abuse the fact that climbers get stuck in the second floor of Castle 3 (did this on extreme). Leveled up all my new Corpses to 2nd level, got bored of waiting, spawned a skele to kill the climbers and move on.
I then proceeded to die as the climbers in the next level climbed straight up from the entrance past every single floor right into the princess. All 6 of them. Needless to say, I was not amused.
In all seriousness though, pretty fun little game. Even if it did outsmart me. :\
@citrustang
same here, last level is tough :(
I can't for the life of me keep the climbers from climbing directly up to my queen on level 3 extreme.
Woot! I beat the game castle 4 extreme! Funnily enough I found castle 3 more difficult. Castle 4 took me 2 tries only.
So I thought I'd share my strategy for castle 4 extreme:
(from bottom to top: floor 1 to 4)
Floor 1: Here you can't really do much damage, so all I had was: 2 un-upgraded skeletons in the first two positions (they were there to take the blow for explosive/attacking units; when you see those types of units coming, spam Q-click hopefully dispose of all of them).
Also, in the third open space, place a plant (not immediately, after a few rounds). This plant is very important, get his damage up and level 3 him.
The other 3 spaces are used a bit later for corpses (place them when you can - I also upgraded them quite a bit (they each had 14 raise at level 3 in the end)).
Floor 2 and 3: Here's where you'll deal A LOT of damage. Floor 2 and 3 follow the same design, so I'll only explain floor 2: Most left position: 1 demon; to his right 1 skeleton (these two can be placed very early (both, but especially the skeleton upgraded heavily) then on the far right place two hives (heavily upgraded later in the game). So I'm sure you can see where this is going: trap them in that small corner while the skeleton whacks and hives swarm them from the top. The exact same applies for floor 3, corner, hives on floor 2.
Floor 4: This floor is made very capable. From the right place: skeleton, demon, demon, plant, plant, plant. You'll want to keep them fairly upgraded, but not that heavy. 2 demons are really difficult to get past - you can really keep the enemies immobile if you use a few well placed freezes in conjunction with them (and for me that was a must to win).
Good luck!
@the developer: Thanks for the excellent game!
I finally beat level 4 extreme too.
@Maapo
I agree, level 3 extreme was much harder. Took me only 2 tries as well.
Two hints for pretty much any level:
1. There are usually 6 tiles available on the 4th level of the stage. Put 3 flowers near the princess (do not upgrade the 2 closest to the princess past lvl 2 - lvl 3 flowers have about half the range). If you put 3 demons in the 3 tiles by the door it is very very difficult for anything to make it past. Especially if you upgrade the demons 2 or 3 times.
2. A dragon with a slime in front of it is extremely effective, especially after the dragon powers up once.
Just pass the extreme difficulty.
One small tip: Always put a slime in front of skeleton. Skeleton is very cheap but strong.
finally completed. now i can sleep
First time posting here! I've been playing games on the site for years, but I never created an account until now.
I just wanted to say that this game is extremely enjoyable. The only thing I noticed was that at the main menu you have a button that seems as though it would give sound control, but clicking on it does nothing. I find I have to go into a level in order to turn the sound off.
Update