Why I Love Tower Defense Games (And You Should, Too!) feature - Whitevale Defender

Quick Announcment!

Whitevale Defender is launching tonight! I will be pushing the publish buttons at 12:01 AM PDT (which is 7:01 AM UTC). At that point you will be able to purchase the game from Steam, Itch.io, and GameJolt. I truly hope you enjoy my game.

Overview

I've been playing tower defense games for the past 15 years. The first one I ever played was a Starcraft 1 custom map (basically a player created mod) called "Turret Defense".

Ever since then I was hooked. The tower defense genre is a spin-off of the real time strategy genre which I've also enjoyed since I was a kid. Here's why I love tower defense games and you should too!

Strategy Game You Can Play By Yourself

Strategy games are great, I love them. But, most often, to really challenge your brain with strategic thinking you need to face off against a human opponent. There's just something special about competing against a person you are evenly matched with in a strategic battle. Which is great if you have people to play with who you are evenly matched with.

If you don't have anyone to play with there is usually the option to play against a computer AI opponent. The problem with that is they are usually too easy and predictable. So what is one to do?

A perfect compromise is a tower defense game! If designed properly, a tower defense game offers a good amount of strategic thinking and challenge that you can play by yourself. Your brain will be tasked with finding good positions for defenses, managing resources, executing under time pressure, and allocating upgrades.

In Whitevale Defender, you get to do all those things completely offline!

Sessions Are Quick

As I age, it's getting harder and harder to find time to play games. Especially with raising a 2 year old daughter. So the length of any given play session is really important, and I know it's important for other aging gamers with families.

The vast majority of tower defense games will have quick sessions from 15 - 45 minutes. That means you can boot up the game, play one or two sessions, then get out. Perfect for when you're trying to play a game during your toddler's nap time.

In Whitevale Defender the average session is 10 - 15 minutes for most players. In the screenshot below you can see I got to wave 10 in 6 minutes and 34 seconds (I lost though).

No Commitment

I love many different genres of games. But there are many genres out there that require a bit of commitment. For example, open world RPGs and adventure games. Those types of games have hundreds of hours of gameplay and long story lines. There's a level of mental overhead those games require that is harder to come by for aging gamers with families. It's hard to just jump in quickly and play for 20 minutes and get out. Very commonly there's a lot of exploring, character customization, and quest lines.

For example, I love "Legend of Zelda: Breath Of The Wild". But the world is huge and requires a lot of wandering around. Let's say I'm craving to complete a divine beast to make some progress. It may take me 20 minutes just to get to the location of the divine beast. Then there's a fetch quest they send you on, lots of dialogue, and preliminary challenge before you can even enter the divine beast, which could take another 30 minutes. Then to actually complete the divine beast could be anywhere from 1 - 2 hours, depending upon your skill level and pace. Then once you beat it, there's an ending cutscene and more dialogue. So we're talking 2.5 - 3.5 hours at a minimum to complete something meaningful within the game.

There's also overhead from the story /quest system. If you start a game with an intricate story / quest system then you better finish it within a reasonable amount of time. At least for me, if I don't play that type of game for longer than 2 weeks, It's really easy to forget the story line, which quest I'm on, where I'm suppose to go next, etc. It's almost easier to just start the game over, but then the cycle continues.

So back to tower defense games. Most of them don't have complicated story lines and quest systems. So it's very easy to just jump in and start playing. You get a nice self contained, bite sized chunk of gameplay, then you can be done.

Conclusion

So those are my reasons for loving tower defense games. If you've never gotten into tower defense games then I hope you do! They are a load of fun. It also just so happens that I am creating a tower defense game.