The Origin of Tower Defense Gaming
TD games were most likely originally called
turret defenses and were built for Starcraft. Warcraft III enhanced the genre by changing the name to tower defense and adding many new features not available in Starcraft. These new features include slow, ice and splash towers. There are also several backend features to make the game function better.
TD Types
Maze - In these games waves spawn from one end of a maze then crawl down the path to the other end. Usually children will be standing at the other end. It is your job to make sure the creeps don’t get to them. This can be done by building defense towers along the path to attack the waves of incoming monsters.
The earliest WC3 TD I can remember was based on this concept. It was called simply 'Maze TD'. It was a cooperative game with 4 mazes that all share a common endpoint (in the center).
Maze Solo - In the beginning most Maze TDs were a team effort. This could be extremely frustrating when playing a large difficult maze. A newb would always start leaking creeps into the center very early. This forces other players to use resources on that end of the maze while neglecting their own.
Because of this several tower defence developers started building mazes that could be played as a team or solo. (hosts direction) One example of a solid solo maze is the 'Bow TD'.
Mauls - These games are similar to the traditional maze Tower defenses. The only difference is the mazes are much wider and you build towers inside the mazes rather that on the edges. This style can be much more strategic. Not only do you need the right combinations of towers at the right times. You also need to design an effective maze within the maze.
Creeps find their way through these complex paths by following waypoints. A savy tower building will find the waypoints and make it very difficult for creeps to go from one waypoint to the next.
Watch out for flyers! Flying creeps don’t need to go through your maze so you need to build air defense towers on choke points and turns. The most popular Maul is probably 'Wintermaul' or 'Cube Defense'
Tower Wars - Tower wars can be played on either the maze style or the maul style format. They can also be coop or solo. The major difference is the monsters are spawned by the teams to go through the mazes of other teams. These games can get extremely intense.
My two personal favorite tower defenses of this genre are 'Wintermaul Wars' and 'Autumn Crossing'. There is even an Autumn Crossing style game available on the internet called
Desktop Tower Defence.
If you have never heard of this genre I highly recommend picking up a copy of Warcraft 3 today. Remember to log into battlenet and look in the custom games. Tower defences are not available through the main game.
