Yet another Flash-based Tower Defense game, this time from Paul Preece of Hand Drawn Games. Perhaps a little confusing, “Desktop” refers to the background image in the game, not that you download it and play on your Windows (or Mac or Linux) Desktop.

Desktop Tower Defense is great take on the game. Instead of building towers on the walls of a maze, as in Critters’ Flash Element TD, in Desktop Tower Defense your towers create the maze.

There are four difficulty levels available: easy, normal, hard, and challenge. Scores in the Easy level are not saved. Challenge levels include a speed level and a few where various tower types are unavailable.

The object is to build defensive towers of various sorts and kill all the incoming creeps before you run out of lives. Different creeps show up on the various levels, quickly becoming tougher to destroy. You have 20 lives and a limited amount of money when the game begins. Every seven of the 49 levels is a boss level.

Maze Construction

Your maze layout is displayed after the game, and the mazes for the last 20 scores that have been submitted can be displayed (along with the corresponding scores).

High Scores

Desktop Tower Defense has an interesting high score system, in which you can assign your name and score to a group of scores. First, after completing a game, you enter your name.

After your name is entered, you’re taken to the maze layout screen shown earlier, and asked to enter a group name. High scores are saved and displayed for your group, but you can also view the top 100 recent scores and the top scores in challenge games.

Overall

This is a good variant of the tower defense style games. The ability to create the game maze with the towers and the high score groups differentiate it nicely from Flash Element and Flash Circle TD (both good in their own right).

Tags: Flash · Free · Online games · Platforms · Reviews