Tower Defence: how to play, and how to win

The basics

Each level is a map with a road, a city at its end and a number of build slots, marked with a +, beside the road. Enemies come in waves. Every enemy that reaches the city costs lives, and the level is lost when the city has none left. Survive every wave and the level is won.

• Gold pays for towers and upgrades. You start each level with some, and every enemy stopped pays more. Gold belongs to the level you are playing.
• Waves start when you are ready: build first, then press Start. Between waves you can build, upgrade and sell in peace. Once every enemy of a wave is on the road, you can call the next one early.
• Lives: the city starts with 20. Most enemies that get through cost one life; bigger ones cost two, the Ironclad three and the Warlord ten.
• Stars: a win earns three stars if the city kept at least 90% of its lives (you lost no more than two), two stars if it kept at least half, and one star otherwise.
• Speed: play at 1x up to 5x, and pause at any time. The first level shows you around step by step.

Your towers aim and shoot by themselves. The game is about where you build, what you build, and when you upgrade.

Towers and upgrades

There are five kinds of tower. Each can be upgraded twice: once to a stronger version, and then into one of two specialisations, so every tower ends up one of two quite different things. Prices are in gold.

Early levels offer only some of the towers: the first has Arrow Towers and Cannons, and Frost and Mage Towers follow on the next two. Tap a tower to see its upgrades, or to sell it. Selling returns 70% of what the tower cost, and everything spent on it since the current wave began, so a tower built by mistake can be taken back in full.

Aiming

Every tower shoots at the enemy in range that is nearest the city, unless you aim it otherwise. Select a tower and the Aim button above the panel says how it is aimed; tap it to choose the next way: first (nearest the city), last (furthest from the city), strongest (the most health left) or closest (nearest the tower). A tower keeps its aim when it is upgraded.

Enemies

New enemies arrive as you travel further. Before each wave, the panel shows what is coming and what clearing it pays, with a warning when an enemy has a special ability.

Grunt

The common foot soldier. Nothing special, but they come in numbers.

Runner

Twice as fast as a Grunt, with little health. Fast-firing towers and frost catch them.

Brute

Slow and heavily armoured: armour takes a fixed amount off every hit, so many small hits do little. Cannons and mages deal with it. Costs the city two lives.

Flyer

Flies, so cannons and mortars cannot touch it. Arrows, mages, frost, Tesla Coils and the Flak Cannon can.

Healer

Heals the enemies around it. Kill it first, or its group takes far longer to bring down.

Swarmling

Tiny and quick, in large numbers. Blasts and lightning clear them.

Ironclad

A bigger, slower Brute with even more armour. Costs the city three lives.

Wyvern

A tougher flyer.

Shaman

A stronger healer that reaches further and heals more often.

Broodmother

Lightly armoured; when she falls, four Swarmlings burst out.

Warden

Halves the damage of magic: let arrows, cannons and lightning deal with it.

Burrower

Every few seconds it dives underground for a moment and walks on where nothing can hit it, then comes up again.

Phoenix

A flyer that turns to ashes when it falls, and rises again two seconds later with half its health. Kill it twice.

Warlord

The boss, from Warlord's Gate on: enormous health and armour, and no Sentinel can hold it up. It costs the city ten lives if it gets through, and pays five credits when it falls.

The Sentinel

From level 11, you can tap your castle to hire a Sentinel for 70 gold: a soldier who guards the road and holds up to four enemies while your towers shoot them. Tap the road to choose where it stands; by default it guards the stretch your towers cover best. A fallen Sentinel comes back after a few seconds. On a map with two roads you can hire one for each.

The Sentinel upgrades to a Veteran (110 gold, tougher, holds five), and then into a Shield-bearer (180, holds a whole crowd at bay) or a Lancer (180, hits hard, holds three).

The six countries

The game has 30 levels in six countries, five levels each, and each country brings something new.

The Meadows
levels 1–5

Where it starts: Grunts and Runners, then Brutes, Flyers and Healers, and the first Warlord at Warlord's Gate.

The Autumn Hills
levels 6–10

Swarmlings, Ironclads and Wyverns, and longer levels. Research starts to matter here.

The Highlands
levels 11–15

The Sentinel joins you, and so do the Shaman and fallen rocks: some slots are blocked by rubble that you can clear for 30 to 50 gold.

The Frozen North
levels 16–20

The Tesla Coil, the Broodmother and the Warden. Enemies cross frozen lakes 50% faster, and towers on rocky high ground reach a fifth further. The Winter Throne has a second road.

The Desert
levels 21–25

Burrowers, and quicksand that slows enemies to 60% of their speed: a natural place to concentrate your fire.

The Fire Mountains
levels 26–30

The Phoenix. Towers cannot aim into drifting smoke, and towers built beside a glowing forge hit a quarter harder.

Gold: spending and saving

Spending everything at once is not always best. The game rewards a little patience:

• Interest. Gold you have not spent when a wave is cleared earns 10%, up to 40 gold a wave.
• Carry-over. When you win, a quarter of your unspent gold (up to 100), plus a tenth on top, is added to your starting gold on the next level.
• Another try. Lose a level and you start it again with a tenth more of its starting gold, for each defeat in a row up to five.
• Wave rewards. Clearing a wave pays gold on top of what the enemies paid.

Research can raise all of these: more interest, a bigger carry-over, more gold per wave, cheaper towers and upgrades.

Credits and research

Credits are the currency you keep. Every level pays credits for the waves you survived, win or lose, with a bonus for a win; later levels pay more. A level you have already won pays less, so new levels are worth more than replaying old ones. Achievements, a daily reward and the challenges pay credits too.

Credits buy research: lasting improvements, bought in order in four branches. You can open research from the level select, between two waves of a level, and after a defeat. Resetting it is free and returns every credit, so you can try another plan at any time (though not in the middle of a game).

Difficulty and ways to play

Easy, Normal and Hard

You choose the difficulty each time you start a level. Normal is the game as designed. Easy gives enemies a quarter less health, but pays fewer credits and at most one star: useful when a level has you stuck. Hard opens on a level once you have won it on Normal: enemies have 30% more health, and it pays 50% more credits.

Endless

Win a level and you can play it endlessly: the waves keep coming, stronger each time round, until the city falls. How long can you hold out?

Daily and weekly challenges

Once you have won level 3, a new daily challenge waits every day: one level with a twist, such as tough enemies, swift enemies, half the gold, no upgrades, only two kinds of tower, or a quarter of the lives. Everyone plays it with the same research, so it is a fair contest. The weekly challenge runs from Monday to Sunday with two twists at once, and pays twice as many credits per wave.

Hall of fame

Sign in with Google and choose a name and a country to join the hall of fame: lists for the most stars on Easy, Normal and Hard, the longest endless game, and the daily and weekly challenges, for the whole world or one country. Every score is checked on our server by replaying the game before it counts.

Achievements and the daily reward

21 achievements, such as winning every level of a country, pay credits when earned. Coming back on consecutive days pays a daily reward that grows from 10 to 40 credits over a week.

Hints

Stuck between two waves? A hint looks one wave ahead and tells you what to build. Each game allows three hints (four with the Scouts research), at 10 credits each; where the game shows ads, you can also watch one instead. A hint costs a star in the hall of fame (or two waves in an endless game), but nothing in your own progress.

Tips for three stars

• Build where the road bends. A tower beside a bend, or between two stretches of road, has enemies in range for much longer than one beside a straight.
• Mix your towers. Arrows for speed and flyers, cannons for crowds, frost to slow, mages for armour. A single kind of tower always meets an enemy it is bad at.
• Slow, then hit. A Frost Tower just before your strongest towers multiplies their damage: enemies spend longer in range.
• Know your armour. Armour takes a fixed amount off each hit. Against Brutes and Ironclads, a few heavy hits (cannons, Sniper, Archmage) beat many light ones, and magic ignores armour altogether.
• Healers first. A Healer or Shaman in a group undoes your damage. Towers with range reach them; the Wildfire research stops healing on burning enemies.
• Keep some gold back. Up to 400 gold left unspent earns the full 40 gold of interest each wave. Spend when a wave needs it, not before.
• Upgrade the right tower. One well-placed tower at its third tier often beats two new towers in poor spots.
• Aim to suit the tower. A Sniper or an Archmage aimed at the strongest enemy spends its big hits where they count; a tower near the start of the road aimed last picks off what slips past the others.
• Use the map. Put frost on the ice, your strongest towers on high ground and beside forges, and a killing zone at the quicksand. In smoke, make sure your towers cover the road on either side of it.
• Plan for Burrowers and the Phoenix. Burrowers can only be hit above ground, so cover a long stretch of road. A Phoenix rises again from its ashes: keep towers behind the point where it falls.
• Stuck? Replay earlier levels for credits and buy research, try the level on Easy first, or take a hint.

Controls

On a phone or tablet, tap a + slot to build, tap a tower to upgrade or sell it, pinch the map to zoom in and drag to look around. On a computer, use the mouse, and the keyboard if you like:

Space

Start the next wave, or pause and resume during one.

+ −

Faster or slower.

N

Call the next wave early.

T

Aim the selected tower the next way.

Esc

Open or close the menu.

The browser's Back button works too: in a level it opens the menu, and pressed again it saves the game and returns to the level select.

Questions and answers

Is Tower Defence free?

Yes. It is free to play, with ads in the browser version. There is nothing to buy.

Do I need to download anything?

No. It plays in any modern browser on a phone, tablet or computer. If you like, you can install it as an app: on Android and in Chrome on a computer, choose "Install app" on the level select; on an iPhone or iPad, use Safari's "Add to Home Screen". Once installed, it starts even without a connection.

Is my progress saved?

Yes, on your device, from the first level, without an account. A level you leave part-way through can be continued later. Sign in with Google to keep your progress in an account and carry it to your other devices.

Which languages does it speak?

41, from English, Chinese, Hindi and Spanish to Turkish, Swahili and Vietnamese. It starts in your browser's language when it has it, and you can change it on the level select.

Something is wrong, or I have an idea

Write to support@flexygames.com.