Desktop Tower Defense

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Desktop Tower Defense
Desktop Tower Defense in play
Developer(s)	Paul Preece
Distributor(s)	Kongregate, Handdrawngames.com, Casualcollective.com
Designer(s)	Paul Preece
Version	Pro (2.0)
Platform(s)	Adobe Flash
Release date(s)	March 3, 2007 (Version 1.0) March 21, 2007 (Version 1.2) June 22, 2007 (Version 1.5) October 13, 2008 (Version 1.9) April 2009 (Pro)
Genre(s)	Tower defense
Mode(s)	Single-player, Multi-player
Media	online Flash game
System requirements	Flash-compatible web browser, Adobe Flash
Input methods	keyboard, mouse

Desktop Tower Defense (DTD) is a Flash-based browser game of the tower defense game genre created by first-time game designer Paul Preece in March 2007. The game had been played over 15.7 million times as of July 2007,^[1] and was one of Webware 100's top ten entertainment web applications of 2007.^[2] DTD is available in an English, Spanish, German, French, or Italian interface. As of May 2009, a commercial Nintendo DS version exists and is heavily based on the flash game.

Contents 1 Gameplay 2 The Creeps 2.1 Normal Creeps 2.2 Fast Creeps 2.3 Flying Creeps 2.4 Group Creeps 2.5 Dark Creeps 2.6 Spawn Creeps 2.7 Hopper Creeps 2.8 Decoy Creeps 2.9 Arrow Creeps 2.10 Morph Creeps 2.11 Immune Creeps 2.12 Boss Creeps 3 History 3.1 Development 3.2 Distribution 3.3 Updates 4 Reception and impact 5 References 6 External links

[edit] Gameplay

The game is played on a map resembling an office desktop. The player must stop a set number of enemies, known in the genre as "creeps," from reaching a set point on the playing field. This is accomplished by building and upgrading towers that shoot at, damage and kill the enemy creeps before they are able to reach their objective. Unlike many other tower defense games, the path of the creeps themselves is not set; instead, the towers built determine the path of the creeps, who take the shortest path they can find to the exit. The game prevents making an exit inaccessible.

The creeps come in waves at set intervals. Each wave of creeps has different characteristics, such as immunity to certain towers, extra resistance to certain towers, and the abilities to spawn new creeps, move faster than normal, or fly over the towers instead of following the maze. For each wave, the game rotates among the types of creeps. Several times during gameplay, boss waves will appear. These waves consists of just one or two large creeps each, that are extremely difficult to defeat.

One tactic is "juggling" in which the player removes a tower to create an alternate path to the exit and then closes off the other path, forcing the creeps to travel back through the maze. Juggling becomes more difficult as the game progresses, since the time required to remove a tower increases each time a tower is removed.

The player has a set number of lives that diminishes every time a creep gets through the defenses the player has built and reaches its objective. Upon loss of the last life, the game is over and the player is defeated.

The game can be played in three difficulty levels: easy, medium, and hard. In addition, there are several challenge modes available for those seeking more from the game. Challenges range from "The 100", where the player must defeat 100 levels of successively difficult creeps to "3K Fixed", where the player has to build a fixed set of towers (including the upgrades) with just 3000 gold. There are also various fun modes different in gameplay than the other, harder ones.

The voice when a player is asked to enter a score for the high score table is sampled from Ivor the Engine.

[edit] The Creeps

[edit] Normal Creeps

Normal Creeps are ground-based and are average in all respects, they are normally small grey and plain. They are the easiest to kill.

[edit] Fast Creeps

Fast Creeps are teardrop shaped creeps that move faster than other creeps, this is compensated by them being slightly weaker than normal creeps.

[edit] Flying Creeps

Flying Creeps are triangular creatures that are quite weak and cannot be redirected by placing towers. This Creep is affected only by Pellet Towers, Squirt Towers, and Swarm Towers. The Flying Creep is weakest against the Swarm Tower, which only attacks Flying Creeps but launches four projectiles at one time.

[edit] Group Creeps

Group Creeps are weak creeps that stay very close together, generally making it hard for Pellet Towers and Squirt Towers to kill them all as their fire is drawn to a single creep in the group. The Dart Tower and Bash Tower are best against them.

[edit] Dark Creeps

Dark Creeps are crescent shaped creeps with thick armor. Only upgraded towers will harm them. They also move slightly slower than other creeps.

[edit] Spawn Creeps

Spawn Creeps start as a figure '8' shape that divides into two circular creeps, then smaller creeps, requiring you to kill it several times. Each of the smallest creeps counts as a single life, meaning larger creeps remove more lives if they cross their finish line. When a Spawn Creep separates, its component creeps may, on occasion, slip through corners of towers.

[edit] Hopper Creeps

Hopper Creeps lunge towards their objective at set intervals. Because of this, they are able to cut the corners of towers making it imperative to leave no gaps between them.

[edit] Decoy Creeps

Decoy Creeps have slightly increased movement speed. When they are killed, they leave behind a few creeps that are very hard to kill because of their high health. Fortunately, these tough creeps move very slowly.

[edit] Arrow Creeps

Arrow Creeps are a type of fast creep that speed through straight pathways and slow down to turn around corners. They are best neutralized by mazes with a lot of twists and turns.

[edit] Morph Creeps

Morph Creeps are a special creep that change their form among any of the other creeps. Because of this, no particular tower(s) are best against them.

[edit] Immune Creeps

Immune Creeps are not effected by the slowing effect of Freeze Towers. They are shaped like a sixteen-pointed star.

[edit] Boss Creeps

Boss creeps appear every eighth wave. There are always fewer of them than in a normal wave, usually only one per entrance. The Boss Creep is always a super version of one of the other types of Creep. Boss Creeps are very difficult to kill.

[edit] History

[edit] Development

Paul Preece got the inspiration for Desktop Tower Defense in 2006. He noticed a lack of tower defense games that allowed proper "mazing" (controlling movement of enemy forces by placing towers in their path). Preece did not immediately start work on Desktop Tower Defense because he considered Flash to be too difficult to learn. It was only after an acquaintance created Flash Element Tower Defense that Paul started work on the game. Starting from the "Autumn Tower Defense" map created for the RTS game Warcraft III, Paul Preece created a simple tower defense game that could be played using only a browser. Because of his lack of skill with computer graphics, he named the game's site HandDrawnGames.com^[3]

[edit] Distribution

Originally, the game was promoted through the web service StumbleUpon, getting further boosts from popular bloggers such as Michael Arrington.^[4] It eventually found its way onto several flash game sites such as Kongregate. The game's popularity was further increased by exposure on the internet pop-culture websites Digg and I-am-bored.com. It is now available on MySpace Games,^[5] and as part of the MindJolt collection on Facebook.

[edit] Updates

The original release version of the game, version 1.0 was released in early March 2007. On the 21st of the same month, version 1.2 was released introducing a new tower type, a new creep, and a new challenge mode among other updates.^[6] Version 1.5 of the game was released in late June 2007.^[7] Among the many cosmetic changes include new types of towers, creep types and challenge modes. While the changes diversify the overall gaming experience, some reviewers like Duncan Riley of TechCrunch and Jason Kottke reacted negatively to the update.^[8][9]

In December 2007, Preece and David Scott also created the Casual Collective, whose flagship game was a multiplayer version of DTD.^[10]

On October 13, 2008, version 1.9 was announced on the game's homepage.^[11] It was released to the Casual Collective and is both multi- and single-player.^[12]

On April 1, 2009 a beta version of DTD Pro, which is the 2.0 release of the game, was launched to the public on the Casual Collective. It contains a sandbox mode to allow granular customization of the game. ^[13]

[edit] Reception and impact

This game was featured on Attack of the Show and the Lab with Leo on G4TechTV. It was also in the March issue of Game Informer, with a positive review. As of July 2007, the game had been played more than 15 million times since its inception in March of the same year. The game has made over $12,000 in ad-revenue and donations according to its creator^[when?]. Most of the revenue generated by the game is through the online ad-service AdSense.^{[1][14][15][16]}

The game itself has been billed as extremely addictive and thus time-consuming by many reviewers, such as those at TechCrunch. Reviewer Michael Arrington commented in jest the game "should be banned" because of this.^{[17][18][19][20][21]}

Due to success of the game, Paul Preece decided to leave his programming job to focus on making online games as an independent game developer. With fellow game maker David Scott, they formed Casual Collective, a game development company.^{[22][23][24][25]} As of 2008, at least $1 million has been raised by the fledgling company mostly from venture capital firms such as Lightspeed Venture Partners.^[26][27]

It has been covered by publications like the Wall Street Journal.^[1] Desktop Tower Defense was ranked second within the top five games within the tower defense genre by Just-Whatever.^[28] The game was picked in a survey involving over 400,000 voters over 5000 other web applications as one of the top 100 best web applications, one of ten in the entertainment category for 2007 by Webware.^[2][29] In 2008, the game won a "Gleemie Award" and the developers received $5000 in prize money at the 2008 Independent Games Festival.^[30]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official site of original version
• Official site of pro version