Must-Try Free Tower Defence/Defense games for Motorola Droid (and Android phones) Best Value!

Tower Defense (tm) started in 1990 with Atari's Rampart, and since then there has been many different variants, such as fixed path, open field, static unit, mobile unit, and so on. Here are a few variants on the Android OS that is worth your while to try.

Spira Defense is a "fixed turret" type tower defense game. You control a station with 5 turret spots, and enemies spiral in from afar. The station and the turrets don't move. The enemy don't exactly follow a fixed path either.

There are six types of turrets, and you will need to read the help file (or the homepage) on what the turrets actually does. You can upgrade range, power, and the special power (which depends on the turret type, such as firing rate).

You can also give different priorities to different turrets, like shoot weakest, shoot strongest, shoot fastest, or shoot closest. Also, in certain waves you get "power-ups" that you can activate later for specials like "double damage", "double score", and so on

The game can be quite difficult. If you have the wrong turrets no amount of upgrades will save you past level 15. If you got the right ones you can probably survive up to level 40 or so. If you got up to 60, by the maker's comment you're pretty good. World record is about level 100.

The game has very smooth animation since the sprites are quite simple, and sound effects are decent if a bit repetitive. Best part... It is only a few hundred KB in size. Definitely give it a try.

The author actually has two more variants of the game: Void Defense and Wave Defense that you can try as well.

Spira Defense on Appbrain

Defensoid is a 2D "open field" variant of tower defense, this one uses hexes instead of squares and 4 turret variants (upgradeable, of course). The four turrets are cannon (regular shooter), beam (damages all within the beam, across the map), missile (shot tracks target), and slow (slows down target within range). Each turret can be upgraded 4 times, and it takes a few seconds to upgrade the turret itself once you pick upgrade.

There are some random terrain that either helps or hinders your efforts to prevent any from getting through, like "speed up" and "slow down".

In practice, the game usually devolves into using un-upgraded cannon as corridor guides, with beam turrets at either end, slow turrets in the middle, and missile turrets in the corners. Then you just keep upgrading the turrets in strategic locations.

A bit too big, as it's 15 MB for the game that has very little graphics. Sound effects are kinda cute at first, annoying later. Only 2 "maps" in the lite version, but multiple levels of difficulty.

Get Defensoid from AppBrain

Bubble Defense is a "fixed path" variant of tower defense, where you need to place turrets (not restricted to a grid). Once the turrets are in, there is no replacing them unless you want to sell it and place a different one.

This genre usually have clever enemies and cute path designs. Bubble Defense have enemies that require special turrets to "thaw", as well as enemies that gets "downgraded" as it gets worn down, and enemies that breaks into multiple weaker enemies. One of the turrets is "teleporter"... sends the target back to beginning of the path, which is an interesting variant.

The idea is your turrets are out to pop the bubbles, but the bubbles are devious, as they often conceal lesser bubbles. It is cute, but it is a little too abstract for me. It does have difficulty levels though.

Watch the video and see if you like the game. There's also a sequel available: Bubble Defense 2.

Bubble Defense on AppBrain

Guns n' Glory is an "anti-hero" game, and it is a variant of the "fixed path" tower defense. The "enemies" in this case are settlers in the old west, and you, as outlaws, are out to gun down every one of them if you can. They come via various "canyons" on the map, and you "hire" different outlaws to shoot them.

The different outlaws are riflemen, dynamite throwers, cannons, gatlings, and indians. Each are good against certain types of settlers, and not so good against others. So you need a good combination of them.

The interesting part about this variant is you can actually MOVE the outlaws (turrets). There are special goodies chests around the map that you can grab with your units. Also, on the later maps, the gatling can only be mounted on a train, and the train can be moved back and forth.

Game is ad-supported and free.

Get Guns'n'Glory from AppBrain

Robo Defense is probably the most... traditional of all tower defense. It's the "open field" variant where you need to place turrets to prevent as many as the enemies from getting through, and that means designing "rat runs" that has only one way through for the enemies using your turrets, and keep upgrading them.

The game works off a square grid. There are different types of turrets... gun, missile, slow, flame, and so on. The variants are a bit varied, and the graphics are pretty good.

The full version has more maps and levels, as expected.

Get Robo Defense (lite) from AppBrain

* Learn the different turrets, their strengths and weaknesses, and upgrade paths. Some turrets work better with others as complements. Some turrets works better at certain locations.

* For the open-field variant, use the cheapest turrets as "blocks" to build the single-width path through your "tunnel of death". Use the border of the field to help.

* Usually, upgrade is cheaper than buying another turret. However, one turret can only engage ONE enemy at a time.

* Different turrets have different uses. Stun/slow turrets that slow the enemy should be placed before clusters of high-damage turrets (i.e. max upgrades), as well as those turrets that fire a continuous damage (such as "flame" turrets in some games).

* In fixed-path variant, the "corners" and branch points are the best place to place the turrets, so you cover a much of the path as possible. If you can place it between two paths, even better.

There are just a sampling of the tower-defense type games available on Android phone, and is by no means a complete list. However, they each bring something unique to the Android gaming experience.

Try them, and if you spot one something really special, put it in the comments.