You start each map with all of your characters which you can place on the map. Your one and only goal is to keep them away from Azra, your lead character. Azra, while not fighting actively, has a repertoire of spells at her disposal to aid in battle.

You start the game with a single melee class which only gets you that far. New characters are recruited in town, and sometimes awarded during the story telling in between battles.

Each character has a skill set available to that class. The berserker for instance gets a double-cut early on in the game which hits two enemies passing by when executed.

Your sorceress gains PSI power during battles which can be used for spells, summoning more characters to the battlefield or powering up characters. When you power them up, they grow considerably stronger.

Characters have attack, armor and health values that you need to keep an eye on. Especially health – and armor items – become important later on when enemies start attacking your characters either in melee or range.

Your characters gain experience with every battle they fight, and the occasional level up awards one skill point that you can spend to improve an existing skill or learn a new one. Skills are divided into active skills, like the berserker’s double hit, and passive skills like swiftness which increase abilities passively.

You can equip each character with a weapon and armor, to increase their damage and resistance. These items become more important later on in the game.

Some maps allow you to select a challenge level with considerably stronger enemies and greater rewards. Rewards usually get you more experience and items that you can equip your characters with.

Defender’s Quest all in all is a solid game that does a lot of things right. If there are things to criticize, it is the low variance of enemies that you encounter on the map. The developers have released a full version of the game which boasts more maps, character classes and five additional acts to play through. The full version retails for $6.99 currently, and you get $2 off when you visit the purchase page from the Kongregate website.

When you first start the game you are asked to pick your class from one of the three classes available. Each class has distinct advantages and disadvantages. The warrior class for instance does a lot of damage but has not nearly the reach of the ranger class or the firing frequency of the mage class.

Once you have selected your class you are thrown right into battle. The game does not start until you hit the next wave button, so no need to haste here. You always place your character first on the battlefield, and then other towers that you can buy with gold.

Once you have placed your towers you can start wave after wave. You can either start each wave individually or let the computer send in wave after wave automatically.

Your main task is to complete each level with at least one life left. You get better rewards and more experience if you do not lose a single life though.

Your regular towers get experience over time which you can then use to upgrade them. Upgrading makes them more powerful. Once towers reach level 4 you have the option to add a special ability to a tower’s arsenal which costs a lot of gold but is usually worth the investment.

Your champion gets experience after the battle. Level ups can be invested in a talent tree and attributes. Both are divided into champion and commander talents and ability. Champion related skills always improve the champion, while commander abilities the troops. This reaches from adding poison damage to the champions attack to improving the base range, damage or attack speed of all units by 1% per point spend.

Each level up rewards you with new units or unit upgrades as well. You begin the game with only two selectable units and increase that initial stock to eight during the game.

Graphics are not really top notch but functional enough to enjoy the game. The leveling system, level selections and upgrades make this game enjoyable.

Head over to Armorgames to start playing Hands of War right away. If you have played the game, let me know what you think of it.

The player has only a few towers to select from in the first levels of the game. This changes later when updates become available. Zombies enter in at least one but often multiple entrances and leave the map through one or multiple exits which are usually indicated with arrows. There is also some debris in the levels which act as natural borders that zombies cannot pass.

It pays off to look at the layout of the map before placing towers. It is often possible to block parts of the map with cheap towers to direct all zombies through a narrow opening for maximum effectiveness.

Towers range from cheap basic towers to lightning, fire, minigun and laser beam towers. Each tower has a distinctive attack pattern, range, firing speed and damage.

Towers can be upgraded if the necessary upgrade has been selected by the player. Available for selection are new towers, additional money or global tower upgrades. All towers benefit from the latter.

It is up to the player and play style to decide which upgrades to select. It is not possible to go back to select different upgrades at a later time though which makes it important to make the right selections.

Defeating zombies earns money which can be invested in new tower placements or tower upgrades. The game has a total of 15 different maps that unlock gradually and become increasingly difficulty to master. Enemies become stronger, map layouts more difficulty and wrong tower placement often result in a loss. Players loose one life if a zombie reaches the exit, if 20 zombies reach it is game over. Game over only means that the map was not won and needs to be restarted to progress to the next map.

The game becomes repetitive halfway through, which can be mainly attributed to the lack of “interesting” new zombies and the lack of a story. Another element that is missing is a fast forward button to speed up the gameplay.

Still, the game is fun to play especially for users who like the tower defense genre. You can play it over at Free Web Arcade. (via)

The game itself consists of two parts. Part one takes place on a strategic map of the country. Here you can use resources to improve cities to increase resource generation per turn or to receive advantages during the battle phase. It is furthermore possible to hire better troops or improve the abilities of existing troops.

You have got a certain amount of action points at your disposal per round which you can use to buy improvements or to wage war.

A click on one of the cities connected to your empire opens the second phase of the game, the tower defense phase.

You begin with a set amount of resources that you can spend buying troops. Your troops can be placed on the hexagons displayed on the map. Your task is to keep the demons from reaching your stronghold on the map. Only swordsmen and archers are at your disposal in the beginning. Once you get the training hall you can unlock new unit types such as knights or golems.

It takes a moment before units begin to appear near the towers (huts) that you have build. You can upgrade the huts several times which always adds another unit of that type to the hut. One of the problems that you may run into is that archers will stop shooting at close enemies. It is therefor advised to position the archers in locations where this won’t happen to often.

I like the combination of a strategic turn based game with tower defense elements. While I would not compare it to a great game like Total War or Empire I’d say it offers enough variety to keep you entertained for a while.

The games is on the other hand not overly strategic, especially the tower defense part lacks variety in the long run.

Visuals are on the other hand stunning, especially the hand painted graphics that are displayed before battles.

You can play Demonrift TD over at the Armorgames website.

Kingdom Rush comes with everything that one would expect from a Tower Defense game. It features a campaign with lots of different maps, different towers, enemies, a great presentation and a skill tree.

The player has to beat a map to advance in the campaign. The game begins with instructions on how the game mechanics work. Each new game element, be it a new tower or enemy, is introduced during the map.

Towers can only be placed on designated locations on the map. The player can select between four basic towers which can be upgraded several times. Each tower can be branched out into one specialization. The Archer tower for instance can be upgraded into a powerful but slow firing Musketeer Garrison or a faster firing Ranger Hidout.

Each specialized tower can be further upgraded with two or three skills or spells which are cast automatically by the towers. Upgrades are paid with gold that is earned by defeating enemies and by starting rounds early.

The player has two spells at disposal that can turn the tide. It is first possible to place three reinforcements on the map that block monsters from advancing. The second spell is the good old meteor shower that rains death and destruction on enemies.

One, two or three skill points are awarded after each successful map depending on the performance of the player. This is determined by the number of leaks in the level.

Skill points can be invested in upgrades that make the player’s spells or the tower’s stronger. They can be reset after each map so that skill points can be redistributed.

The introductions of new enemy types and towers helps a great deal. Some monsters are for instance more or less immune to a certain damage type; Armored monsters take less damage from arrows while spiders take reduced damage from magic attacks. Placement of towers and tower upgrades are therefor essential to beat a map without leaks. Observant players will notice that enemy waves always start from the same locations, which makes it easier on consecutive plays to place the towers in the right locations to thwart them of.

You can replay maps at any time, for instance to improve your score to get all of the skill points for completing the map.

Kingdom Rush is an excellent Tower Defense game that comes with all the bells and whistles that one would expect. You can play it over at Armor Games.

The game plays on beautifully drawn 2D maps. Both the interaction with NPCs and the tower defending part take place here. The adventure part, apart from the map layout, has been reduced to a minimum though. Footsteps indicate the path that the monsters take from their start to the Crystal that needs to be defended by the player.

Trees along the route act as placeholders for towers. To place a tower, the player needs to move to that tree until it is highlighted on the map. A tap on space opens the buy menu where one of the available towers can be selected.

Towers include the usual assortment of Tower Defense classics, like the ground only attacking boulder tower or the versatile spear tower. Additional towers become available later in the game. But it is not only towers that the player can use to stop the creeps from reaching the crystal. Traps are a second option. Included here are an ice trap to freeze creeps in place for a short period of time, or the poison trap which poisons them for some time.

Towers can be upgraded for money. Upgrading towers increases the tower’s range and damage output, among other things.

Creeps sometimes drop gems which are the last weapon in a player’s arsenal. These gems can be attached to towers to give the towers special abilities. Some freeze enemy creeps, others add damage types like fire.

A pet needs to be selected after the first level. Three pets are available, from a pet that collects dropped money to one that grounds air creeps.

The world map indicates a player’s progress in the game. It is always possible to go back to play a map again, especially if you want to achieve a perfect score in all levels. The boss levels are also highlighted on that map.

You may need to change your skill set for some levels. The first boss level on normal for instance may require that, especially if you picked skills that are not offering a bonus in that fight.

Maps, at least in the beginning, consist of 2 to 6 waves only, which is low in comparison to other tower defense games.

The game becomes a bit dull mid-game due to a lack of challenging levels and monster variation.

Castaway Island TD is nevertheless a well designed game, suitable for short breaks as levels do not take longer than a few minutes each.

Interested gamers can play the game over at the Flash gaming site Kongregate.

A reverse tower defense game if you will. The excellent tutorial walks you through your first raid on one of the world’s villages. You select your troops at the beginning but are limited to casting spells and watching the progress once you hit the start button. Troop selection is the essential task in the game that will lead to success or failure. There are a few things that you need to know to be effective.

First, there is only one monster available that can plunder. The Goblin Raider. Not good for anything else besides that though. All other troops are support troops that protect or aid the raiders in reaching the objective. You only got a tank unit called Mammoth Turtle at the beginning that you can send along with the raiders. Enemies will automatically fire their bullets at the turtle, they act as cannon fodder to protect the raiders for as long as possible.

You get access to four other units later in the game: A healer with a healing aura, a golem with a protective aura, a warlock that can cleanse units and elementals that aid in the generation of mana.

The money earned during raids is used to unlock new spells, abilities and units.

You will encounter different types of towers on most maps that require different strategies. One basic example. A bog tower damages your units constantly. Only a warlock can cleanse the troops to reduce the effect of the tower. If you add a healer to the mix you should not have difficulties with this kind of tower.

Other towers include a standard and fast firing arrow tower, cannon towers that do splash damage, holy towers that do holy damage (also cleansed by warlocks), quake towers that do ground damage or atomic towers that do even more splash damage than cannon towers.

You have got three spells at your disposal that you can cast during a run, provided that you have the necessary mana to cast it. The heal spell heals units, quake disables towers in a specific region temporarily and the stun spell disables a tower for one round. Clever use of the spells is essential in the later stages of the game, when towers become more powerful and more versatile.

It is necessary to assemble the right units and their order to beat all maps of the game. It may look like an easy to beat game in the beginning but the later levels turn out to be hard to beat, especially if you want to raze and win gold medals and not only bronze.

Villainous is a great game with traits from many games that I like to play. You get a tower defense part, reversed but still lots of fun to play and an rgp part where you need to unlock new skills and units.

Users who are interested in playing Villainous can do so over at Kongregate.

I can only talk about the medium mode that I tried today which I passed at first try and the challenge mode to beat 100 levels which is tough as always. I was not able to beat the challenge mode though, it becomes extremely difficulty at levels 75+ at least with the strategies that I have tried.

Desktop Tower Defense is an excellent game for a short period of time. It does not take long for instance to play the medium mode which consists of 50 waves of enemies that have to be hindered to reach the exits.

Vector TD is a better Tower Defense game. Your objective is to destroy the enemy vectors before they can reach the exit of the level. You loose one life for every vector that reaches the exit. The game ends when you have no lives left or when you beat all the levels of the game.

One remarkable aspect of this game is that it has its maps categorized in beginner, normal and extreme maps. The beginner maps for instance have only one entrance and exit to the level while the extreme ones have two of them. The extreme ones are also more straightforward meaning that you have less space to place your towers well.

You may build four kinds of towers that have all their distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Ever colored tower is strong against his own color and weak against another color making it extremely important to have a solid mix of all kinds of towers at your disposal.

The green, red and violet towers can be build in three different versions while the blue one has only two different models available. Each of the 11 towers that can be build can be upgraded as well to increase range and damage output.

Every now and then a bonus object is among the enemy vectors. If you beat it you get a bonus point that you can use to either increase the damage output of your towers, increase the range of your towers, increase the interest rate or add five lives to your contingent.

I got to level 50 of 50 in the first beginner map in my first try and will give the normal maps a go later today. This is really a great time waster. The only annoying thing is the commercial before the actual game.

Death Star Designer is your change to make it better. Create the meanest Death Star of them all for the Emperor. You receive lots of credits and have to make all the choices. Install Defense systems, firepower, naval facilities and much more. Just make sure you stay in the limit or the Emperor will not be pleased. Once you are done your design is reviewed and you will face criticism about all the design flaws of your Death Star. You may then redesign the Death Star or submit the design anyway.

The second game is called Tower Defense. Buy and Upgrade Towers that attack the waves of monsters that try to storm your castle and kill your citizens. You receive money for every monster that your towers kill and you can use the money to build new towers or upgrade existing ones to make them stronger. Great game, lots of fun.

The second game was recommend by a veteran reader of my blog, Thinker. It is also a Tower Defense game, this time in the well known Starcraft universe. Instead of building towers you build structures known from the game to beat waves of enemies that try to destroy your hive. Yeah that’s right, you play the Zerg. A bit more complicated than the first Tower Defense game but still lots of fun.