Pong and Beyond

47th game played so far

Genre: Strategy
Platform: Internet
Year of Release: 2007
Developer: Paul Preece
Publisher: Kongregate

Desktop Tower Defense is a tower defense strategy game with a focus on ‘mazing’ the enemies – forcing their path to change based on the towers you build. The ‘desktop’ in the title isn’t referring to where you play it – instead, the game takes place on an actual desktop, with pencils, coins and other mess.

Our Thoughts

A quick simple online game before we jump into games older than either of us. Desktop Tower Defense is, unlike what the title suggests, a tower defense game. A tower defense is more or less a strategy game where you place towers to prevent your enemies from making it to your base… you defend yourself using towers. I know it sounds simple when I explain it, but it seems to be fairly new (larger) genre, so some, like me, may not know about it.

It’s one of those genres that have become very popular in recent years. Since it’s a fairly simple concept it has been the subject of multiple free games online with many different settings. In fact in a few weeks we will be tackling Plants versus Zombies which breathed new life into what quickly became a clichéd concept and looks more fun. (Zombie week coming up, stay tuned!)

Still, this game is a good game to play. I can’t compare it to other games of this type, really, not having played them much, but this feels like a solid game of the kind. One thing I liked about this game was the different types of guns. Also, it looks like it takes place on an actual desktop. There’s even a large pen in the corner. Not that that makes much sense in the context of the game, but yeah. Other than that, the graphics are actually relatively simple. The enemies are rarely more than circles or triangles with eyes. The towers are simple in design (although some of the better guns look more complicated).

One of the special features of this game is the maze element. The intention when creating the game is to make the tower position matter by forcing the enemies down certain paths and making it easier to kill them as you want that way. Unless they fly… then quantity really does matter over quality. You can’t have it be too easy either… there is a nice variety in enemies. Aside from the usual, some are clumped together, some fly, and others divide up after the first time and need to be killed a second time. The clumped together ones are so deceptive in their volume. Although there’s a tower great at taking care of them, with some nice splash damage.

I guess in the end this does go to show that gamers with no money in their pocket needn’t worry as long as free games like Desktop Tower Defense or Quadradius are still being made. Especially if you just have fifteen minutes to spare, rather than the 150 hours necessary for your fun Final Fantasy game.

Final Thoughts

This is best described as a good, solid tower defense game with the right graphics and solid mechanics. That is, at the same time, all you can say about it. It’s a good baseline game and we’ll probably refer back to it plenty of times in follow-up games… but I’m sorry, nothing to say here.