The tower defense genre is one populated with hundreds upon hundreds of cheaply-made Flash games, expressly designed to help office workers get through their boring days at work (so, y’ know, every day). They’re basically the bread-and-butter of all those “free online games” sites that our younger readers probably spent the entirety of their high school career on – don’t pretend that you didn’t!
For those uninitiated to the genre, tower defense games (with some exceptions) operate on a pretty simple principle: place automated attack towers to stop the monsters/creeps/what have you from reaching your base. If a certain number of creeps hits your base, you lose. Pretty simple, right? Not really- most popular tower defense games require some deep strategies to succeed, and some games mix up the formula by reversing the roles, making the player the attacking party.
In choosing the candidates from this list, I selected the very best of what the genre has to offer – taking into account both art style, fun value, and how derivative the game in question is. We all love new blood, right? So, without any further ado, here are the best Tower Defense games.