Shamus linked up to this Flash Element Tower Defense game. I actually had been meaning to mention this game in a post over the weekend, but didn’t get around to doing so.

What an addicting little game. I’ve played it a couple of times now and still haven’t managed to beat the last level. My main strategy at the moment revolves around trying to bank as much as possible and maximizing my damage output / gold expenditure by upgrading as much as possible.

My basic strategy so far is to buy an arrow tower, upgrade it, and then buy another one around level five. At level seven I sell off my Arrow Towers and use my wood to purchase Fire, then buy a Fire Tower. I can upgrade the fire tower and that’s the only tower I need until around level 20 (25?). I purchase the Interest Upgrade at level 14 and 21, and then at 28 I purchase the Water Research so I can build Water Towers. I build maybe one or two more Fire Towers (and upgrade) them to handle the remaining waves up to 33. At 33 I build a Water Tower or two to slow down the boss.

After that I haven’t really developed a very clear idea of what I need to do. Particularly the 30,000 HP enemies — I just don’t have enough gold to spend. It’s kind of confusing to me considering my entire strategy throughout the first thirty or so waves involves spending as little gold as I possibly can. I suppose what I ought to really do is figure out the Damage / Gold cost for all towers and upgrades and figure out the best strategy. Another thing I could do if I were compulsive is figure out the best placement — Shamus thinks that the middle is a honeypot, but I’m not really convinced it is — Logically the area with the most tiles of coverage is the best placement, and that seems to be the middle. Splash damage on Fire Towers does encourage clustering of creeps, though, and the creep clustering is weakest in the center…

The only things that have been giving me trouble in waves 1-30 are the bosses, which are actually an update that wasn’t in the original version … Bosses seem geared towards attempting to make the Earth Towers useful, but they really don’t. Fire Towers are pretty much the ultimate towers due to high damage, ability to hit air and land, and splash. Even a single boss monster, which presumably Earth Towers would be better at taking out, can usually be gotten on the second lap using Fire Towers. The addition of the “Purchase More Lives” button really downplays the impact of bosses — I could go easily from 1-30 without losing a single life if not for bosses. Past that, I’ve just got too much cash for a mere 40 gold to worry me.

There are apparently a couple of videos on YouTube of this game being played… This character named mo0h has a video up demonstrating a Cannon Tower strategy, as well as an unupgraded Fire Tower strategy.

I have no idea how this guy managed to get through the air levels with this all-cannon strategy…

One thing that is kind of disappointing, given that I used to play Elemental Tower Defense on Warcraft III all the time, is that the structure of this Flash game completely restricts your placement options. For this to be a real Tower Defense you would be able to build anywhere you wanted, but creeps would destroy your towers if it completely blocked them from continuing along their path. This also brings back the real threat of air units — You can make the most elaborate maze of towers imaginable to maximize the time creeps spend navigating the map area, but air units will fly right past your towers. Air waves are truly something you need to plan for, when that’s the case. And, well, as far as I can recall splash damage doesn’t work against air units in Warcraft III, so you couldn’t just stockpile on the Fire Towers as you can in this Flash game.

I guess I could go play Warcraft III though if I wanted the real deal.