Desktop Tower Defense is a great game by Paul Preece that we reviewed here previously. Since Preece joined forces with Dave Scott, the creator of Flash Element TD (and Flash Circle TD and Vector TD), they’ve been working on a multiplayer Flash gaming site call The Casual Collective.

The Casual Collective is out of beta and running on an invite-only basis. Once in the system, you can invite others to join your collective. TCC appears to be adding the social element to casual gaming, with groups, collectives, etc.

Flash Element TD

The original sheep killing game, Flash Element TD, has been ported to their new system and is playable in a single-player mode. This is the same old TD that got the whole thing rolling.

Multi-Player Desktop TD

The first new game they’ve got running is Multi-Player Desktop TD (MPDTD). You can create games of several types, with various options, and await others to join. Once the minimum number of players have joined the game, you can start.

The first reaction is to ask “how do you make a Tower Defense game multiplayer?” The approach taken with MPDTD is that you play the TD game as you normally would, except that you’re competing against the other players for the highest score. Further, if Super Powers are enabled, you gain points for each level that allow you to buy attacks against the other players. For instance, you can temporarily turn the Lights Out on their board, or Silence one type of tower on an opponent’s board.

Before and during the games you can post chat messages that show up under the game area.

Your Stats

The Casual Collective keeps statistics on your game performance. Viewing your profile page will show your recent game history, graph the scores across the last 20 games, and basic win/loss/disconnect counts.

Clicking a recent game in the history will show points, awards (longest maze, most points, early leaker, etc.), and permalinks to that game page.

Groups

The Collective also has the concept of player groups. This can be geographical or otherwise, like Firefox Users, or a team. TCC Group home pages have sections for news, shouts, a leaderboard, and a list of active games being played by group members.

Upgraded Accounts

The basic account is free, and allows you to create and play games. However, upgrading your account (five bucks per month) lets you create more game types with more players, invite more people, create more groups, etc.

Awaiting TCC

Once Paul and Dave open The Casual Collective to the public, it will be interesting to see how it develops over time. There are still a few minor bugs here and there, but hopefully those will be ironed out and the Collective will be open for business soon. They are taking casual gaming to a different place.

Tags: Flash · Online games