* Tower Defense *

Ah, Tower Defense.

Not as old as many genres, these games emerged in the 90s, and have remained a fecund, but not especially respected, part of the games market ever since.

In a Tower Defense Game, enemies approach your base along a preset path. You set up your defenses along that path with 'towers', defensive turrets that attack incoming enemies in an attempt to kill them before they reach your base.

The reason these games are not much respected is they are easy to make and take up relatively little data, so dozens of them are published free on the internet every year. What we obtain too cheap we esteem too lightly, and nothing is cheaper than "free". Therefore, tower defense is seen as an amateur game, and not treated with much respect.

Yet there are many interesting variants to the genre! Tower Defense has spawned hundreds of variations and been used as part of many worthwhile games even by professional studios such as Ubisoft and Square-Enix.

There even are game SERIES based around tower defense...