Single Malt Strategy: Tower Defense Games | Ft BLXZ & Lethrington | Episode 86 - Single Malt Strategy

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome everyone to episode number eighty six of the Single
Malt Strategy Podcast. I am Eric Tortuga. I don't know
what I'm going to be called today, but I'm joined
by my trustee, really the host of this, but we'll
calm the co host, the historical gamer, Matt. How are you.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
I'm doing great, but I'm definitely not the host of this.
I'm a I mean, I definitely have played plenty of
games in this topic, but I consider myself a casual
just sort of hanging on, you know, I'm a fly
in the wall.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
I've given this in thought. I think we can go
ahead and spoil the topic. It's going to be tower defense.
We're gonna talk about tower defense games. People already saw
it on the episode when they clicked right, So that's
the topic for this special topic, which it's a little
more niche we have brought in. I'm going to go
ahead and call these guys two genre experts. We dug
far and wide for two tower defense aficionados, and we

(00:49):
are joined by Letherington. How are you doing left?

Speaker 3 (00:52):
He is, hello, I'm here from the bottom of the
kiddie pool that he dug too.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
I don't know about the bottom of the kiddie pool.
But this is your first time on the show, right.

Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah, it is. Thanks for having me welcome.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
I've known left for a very long time just through
my YouTube channel. I think that you and I would
probably have a good overlap for most genres. We seem
to play a lot of the same games. But it
was good to see if that D's also a big
tower defense fan.

Speaker 2 (01:15):
Someone's got a man the walls, but do.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Brother. We're also joined today with second time podcaster with
the single wall strategy. I think you've been on this
once before, b Alex said from way down.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
Under, glad to be back, and I'm another filthy casual
that you've dug up to talk about this topic because
I don't think you could find anyone by the sounds
of it if you're getting me back. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
Well, we'll start off today as we normally do, but
with an abbreviated section on what have you been playing lately?
I can just tell you that what I've been playing lately.
I'll start with myself selfishly, I've been playing a lot
of tower defense games, which might have been part of
the catalyst for this. But we also have like two
I guess almost three recent releases in this area that
have kind of driven my my peak, my interest. You

(01:58):
could say I played tech axon tower Defense. I've played CATACLYSMO,
which is just recently released into early access, and I
played Diplomacy Is Not an Option. And other than that,
I'm still playing that game from our previous podcast, Heads
will Roll. And that's probably the extent of what I'm
playing in depth. Oh, I guess a little bit of Stationeers.
So the first three are tower defense games Heads will Roll.

(02:20):
People who have listened to the podcast will already known
about that. That's the RPG, and then this last one,
Stationeers is a really cool game where you're it's like
a survival game, but without combat. You're dropped in as
like an astronaut onto a planet and you construct your
own habitat. It's pretty involved, but it's a lot of fun.
Let's jump over to be like, said next, what have

(02:41):
you been playing, mister down under.

Speaker 4 (02:42):
I've actually not touched a lot of tower defense for
a little while. I'm more of a purist when it
comes to tower defense. A lot of these new newfangle
things don't quite do it for me. But what I've
been doing lately has been a bit of red dead
redemption too. I'm finally getting through that bit of death stranding.
I like my walking simulator and flighting of all things
much all flights. I've been flying around the world with
a couple of Australian people in the Baby Duke. Other

(03:05):
than that, I you don't have a lot of time
to myself at them. I We're in the middle of
truffle season, so I don't play huge amount of games
right now. I'm mostly scrabbling in the dirt.

Speaker 3 (03:13):
I always forget about truffle.

Speaker 2 (03:14):
Season for the uninitiated. You're that counts as farming, right.

Speaker 4 (03:19):
Yeah, agricultural that kind of stuff. It's a great big orchard,
so I get to muck around in the dirt and
the mud and the rain and the hail, and it's
a wintertime crop, so it's it's not traditional farming how
you picture.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
It, Tish, What have you been up to?

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Not a ton. I did just resume my War in
the Pacific series after a little bit of a hiatus,
so that's sort of always ongoing. I've been playing Strategic
Command World War two War in the Pacific, which I
enjoy but is definitely not a substitute for any serious
sim of the of the era. It's just as much
as I think the land combat in that game is fine,

(03:55):
but the naval combat is just I'm in the midst
of a Central Pacific battle that is just a ridding
the Japanese over like two months, and it's like, this
is not, this is not We've talked about.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
This, We've talked about this, I was gonna say at nauseum.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
And then you know, a little bit of casual stuff.
I've been playing. You know, I enjoy MLB the show,
so I've been playing my picture character in that. And
I just started up College Football twenty five, which I
wanted to play my first game. I've done a little
bit of scouting and stuff in my Dynasty, and I
started to play the first game today and then my daughter,
who was coloring at the table, was started yelling at me,

(04:30):
wondering why if the TV was on, why it wasn't
Gabby's Dollhouse. And then I had to stop, Yeah, Dad, life.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
Well that only leaves Letherington. I'm just gonna guess, have
you played a lot of stuff lately? I just feel
like I just feel like you're touching all the tons
of games at all times.

Speaker 3 (04:48):
I get very fatigued if I play one game too long,
so I regularly switched between several different games throughout a week,
otherwise I get really burnt out. I have him doing
a lot of tower defense, which in one of which
I'll save for now because we're probably gonna get way
into that later. But I've also been revisiting some older stuff.
Pillars of Eternity, which is a kind of CRPG thing

(05:09):
that came out as sort of it was one of
the early we're getting back to CRPGs I haven't played
in a long time, still really good, and then Fought London,
which has just come out. Been tipping dipping my toes
into that.

Speaker 2 (05:22):
I don't know if they're still called this, but basically
the total conversion mod for Fallout four.

Speaker 3 (05:25):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, it's total conversion and it's using the
same you'll find the same assets everywhere, but it's a
totally different setting, fully voice acted. A lot of work
has gone into it, and unlike the previous Fallout for
Total Conversion that was in the news, this one doesn't
seem to be as problematic as that one was so great.

Speaker 1 (05:44):
I don't know the backstory about that. Is it worth it.

Speaker 3 (05:47):
There was a it was a big mod that was
really hyped up and then came out and there was
a bunch of issues about it, most of which I
don't think are something I even want to talk about.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
But no, you're not saying fall Out London, you're saying
the other.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
The previous one, Yeah, the previous overhaul. It.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
So fall Out London worth taking a look at.

Speaker 3 (06:06):
I think so. I would give it a few weeks.
They have some crashes and bugs that are happening right now,
but it's only a few things which they're trying to
get patched, so I would give it a bit. I
think it's definitely worth taking a look. It's a lot
of effort has gone into.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
This awesome topical too with the Amazon TV series. Yeah,
have any of you watched that, by the way, not
to like get us way off topic, Yeah, I watched it.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
I actually haven't, but my brother and my friends have
all been talking up its praises, so I need to
get around to eventually.

Speaker 4 (06:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
I thought it was very entertaining.

Speaker 4 (06:40):
Missed a lot of it. I saw a few bits
of the first episode and then sort of checked out,
signed out, it's not quite my kind of thing. But
I reckon a lot of people have been to it.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Yeah, I've heard a lot of I've basically heard rave reviews,
but I don't watch a lot of TV shows to
begin with.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
But yeah, same here.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
But yeah, no, that's the problem though, if you hear
rave reviews, then it's already poisoned for you. I went
in with kind of like this, very like this is
going to be garbage, and then my expectations were, well,
they were met and then some because it wasn't totally garbage.
So that's the let me just tell you guys, it's
totally garbage, and then going with those kind of expectations,
that's the best way of doing it.

Speaker 2 (07:18):
I mean, I did enjoy the Last of Us, which
I knew had great reviews too going in, so I
thought that was pretty good. I'm not a huge like
I haven't played the second one in that series. I'm
also not a huge Fallout fan, like I played a
little bit of four. I don't think I have any
history with any of the other Fallout games, so.

Speaker 4 (07:36):
I never even bought four, I played three, never even
played New Vegas. So I played one, two, three and
that was sort of it. So I don't I've touched
Fallout for what's that decade and a half.

Speaker 2 (07:47):
Well, anyway, we can probably move on to our topic
of tower defense. And I know you are the most
qualified person to discuss this tour two guest, so why
don't you?

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Well, I don't know about most qualified. We have probably
a three way throw thumb wrestling match with the Leat
and b Alexed and myself. But I did want to
kind of break this into two segments because I think
that you talk about tower defense things. Okay, one of
the first things I guess we can talk about is
even how tower defense came to be. I think it's
even hard to define what it is as a topic,

(08:16):
because when I was kind of reminiscing about my childhood days,
I remember playing Warcraft two. It is probably the first
game where I played it in a pretty tower defense.
Actually that's not true. It was probably as early as
Doom two where you would just set up based defenses
and you could probably play almost any real time tragic game,
I mean a lot of them off a base defenses,

(08:36):
and you can play it as a tower defense game.
You can play it where you just wait for the
enemy to come wear themselves out and then a mass,
like a massive force that's like completely unkillable, and they
go take out the enemy. And that's kind of the
way I played Warcraft, the original game, and that's the
way I played Doom too, I mean a lot of
the games.

Speaker 2 (08:52):
That's certainly how I played Command and Conquer.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
I feel like the roots of tower defense is basically
just in people who are turtles.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yeah, turtles, yes exactly, Yeah, I was thinking it.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
If you're a turtle like me, then yeah, you basically
have a dedicated game now that comes out of this
where you do nothing but turtle as the game mechanic itself.
You don't even have to bother with the offensive part
because that was just something where it was already a
foregone conclusion. Your army would attack and win the moment
you set out from your base. You only set out
from your base when you were unstoppable. So now they've

(09:27):
just erased that part and they made a tower defense.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Turtling is got to be every RTS gamer for their
first couple games they ever played, what is the What
do we do? We hide behind our little walls and
towers because the game's scary and we don't know how
to handle the AI. So, but we do know how
to build structures well, of the first things that tutorials
always teach us, you know. So Age Vampires, even the

(09:50):
first one Tower defense seem definitely came out of that,
because again, people were already really into just building their
little defenses and hiding in the corner, right, I mean,
I think we've all done that at some point.

Speaker 1 (10:02):
Yeah, exactly. I even looked for games like that. A
perfect example Age of Empires, where I always wanted a
game where you could just build defenses and build up
like your big walls and then watch if the enemy
could overcome it. In fact, I remember when I would
make custom scenarios almost always it was basically a tower
defense thing where I would put a million units for

(10:23):
the AI and I would just build up my defenses
and I would just let them attack and see if
I could hold. I don't know, it probably harkens back
to my childhood images of the defense at Minas Tirith
from Lord of the Rings and stuff like that.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
I was going to say, for me, Helm's Deep, Yeah,
that was a big inspiration.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
So those kind of things just inspired my tower defense bug.
And maybe we can talk about first the real time
to stry. I mean we already are, we're deep into it,
and then actually hold off on what I think are
the pure tower defense games that come from that. Sorry, pire,
this is a question I had when thinking about this.
Would you consider Lords of the Realm a tower defense? Woo?

Speaker 3 (11:00):
I think about Lords of the Realm.

Speaker 4 (11:02):
What's a big one? How do you define the genre?

Speaker 1 (11:05):
It's got like? Okay, So my idea of the real
time strategy version of a tower defense is you have
your resource gathering and then you have your actual defense scene,
and it has to be that the resource gathering enables
you to build up a better defense. And it's kind
kind of on the fence about it, because these are
all games, by the way, that probably are going to
have mobile units. But yeah, I thought about Lords of

(11:25):
the Realm and maybe that was another game that I
also enjoy just building up massive defenses. And it's not
quite the same though, because it's not customizable. It's just
like pick this castle, pick that castle.

Speaker 3 (11:36):
But you know, again, that's another one of those games
where if you're actually, if you actually know how to
play Lords of the Realm, you almost never will defend
because you know, you're always sieging down to AI castles.
But when you're young and you're playing Lords of the
Realm and you don't know what you're doing, you've very
quickly learned about defensive battles, right.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
Yeah, probably when I was young and didn't know what
I was doing.

Speaker 4 (11:59):
You think you thinks Stronghold, the original Stronghold, would probably
be the original sort of catalyst for when defensive battles
were the main thing they are going for, because a
lot of games, fighting defensively is really a losing proposition.
But tower defense is all about fighting defensive, So you think,
what would you call Stronghold? Because it was two thousand
and one, I think, would you call that the beginning
of proper tower defense like defense as a as a

(12:20):
gameplay point?

Speaker 2 (12:21):
I would.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
I mean, that's what I had in my notes as
the first tower defense dedicated to tower defense game with
a question mark about Lords of the Realm. But yeah,
probably Stronghold for me. And now, Tishy, you said that
you actually played Stronghold, So.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
I played it a lot, and I guess I never
thought of it as a tower defense like it obviously is.
But to me, I mean I played more of the
campaign stuff, which had elements of offensive Warfare two where
you'd be given like a set number of units and
then you'd have.

Speaker 3 (12:48):
To go h siege.

Speaker 2 (12:49):
Battles were less siege. It was more of like figure
out how to unlock the puzzle. There's almost like a
puzzle game element in that game when you're fighting offensively,
because you can fight off battles, but it's all determined
on the map, right. It is either an offensive battle,
in which case it's kind of you being the anti
tower defense, or its tower defense where you have to

(13:11):
fix up this castle before the rats troops or whatever
the bad guys t And I played a little bit
of Stronghold HD when they remastered it a couple of
years ago, and I played Stronghold was at five, the
one I think that was in China that just came
out recently. It didn't capture the same magic to me,
like Stronghold sort of exists in this period of was

(13:31):
it middle school or high school? I can't. I must
have been school, wouldn't you, hell? Do you? Maybe I
was a freshman in high school when it came out,
and this was like back before I had a good
gaming PC, but my neighbor had won, so like when
I got Gettysburg, Sid Meyers Gettysburg. I would bring it
over to his house and we'd play it, you know
into the wee hours of the morning. And I got
Stronghold and we did the same thing. So like I

(13:54):
played these games in other people's houses. But I guess, yeah,
Like I mean, traditionally, I suppose strong Hold is a
tower defense, but but again it has elements that I
wouldn't necessarily to me tower defense. And I know this
isn't fair, and I know we're going to talk about
mostly PC games here, but to me, tower defense is
almost like I associate with the iPhone or with the
Android phone because there's so many garbage tower defense games

(14:16):
on mobile that that's kind of like poisoned my mind
on what tower defense is.

Speaker 3 (14:21):
Oh yeah, well we'll get into that. That's a whole Yeah,
that's a whole can of worms.

Speaker 4 (14:26):
The old congregate days, back in the day, you know,
the congregate sort of online stuff. That's where tower defense
I think really started to shine. Those sort of the
purest ones, the initial kind of like your Dungeon not
Dungeon Defenders, your Kingdom Rush style.

Speaker 1 (14:39):
Stuff that was like flash games, wasn't it.

Speaker 4 (14:41):
Yeah, Like that will flash games and stuff like that
that were huge.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
Back in kind of the predecessor to the mobile games
that now infest everything.

Speaker 4 (14:48):
Yeah, the early Internet.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Yeah, did the original Pharaoh have battles in it?

Speaker 4 (14:53):
Pharaoh? The Siki build up CA Caesar.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Three did, And I'm wondering how much of ca Cazar
three obviously predates Stronghold, right, So I'm I'm wondering how
much of I.

Speaker 4 (15:04):
Wouldn't call that a tower defense game. But there are
towers and you do defend, right.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
No, No, no, I'm not suggesting that Caesar is a tower.

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Defense It has the elements, yes.

Speaker 2 (15:13):
Right, And that's what I'm wondering is like, did did that?
You know? The desire to have a city builder where
you would have combat elements. Is that where tower defense
came out of? Right? Like, because most of the early
tower defense games, at least Stronghold have very strong city
building elements in them as well.

Speaker 4 (15:28):
If you look at mods and stuff for say StarCraft
or something like that, a lot of or Warcraft, a
lot of them were actually taking out the city part
and that was really what defined the tower defense part
was I think it's only Stronghold and sort of the
more modern ones like they are billions and whatnot are
aure sort of bringing that city aspect back into it.
But for a long time, defining tower defense was without

(15:50):
a city, weren't building a city at all.

Speaker 3 (15:51):
Yeah, the eco part is so in a way, it
was that modern games all have the big economy focus
for tower defense, and I think that's kind of emerging
of the two concepts of the games like Stronghold, which
weren't really a power defense game, but they had similar elements,
and then what I would really call the original tower
defense scene, which were custom maps people were making in

(16:14):
Age of Empires the old arts games where someone would
just make a maze and then they'd give you some
builder units and they transfer that custom game to people
through email or whatever, and you would just go and
try and build towers to stop the enemies from getting
to the end.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
RTS games and I didn't play StarCraft, but I did
play a lot of Commanding conquer Red Alert. So like
Commanding conquer Red Alert obviously has very strong it's an RTS,
but in the base building mechanics there's definitely and in
a lot of the missions there's definitely a feeling of
building a base up that can survive waves of enemy. Obviously,
it does have the RTS element of now you've got

(16:50):
to go hunt down the enemy in most cases and
destroy their base. But there's definitely this build up your city,
if you will. The difference to me between like something
like that and something like Stronghold is like Stronghold sort
of has this economic element of if you don't build
a good enough town, people will leave, right Like, there's
this public happiness element of it where to get more

(17:11):
peasants to come to your town to run the bakeries
or you know, man the walls. As soldiers, you've got
to have a happy populace. So that requires you to
kind of city build as well as build up your defenses,
whereas something like Command and Conqueror is literally just farm
money print soldiers build buildings. Every single building is military oriented.

(17:33):
There is no civilian economy, And to me, that's kind
of where I delineate in my head anyway, Tower Defense
as sort of having a civilian aspect to it as
opposed to just more RTS. E.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
I got another wrench to THROWNE in the conversation, And
that's a game that you could play as definitely was
meant to be played as a normal RTS, but you
could actually win in a tower defense mode, and that
is total annihilation. You could, in theory, just build buildings,
no offense of units, and your buildings could defeat the
enemy buildings, which is one way I used to play

(18:06):
is by building up those like super railguns and hit
their like map wide attacks, so you could just win
the game turtling. I don't know. That's probably not the
most popular or popular way of playing and probably can't
be done competitively, but against the AI it was a
viable way. The pure tower defense a.

Speaker 4 (18:24):
Little bit like Creeper World. It's sort of an I
guess you'd call that tower defense, but it's you're creeping
forward against the creeper which is creeping to you, building
your buildings and slowly taking mat control.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
You're actually using your defenses offensively, so it's tower defense,
but your towers are also what you're using to attack
the enemy at the same.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
Time, correct ye, So you have to take mat control,
but at the same it's a race against time. There's
little nodules around the map, nodes that are actually releasing
like layers of this liquid stuff. The creeper they call it.
I suppose and you actually blow that shit up to
take back the land, which is you more economy, more
and more money to build more towers faster.

Speaker 1 (19:03):
I would definitely call that a tower defense game, and
almost a pure tower defense game. Really, it's it is,
it's got the economy and then it's got the uh,
the towers. Basically that's it, right well.

Speaker 4 (19:15):
Effectively, Yeah, you actually offensive towers rather than defensive towers.
You'd love it, Tortuga you can turtle for river, Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
No, I think it's it's perfect anything where you're building
towers to advance, like even to advance your defenses in
this case offensively. Yeah, I don't know. I'd still call
it a very pure tower defense game.

Speaker 3 (19:33):
With this whole conversation about the RTS thing, Gagg actually
had a point that I want to come back to,
which he was talking about these games like Stronghold where
it's all about your economy, right, So I was thinking
with a traditional tower defense, which we're still going to
get into, you usually have lives or score where like
if something gets through your defenses, after a certain number

(19:55):
of them get through, you lose, right, well, the economy
in a game like Stronghold's kind of similar when you
think about it, because you have to build your defenses
to actually protect your economy, right, because if an enemy
gets through, they're going to wreak havoc on your apple
orchards or whatever, which means that your people are going
to start starving, which means your economy crashes, and you
can get caught into a death bible by that. So

(20:18):
there's a lot of similarity actually when you think about
these more especially these more modern titles that have the
economy aspect right to a traditional life point system, because
in practice it's the same thing. If enough enemies get through,
you're going to lose just because of the rest of
the mechanics at play. It doesn't even have to like
destroy your killer king. If you lose enough of your economy,

(20:41):
you're going to lose no matter what.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
Yeah, that's a fair point. I think we've danced around
it enough. Maybe we should just talk a little bit
about pure tire defense, because well, scandalous the flow I
have in my head for how things progressed in time,
and you guys can feel free to disagree with this,
is that we had these games which had the tower
defence elements stronghold being the only one there was probably
like a really good pure tower defense game, and then

(21:06):
at some point people are like, well, look at it,
we can make a very simplified version of a game
if we just get rid of everything else. And also
guess what that simplified now tower pure tower defense game
can be played on the web or on mobile devices
because it's so simple. And I don't know which one
the first was that came about that was only tower defense,

(21:28):
and like the pure tower defense where we all think
about it. Balloons maybe I don't know, I really don't.

Speaker 4 (21:34):
You couldn't name them. They'd be so to be thick
on the ground. There were a dozen coming out a
week back in the old congregate those sites and whatnot.
But balloons, balloons and Kingdom Rush, I think was another one,
which is they've don't made a more modern version of it.
But back in the day it was something very similar.
You place down the tower and you put out like
little soldiers to walk onto the track and try and
block them. All the other towers would you shoot? But

(21:55):
balloons is probably the most well known modern version because
I keep think about six. Now they might be have
number seven on the way shortly.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
In my view of things. The pure tower defense games
are very paired with this simplified gameplay that also exists.
I mean it's meant even for like mobile devices, and
I myself played Kingdom Rush on my on my phone,
so that that's actually the only way I've played those
really pure ones until maybe Defense Grid the Awakening. It

(22:23):
must have been in the first PC title that I
played two thousand and eight.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
I think that was you and I.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
Both played that one, but one I lets.

Speaker 4 (22:31):
You talk about it, Defense Grid one, And there was
a second one. I can't remember the subtitle for that one,
but Defense Grid one I think was fantastic. Two thousand
and eight or two thousand and nine, maybe came out
fairly long time ago. But it was all about having,
you know, these individual towers you'd summon on the spot
and you could upgrade and whatnot, But it was all
about identifying what you were going to be fighting. So

(22:51):
each tower was balanced for x amount of time that
something would be within the range. And so by placing
a really good tower in the bad spot, you could
completely ruin and throw it out. And they're having enemies
with sort of like resistances to whatnot, so the fire
tower would be fantastic at huge swarms of slower enemies,
but if they move beyond that raine, you need to

(23:12):
have something else to back it up. You couldn't just
keep piling fire on top. So it's a fantastic game
for bringing in like strategy and actually building up layered defenses,
which I don't think a lot of games had before that.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
It was it the first game. It's the only one
that I've experienced like this, so I don't know. I mean,
it's probably not original, but at least it was original
to me. This also this idea that the enemies had
an entrance point which was also the exit point, because
the objective for them was to go and take one
of your cores, steal it, and then they would return
on the same I don't know if it was it
always the same path, but anyways, they'd go out not

(23:45):
always okay, well, they'd go and they'd take a core
from your central point, and then if they got that
far you could still by killing them. Your core would
slowly drift back, so you know, you could save it.
But if they took it off the map, that was
really how you lost.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
Is the thing with the cause though, is defense could
did an interesting thing were incentivized not building as much
as you could, so your cause gave you like interest payments,
and if you had all twenty cars remaining there, you
gained one hundred percent of the interest. Every care that
was removed, whether it was drifting or whether it was
removed the map permanently. Every time was outside of that

(24:20):
home base, you would lose five percent all the way
down to zero percent of your interest income. So you
could you could have a guess like do I need
to build up as much or do I save one
thousand dollars or whatever and allow myself to gain heaps
of interest. But if the guys come through and take
all your cause, you may as well get You may
as well spend the money because you're actually not gaining
any interest. So I had the interesting sort of hit

(24:41):
the way up the pros and cons of just ultimately
defending or trying to play the long game.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
It's perfect for a menmax type person like myself, where
it's you're really straddling the very edge of how much
you can eke out. I also want to say the
voice acting in that game was fantastic. The person who
play the AI core person, I think his voice acting
it would Actually, I don't know how much. It was
supposed to be an emotional game, but I actually became

(25:07):
emotionally involved in the story because of his fantastic voice acting. Left,
I don't know did you play that one at all?

Speaker 3 (25:13):
So I did play Defense Grid, both one and the
one that won't be named. Okay, So that's one thing
I was actually gonna ask, did you guys, was your
first experience on PC? Or did you play it on console?

Speaker 4 (25:25):
PC?

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Oh? Console? Wait, hold on, stop and sorry, I'm a
historical gamer. Can we find a replacement for Letherington? He's
bringing up console and our pure PC.

Speaker 3 (25:36):
Well, it's relevant.

Speaker 2 (25:38):
Well speaking of console, I mean, I feel like, you know,
I was just thinking through you guys are going through
all these games, and I'm just like, how have we
not mentioned Missile Commando?

Speaker 1 (25:47):
Is that the Atari?

Speaker 2 (25:49):
It started on the Atari, but I played it on
the Game Boy?

Speaker 1 (25:51):
Oh okay.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
I don't know that it would fall under like our
definition of tower defense because there's no real placing of stuff, right,
Like you're just it's a wave defense game more than anything.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
Yeah, we might as well call it talk about but
that is that is relevant as saying like an ancestor.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Hey, Wikipedia claims it's a precursor.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
So Wikipedia is never wrong.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
I mean, I'm just saying, just trying to throw a
wrench in thing.

Speaker 1 (26:14):
Yeah. If I remember, this is the game where there
was like vines creeping down or whatever they were, and
you shoot them.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Right, not vines, they're ballistic missiles and some of them
break into you know, multiple independently targeted tracks. I think
you've got like six or seven cities you've got to defend.
You're basically, yeah, commanding an ABM system trying to shoot
them down as they come in.

Speaker 1 (26:34):
Okay, Yeah, I would say that's not a tower defense game,
but that's my opinion at least.

Speaker 2 (26:39):
Just just trying to throw something out there.

Speaker 1 (26:41):
It would have been the original from Atari definitely, But.

Speaker 2 (26:43):
I mean that's console. I'm just you know, I played
it on the game Boy. That's console.

Speaker 1 (26:47):
So then that you were saying the Defense Corid came
out on console, first of all, I'm surprised. I'm actually
happily surprised that the game was popular enough to warrant
an appearance on console.

Speaker 3 (26:57):
Yeah, you got it on Xbox Arcade for Xbox three
sixty and that was kind of crazy. At the time
playing a Tower Defense on console?

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Was it successful there or do you know anything about it?

Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (27:10):
It was.

Speaker 3 (27:11):
That's why it ended up getting a PC release, because
it sold well.

Speaker 1 (27:15):
Oh no way, I didn't realize it was console first.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah, at least at least as far as I'm aware,
because I don't even think Steam was that popular at
the time if it because I'm trying to think at
the time release on that even if it was out
on PC, I don't think anyone played it around then
because it at first it was kind of a sleeper game.
I don't think anyone really knew about it at first,
but it got really popular.

Speaker 2 (27:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:37):
I remember even my older brother was like, oh, man,
do you see there's tower defense game on console?

Speaker 2 (27:43):
Also, why are we bemoaning counsole? Just I what have
you been playing lately? Had two sports games that I've
been playing at my PS five.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
I know, I know the snobbery from the officer quarters
over there.

Speaker 2 (27:57):
Railroad Tycoon two was one of my favorite games of
all time, played out on PlayStation.

Speaker 4 (28:01):
Just saying what about the more sort of like three
D ones like the console stuff really took off. I
think once you've got things like dungeon defenders and sank them.
And I don't know if Hawks Must Die was on
console or not, but those were a lot more sort
of the whole sort of three D run around in
first person or third person and build up your tawer
defense that way. Do they count?

Speaker 3 (28:20):
I suppose yeah. They're absolutely terwer defense games.

Speaker 1 (28:23):
I have those as twer defense. In fact, I called
those first person shooter horde mechanics because I also included
in that Seven Days Today. Now that's we kind of
joked about this before beginning this podcast, is seven Days
to Die? Does it really qualify? I don't know. It
does to me because it seems very similar where you're
building up a defense. But I don't know, man, it

(28:44):
might be pushing it to call it that.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
I think it falls into a similar gray areas like
when we were talking about like games like Stronghold right
where they have it has a lot of the elements
that you could argue it, but it is kind of
like people would debate us on it.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
You could play it not as a I think you
can play it not as a tower defense game, which
maybe makes yeah, which might make it not a tower
defense game. So but yeah, Ors Must Die I.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Don't want to throw a wrench into everything. But while
we're talking about what is or isn't a pot or
a tower defense game? You know, I know when you
guys are talking about games you want to talk about.
Before this podcast, I was kind of wondering, what about
frost Punk, Like.

Speaker 1 (29:20):
It's I would not call it a tower defense.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
It's it's tower defense if the environment is the enemy.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Mmmm.

Speaker 4 (29:27):
I mean there's a tower in the same top and that's.

Speaker 3 (29:32):
I think you could make more of an argument that's
more of a survival game, right.

Speaker 2 (29:36):
Yeah, but the elements of surviving I don't know.

Speaker 4 (29:38):
To me. I mean, is bungee jumping a tower defense
game because there was a tower involved? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (29:45):
You know, I think maybe football games American football is
kind of.

Speaker 4 (29:52):
Which they talent.

Speaker 2 (29:54):
So you're taking this to an absurdist absurdist to degree,
but I do think they're like in the case of
frost Punk, it is similar in the sense of stronghold,
where you have to build up your city so that
people are happy enough and that you have the resources
and the defenses against the environment, you know, before to

(30:15):
be able to weather the storm that's coming.

Speaker 4 (30:18):
Where are the tower is?

Speaker 2 (30:19):
And sure they're not individual dudes with spears, but it's
not does it. Does a tower defense have to have
a physical tower to be a tower defense?

Speaker 4 (30:29):
Yes? Yeah, I'm a purest I.

Speaker 1 (30:32):
Think you're stretching this so much. You could probably draw
analogies between tower defense games and frost punk. But if
you were to pull one hundred people, I think at
least ninety nine of them would say it's not a
tower defense game. And I don't even think that that.
Most people probably wouldn't even say it has tower defense elements.

Speaker 3 (30:50):
And this is considering tower defense is already a very
broad genre.

Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah. I mean Wikipedia doesn't mention tower defense at all
about stronghold.

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Right, That's what I was saying. We're already stretching what
the classical definition of a tower defense game would be,
just even games like that. So yeah, I see where
you're coming from though, in the sense that you know
you're defending against the environment. But I would actually say, yes,
I think you're you actually said it correctly. When I
think a tower defense does need a kind of physical

(31:21):
enemy as a threat. It could be bray goog, but
it needs to be something that you're actively combating against,
and usually it's going to be with waves of some kind. Right,
Just a nebulous constant threat would be a lot harder
to balance a defense around, right, Like I think frost
Punk is more focused on building your economy within a

(31:42):
limited scope because of the environment, rather than you defending
against it. You only got the one generator. I'm not
and then you get your little hubs. I'm not building
like a network of generators still to hold back the
wall of snow that's coming, like a physical barrier of
ice descending.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
Just playing Devil's Advocate over here.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
You mentioned Stronghold is not really one, but I think retrospectively,
when we look at it, we do need to lump
it in as a tower defense because you look at
something like they are billions, diplomacy is not option even
thrownefall to an extent, a sort of Stronghold ESK tower
defense games.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
I would vote strongly in favor of Stronghold being considered
a tower defense game.

Speaker 2 (32:23):
I suspect the reason it's not, and it's the thing
that nobody thinks about with the game. But I would
suspect the reason they don't classify it as that is
just because there are battles where you're on the offensive,
and that's usually not probably in like a traditional tower defense,
usually it's build your defenses up, survive waves of enemy.
It's less like, okay, now in this mission, figure out

(32:44):
how to crack the enemy walls, right, and that's where
it becomes a bit more rts.

Speaker 1 (32:48):
Yeah, maybe I don't want to get I was kind
of trying to go chronologically through games, but to jump
off the way forward to Cataclismo, I mean, I think
I would call it Cataclismo a tower defense game, but
it suffers from the same thing. There are missions where
you just started moving troops.

Speaker 4 (33:02):
I mean, it has no did anyone hear play Castle
Story sorry to cut you off their left.

Speaker 3 (33:06):
Yes, I unfortunately am a Kickstarter original backer for Castle
Story Story.

Speaker 4 (33:12):
All my my condolences to that one. They left. That
was uh yeah, that's that was a choice you made.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
Lost money. That's that's what it is. Money in a Fire.
That was the first game I ever backed.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Oh, I have that under I don't have a lot
of games like that on my steam list, but it
is under ignore when I yeah, there's a good reason.

Speaker 4 (33:29):
Yeah, it's been unfortunate that one.

Speaker 1 (33:31):
But it looked okay, I mean, was it at the
final state it got to.

Speaker 3 (33:34):
Was it what has become a classic problem, which is
that they got way more money than they needed. They
got over ambitious then, of course, because they suddenly had
a bunch of money and they lost their sense of
scope and they ended up wasting all the money. By
the end, they're rushing just to get a final product
out right, and it just ended up being a mess.

Speaker 4 (33:55):
What year was that, because that twenty thirteen they started
and didn't release it like the final one point and
this is his finger quotes here, at one point was
twenty seventeen. I think, if memory hold, so four years
I took on this thing and I just did not
accomplish much for four years, like Juke and Yucme forever style.

Speaker 1 (34:11):
Yeah, I mean I saw it, and I was always
intrigued by it. In fact, I felt a lot that
Cataclysmo was then the complete version of Castle Story.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
People have been comparing the two since Cataclismo was an ounced. Yeah,
it's it's got similar roots in the fortification building stuff.
It's just way more refined than what Castle Story ended
up coming out with.

Speaker 1 (34:34):
So are we now are we shifting gears? Because I
think if we're shifting gears.

Speaker 2 (34:38):
Back to I didn't mean, if there's more games you
want to talk about in the traditional go for it.

Speaker 3 (34:42):
I got something we need to talk about before we
jump ahead here, because I think it's very relevant, and
we kind of skipped over this, which is that, as
you Alex Zed was talking about, we had the flash
game era of tower defense, right, and I think both
a little before that, and simultaneously we had the Lizard
custom games community in my opinion, StarCraft and then later

(35:04):
Warcraft three, where tower defense went from kind of a
thing that you would just occasionally make a map and
share with your friends right, became a real dedicated community
around it. I remember Warcraft three. It came packaged with
a tower Defense custom game in the game, Green Green
Circle tower Defense was the map called it came with

(35:27):
the game, and you could play single player by yourself,
and then multiplayer wise. You'd go on to their server
browser and you just see dozens of power defense games
of many different kinds, all community made at any one time. Yeah,
I agree, ones which have become actual full products, since
there's multiple on Steam right now you can buy that

(35:48):
were originally just a custom game that some people made.

Speaker 1 (35:52):
There was so much innovation in that era. I wonder
if more innovation or just it was the same thing
in a different place was happening in those Blizzard custom games, which, yeah,
it was good that you brought that up. But also
though on the online era with the flash title stuff,
there was a lot of innovation in both of those.

Speaker 3 (36:08):
I think they were hand in hand. In particular, A
class example I can think of right now, there's a
tower Defense game, which is again a product you can
buy on Steam now GEMTD or gem Craft. It was
originally a Warcraft three custom map. It then became a
flash game, several flash games actually, I think, and then
it became a product you can buy on Steam. There's

(36:30):
a gem Tower Defense game.

Speaker 4 (36:31):
They went mainstream sort of the late two thousands. Plans
Versus Zombies I think came out nine maybe.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Okay, I'm just going to say it, since you mentioned it,
Plants for Zombies is my favorite pure tower defense game.

Speaker 3 (36:43):
I have a note here, Plans Versus Zombies Tortuga's favorite game.

Speaker 4 (36:46):
My five year old just dominates on that thing.

Speaker 3 (36:49):
Oh you knew that, I got it. I got it
in here.

Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, it is, it's it's I think it's just brilliant, man,
everything about it. It's cute, it's got a great tower
defense cycle. It's very simple. You could play it on
the phone, you can play it on the computer. It's
so good anyway, I just I love Plans for Zombies,
and I would say anybody who likes the tower defense genre,
it's like a high recommendation for me that you check

(37:13):
it out.

Speaker 4 (37:14):
Is that just the first one?

Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah? The second one is only on mobile, I believe,
and then all the other titles on PC I think
are first person They did some weird transition.

Speaker 4 (37:22):
I went downhill very quickly after that.

Speaker 1 (37:24):
Don't recommend that. Yeah, but first one probably goes on
sale for like a dollar or two in the Steam
sale and one thousand percent worth your time.

Speaker 4 (37:33):
You know.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
I still have not played Plans for Zombies. What what again?
I was so deep into the warcraft stuff at the time.
I barely even played Flash power defense games.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
Well, and that's really where tower defense games, I know,
in terms of become a really mainstream and like picked
up by millions of people.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Flash.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah, it was really with the rise of Flash and
a lot of the things that you know, developers could
do cheaply there, right, And also the fact that mobile,
especially Android, really embraced that. But anyway, the real things.

Speaker 3 (38:04):
No, no, no, I mean absolutely, Flash is definitely where
it really took off. I guess the issue is that
when you're kind of deep in the woods of where
a lot of I don't want to say development because
that sounds really over the top for what it was.
But I was playing a game where there was still
new tower defense games were coming out, and then I

(38:25):
would see a copy of one being made into a
Flash game. It was really surreal at the time. As
most people should know by now, MOBA's come from Warcraft through.

Speaker 1 (38:34):
Yeah, definitely got to mention that it was such a
big thing.

Speaker 4 (38:36):
They rewrote the yuler just so that now they owned
anything you make in those custom games was back then
you owned whatever you made, and I think that encouraged
the development. That's I think a lot of development and
innovation has slowed down since they've made that change. Like
you don't hear of StarCraft two custom games anymore?

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Do?

Speaker 2 (38:53):
Uh? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (38:53):
And there are some good ones, but it's not the same.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
So we can talk another loss up to Blizzard there
to have killed another thing.

Speaker 1 (39:00):
Mm hmm, Yeah, Lizard's kind of not in the right
direction in my opinion, But just to it's.

Speaker 2 (39:05):
Okay, rollblocks will save us. They have lots of tower
defense games.

Speaker 1 (39:08):
Oh but the Defense of the Ancients, right, that's where
all this stuff comes from. Just another tower defense game.

Speaker 3 (39:15):
And at the time it was considered, it split the
community because we had more traditionalists tower defense people who
were not jumping ship. But Moba took off and even
in the game, like the server browser became at least
seventy percent MOBA, And there was a couple of different ones,

(39:36):
but that was Doda is the one that really took off.
It was also their original I would say it was
probably the first one that really had a proper gameplay loop,
and the others just kind of copied it. I never
got into them because I was one of the old
fuddy duddies over here going no, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
I agree, it's very different. I mean Doda's yeah, it's
not tower defense. It's really more about RPG, clickfest whatever.
It's a single single unit micro.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
Right, Yeah, I mean there are units and towers on
the map, but you're they did matter more back in
lower Craft three variation, but it quickly became just hero
focused completely.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Yeah, and that's great. I mean, that's fun thing for them.
But I would say it's it devolved from.

Speaker 4 (40:22):
They split off and they left tailed defense behind them.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
There was another interesting thing though, and this is I'm
sure very few of the people here have much experience
with these, but they are out there, which is that
there's EVP tower defense game.

Speaker 4 (40:37):
EVP.

Speaker 3 (40:38):
Yes, so there's one on Steam right now called Legions
Tower Defense. I think it's Legions too, where you are
playing a tower defense game. Now it's the kind where
you use units, which was something we're going to have
to discuss a little more here, but you use your
Traditionally it was actually towers. But this new PV, this

(40:59):
new one on Steam music units for it. But you
actually PvP. Yeah, I heard that player versus player. You
actually you're building, you know, your defenses and stuff. But
then you you actually are the one that sends a
wave of enemies to attack the other player's defenses and
they're sending to you.

Speaker 1 (41:16):
All right, I remember that.

Speaker 4 (41:18):
Did you play ORCS Must Die Unchained?

Speaker 3 (41:20):
I did not, but I've heard that it's somewhat similar.

Speaker 4 (41:23):
That is that, like the ultimate failure of the p
P model, they had something like you needed like one
hundred and fifty losses before you could even get enough
premium currency to buy a tower, and you didn't even
start with barricades unlocked, which if you've ever played Orcs
Must Die is like a must have item.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
I pleaded the original, so they were.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
Very much pay to win all the way. That was
an appalling one, that one. So I was gonna ask
Tortuga earlier, are they are there three or are there
four Orks Must Die games?

Speaker 1 (41:50):
Like?

Speaker 4 (41:51):
Do you count that last one as even an ORCS
Must Die game?

Speaker 1 (41:54):
I only own ORCS Must Die one and two, so
they were the better to put the record reflect. If
you're in the middle of point, let's not do it.
But otherwise I did want to just have a brief
segment on the first person shooter Horde mechanic type stuff.

Speaker 3 (42:10):
Go ahead, it's got to be.

Speaker 1 (42:12):
Orks Must Die. I mean, it's weird that all these
games came out at the same time too. All in
twenty eleven you had this huge I don't know why
there was a surge of these games, but I looked
it up and the original ORCS Must Die and Dungeon Defenders,
which in my opinion are like the two iconic first
person shooter tower defense games.

Speaker 3 (42:30):
When did Sanctum one come out?

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Eleven?

Speaker 3 (42:34):
Really? Okay, so yeah, it's same year. Oh jeez, Oh.

Speaker 1 (42:38):
My gosh, how did that happen? What happened like two
thousand and nine that people start developing these games? I
really don't know.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
Dungeon Defenders, Sanctum one ORCS Must Die all twenty eleven?

Speaker 3 (42:48):
That's crazy.

Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
So just to answer your question toward two guy, I
think that I mean, like twenty ten ish is when
four G starts to come out in a lot of
cellular networks. So I think you're really starting to see meaningful.

Speaker 1 (43:03):
No, these aren't these are PC games though, these aren't
mobile games.

Speaker 2 (43:06):
No, But I think a lot of the development is
cross pollinating. I think the rise of the smartphone, which
is sort of two thousand and eight two thousand and nine,
leads into an increase in the tower defense genre there,
and then I think you see spillover into PC over
the following few years.

Speaker 4 (43:22):
Plans of the Zombies was two thousand and nine, so
I think that kind of oh there it is brings
in that was the catalyst win with.

Speaker 3 (43:30):
Mainstream Well, I mean that kind of lines up though,
that's all around the same period, right.

Speaker 1 (43:34):
And Defense Grid as well was two thousand and nine,
didn't you say a night? Okay, so that there was
at least this console game, and then there was Pencer Zombies,
which I feel like was it was very successful, not
just in my eyes but others.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Right, Yeah, and mobile tower defenses in general were getting popular, so.

Speaker 1 (43:51):
Weird we had some weird blossoming of this first person
merger of tower Defense.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Well, I mean the iPhone three GS, which was really
the first I guess the iPhone three G I forgot.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
I don't think it's had anything related to that.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
I'm just saying the iPhone three G was released in
two thousand and eight.

Speaker 3 (44:09):
I No, I agree with I agree with THHD because
mobile games started to become a thing, and a lot
of the early ones were basically just flash games but
made for mobile, and a lot of them were tower
defense style games because they were cheap to make. Right, Balloons.
I don't know when the first balloons was mobile, but
I'm sure it didn't take long.

Speaker 4 (44:28):
Yeah, remember the first balloons. It was a long time ago.

Speaker 2 (44:31):
I mean, I'm not not trying to kill the conversation,
but you know, the Plants Versus Zombies went to mobile
in two thousand and nine.

Speaker 3 (44:38):
Well yeah, d yeah, good exactly, good point.

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Wait was pence for Zombies PC? First? I thought it was.

Speaker 3 (44:45):
I think it was a flash game first, But like
I said, a lot of flash games got cloned to
mobile once the mobile apps scene started to actually really
get off, and it wasn't just the crappy one fps
thing on your flip phone. It was unplayable.

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Okay, so wait, the premise was just the mobile gaming
is what started things that got things going in twenty eleven.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
We're just saying that around this time it was a
lot of factors.

Speaker 2 (45:12):
I think mobile gaming becoming a thing because that's like
when it first really starts becoming a thing with the
three gs is what drives a lot of mass adoption
of this because they're cheap, simple, easy games that used
to be buried on flash websites.

Speaker 1 (45:28):
Okay, this is this is tower defense in general, right.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Yeah, okay, yeah, I'm speaking of the genre generally, but
you guys have mentioned so many games that came out
between two thousand and nine and twenty eleven, and part
of it's the Plants Versus Zombies effect, but also part
of it is that all of a sudden, millions of
people have a phone. Yeah yeah, that can play flash
like games. I know iOS didn't support flash early on,
but like, they can play flash like games that are

(45:53):
simple to develop, and so you've got this huge influx
of people who are downloading apps, playing games on their
phone that are of a higher quality than previously. We're accessible,
and so there's a new market there, and these are
games that can easily transfer into that market. There A
lot of times they're easy time sinks. They're not like
deep deep games. Sorry, you know the types of games

(46:16):
we're talking about.

Speaker 4 (46:17):
Anyway, personally attacked.

Speaker 1 (46:20):
Let this guy on.

Speaker 2 (46:22):
So I think I think the explosion of mobile occurring
at the same time as these games are coming out
makes sense.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
Yeah, okay, And in fact, Balloon's Tower Defense three first
one to come to mobile two thousand and nine iOS
App Store.

Speaker 1 (46:37):
Okay, yeah, big Cellular coming forward right on that timeline.

Speaker 4 (46:42):
Balloon's three and plans versus on the scented mainstream. Two
years later we had the explosion.

Speaker 3 (46:48):
And I think that's also what you had first person stuff, right,
is kind of like an evolution.

Speaker 1 (46:53):
Well that's what I was saying this is only first
person stuff that I'm referring to.

Speaker 3 (46:57):
I don't know why, but I think you need the
attention before you get the evolution.

Speaker 4 (47:01):
Yeah. So people have tried to innovate, they've tried to
make something that'll make it multiplayer. They want multiplayer, Yes,
Orks Must You and I've played multiplayer that Tortuga we've
I think it was one or two co op Yeah, yeah,
co op, same thing, two people playing is multi more
than one player.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Right, I'm sorry, that's right. We don't acknowledge PvP version
ever existed, so that's right. It was the only option
was co op.

Speaker 4 (47:22):
No, god, no, no, but one and two we've played.
We've played all of the Orks Must Die games together,
and Sanctum one was a similar sort of a version.
And then Dungeon Defenders I think are still going strong now.
They've got Dungeon Defenders Too is out. We've still got
DLC coming out in twenty twenty three. I think they
had more DLC coming out, Like this is a this
is a twelve thirteen year old game.

Speaker 1 (47:42):
Again, I don't think that Dungeon Defenders two was quite
as good. I don't I wouldn't play it now.

Speaker 4 (47:46):
Well, they never made a three.

Speaker 1 (47:48):
I would probably play Dungeon Defenders the original before I
play the second one. But yeah, it was interesting that
those games came them out, and I think it's worth
mentioning them as tower defense games that you play first person,
which is pretty cool. It does have a little almost
a little bit of the mober tape because you are
essentially your own hero moving around. I think that you
can play that as a pure tower defense and it's

(48:09):
really up to the player whether or not they want
to invest more of their points and their research technology
into better towers or better player interactions.

Speaker 4 (48:17):
What about x Morph? Did any of you guys play
that one? It was on the Xbox and the PC.
I did not.

Speaker 1 (48:23):
Now do you want to talk a little about it that?

Speaker 4 (48:25):
Yeah, sure I can talk about it, won't spend too
much time. But x Morph was basically, you were an
alien attacking Earth effectively, so you landed down, you were
like fully zerging and spreading your guey shit all over
the Earth, and the military was coming in with a
series of incompetent generals who would just telegraph their attacks
down straight lines or coming in from different directions. But

(48:47):
there was a lot more. It was almost in the
Defense Grid one style, so you actually built your own
maze a little the time. You had a thing an
x morph that would fly around like a plane, so
it was actually really good on things like on console
with you with your duel stick. You'd fly around with
that thing shooting, but at the same time you drop
down towers and try and funnel them into into like
a maze grid so that you'd have more time to

(49:08):
wipe everyone out before they got your your terraforming core
and sort of defense grid one esque. Well, while trying
to add was multiplayer as well, so they're bringing in
sort of sorry not multiplayers co op. You can go
more than one player optional, you could have that sort
of co op where they upped the difficulty a bit
like how Diablo makes the enemy stronger.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
This is a twenty seventeen release, is that correct? I
mean I just looked it up. Yeah, but it looks good.

Speaker 4 (49:33):
The fantastic game. If you've got I haven't got it.
What's a thing called game pass. I think it's on
game Pass. You could pick it up on that if
you're really keen. But I'm not an Xbox player.

Speaker 3 (49:43):
And it's got Steam release now too, so that's.

Speaker 4 (49:44):
Not Yeah, it's on steps. How I played it on Steam.
It's a bloody fantastic game.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
Okay, cool, Well you're not added to my wish list.
I think it's time for us to start talking about
the modern stuff. Yeah, and I'm sorry to get I
just want to throw my punch first. I think that
it all happened with the Billions. But let me know
if you think that there was something else before that.
But in my opinion, there are Billions just came and
it just took the scene by storm. It reinvigorated a
lot of the stuff that we're seeing.

Speaker 4 (50:09):
Well, I've got they are billions as an actual sub
genre in the thing. I think it's it's defined and
innovated its own. It's sort of I call it the
like when I was describing it to a friend the
other week, I called like the dark Souls of Tower
Defense in that it sort of embraces a lot of
the other games are about winning, whereas I've found the
early part of they are Billions, like when you first
play first couple of games, they embrace a failure first

(50:32):
style of play. I think so arguably the player is
expected to fail the first couple of times, and you
only really win, thrive and survive and everything once you've
got a bit of experience under it and really get
up there. Like balloons, you're expected to pass. Obviously you
fail at the end, but there's you know, forty forty
fifty sixty rounds you win, whereas they are billions. I

(50:53):
think really has gone for that failure first style your
opinion on that tour.

Speaker 1 (50:57):
Well, let's leap when because I've first of all, I
agree with everything you said. I actually really like this
thing you said about the Dark Souls and this failure
first because it is extremely brutal. You can't really recover
from an early failure. But yeah, let me pass the
floor over to the left. I assume you played Their Billions.
I assume you played it a ton.

Speaker 3 (51:16):
I've played a decent amount of it. So I originally
played it when it first came out, and I kind
of bounced off of it because I struggled with it
because it is difficult. Since then, I have a friend
who is another content creator who really got into Their
A Billions, and he would do full streams of playing
through the campaign on the hardest difficulty, and so I

(51:39):
revisited it to try and play on that difficulty. I
actually think that feels what the game's designed for, because
that is when it is truly at its most, you
feel the omnipresent threat of the zombies in that game.
But and this comes back to what bi Alex said
said about how that challenge where you it almost expects

(52:02):
you to be defeated and have to try again. Right
on the campaign, when you're playing the harder difficulties, you're
going to die a lot. You need to be the
kind of person that's willing to quick save and quickload
a whole bunch of times, because you even pull one
enemy towards your defenses at a bad time, like just

(52:23):
a single enemy that can cascade until you you just lose.
So it becomes like, oh, well, I'm going to try
and pull this zombie ten feet away this time. And
there's parts of that that I don't actually like in hindsight,
because a lot of tower defense games are pretty open
to the player cramming up with their own solutions to

(52:44):
a problem. Right, there might be a certain kind of
enemy that your defenses are optimal against, but because you're
so good at defending against these other things, it's okay
if you take a hit here or something like that. Right,
but with they are billions, it demands perfect of you
at all times. There is an optimal, more or less
optimal way to play through, especially with the campaign where

(53:07):
there's a giant tech tree in that. Oh, there's so
many traps like oh, getting blister towers. You should get
Blistered towers as soon as possible, right, you could get
them later. Don't get them now. It's a waste because
the early missions you're not going to need it, and
instead they're like, oh, you got to get to the
next PEC tree, the next part of the tech tree
where you get your Arc Tower, your Tesla towers and

(53:28):
stuff like that. Because of that, I think the game's
really hard to get into the first time for a
lot of people. And that's what makes it so difficult,
because there is more or less an optimal way to
play through it. And I say, you figure that out,
the game's just going to kick you in the teeth over.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
And over again, like a puzzle game or something.

Speaker 3 (53:44):
Yeah, very puzzling.

Speaker 1 (53:45):
I would share a slightly different perspective. My own was
that I played on normal difficulty and I still felt
the game was very reasonable challenging. I still failed missions again,
This has a pretty brutal mechanic, and I get I mean,
maybe we should just take a step back and explain
what their billions is for anybody who, god forbid hasn't
played this game. It's really good though. It's half city builder,

(54:06):
half tower defense, and it does have a wave mechanic
where you have so much time to build up. It's
real time, so it's running and you know when the
next zombie attack is going to come. You have to
build up a lot of city type stuff because there
is a housing, there's residential I mean, I mean, you
have to build up enough people, and that is not
a small part of the game mechanic. A lot of

(54:27):
it really comes down to almost a Caesar or Pharaoh
like figuring out a way to cram in the efficient,
most efficient layout for your buildings, and then you also
need to maximize your resource gain. All these things are
kind of coupled together because you have limited grass space,
and that grass can be used for farms or it
could be a nice defensive place to put housing. And

(54:47):
there's a lot of little building trade offs in this
where the layout of your base, although it's not going
to be hopefully not I mean probably game over if
the zombies actually get to that point. But the layout
of your base is very important from like a Caesar building,
it's like city building perspective.

Speaker 4 (55:02):
Just to cut in here, the reason for the game
over if they get in is that because the zombies
they bite the people living in the houses and like
cascades from there. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Yeah, exactly. So once one building is attacked by a
there's two. Every building has two hit points too, like
their hit points are broken into two categories. The first
sliver of it, I mean, depends on the building, but
most non defense based buildings only have a very little
amount of hit points that they can suffer before they
shut down and the residents whatever workers are inside are

(55:36):
turned into zombies, which gives you this cascading effect where
things just snowball out of control. And god forbid, if
you stack your residence, you're housing altogether, which is what
most people do. They get one building and the houses
have like no hit points before they break, so you'll
just the entire it's game over basically. It's just it's
beautiful when it happens, but you know, in the moment,

(55:57):
you probably don't think so because you're about to lose
and it's very unforgiving.

Speaker 3 (56:01):
It's quick. When the in comes, you will not have time.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
To react to it.

Speaker 1 (56:07):
Yeah, but actually so then there are ways you can
kind of be on medium difficult or normal difficulty rather
than the highest ones. I actually started to build in
sub segments of walls to prevent that cascade effect, or
at least to buy myself some time to correct if
I had a failure. It wasn't catastrophic, it was just
nearly catastrophic. That's really rewarding when the game offers that.

(56:29):
But again, I don't know if you can do that
at the higher difficulty levels.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
You can I can, I ask because I have not
played this, but I feel like tower defense games are
susceptible to this, and I think where you're going Tortuga
is similar, is similar to this. Is this one of
those games where like you've lost and you don't know
it yet, Because I think that's one of the struggles
to me with some tower defense games is if you've

(56:52):
already lost, but you're not going to find out for
another two hours. You spend all this time, but the
critical mistake you made was hours ago. I know that's
one of those things you can give folks really frustrated
with these types of games. It's just that, like sometimes
it's not communicated to you, like there's a path you
have to follow, you didn't, it's too late, you can't

(57:13):
course correct.

Speaker 3 (57:14):
I think if you're doing the I don't know what
you call it, the kind of sandbox mode where you're
just trying to last as long as possible, your endless
mode not so much. I don't think that's as much
of a problem. The problem comes into the campaign because
it has a tech tree where you pick your text
between missions and you get your points from doing missions,

(57:34):
and there's certain levels or if you didn't grab certain texts,
it might be beatable, but you're gonna have such a
painful experience with that level that you're probably either gonna
give up or you're gonna have to reloadice save many
missions ago to redo your tech choices.

Speaker 1 (57:49):
That's sorry, dick, gentlemen, but can you remind me? Do
you can you change difficulty midway through the campaign?

Speaker 3 (57:55):
You can, But again I think even on normal difficulty,
certain missions you don't have farms. By certain levels, you're
just not going to have enough food.

Speaker 1 (58:05):
You might be able to lock yourself out Okay, yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
You can basically soft lock yourself on informations like uh again.
Tesla Towers are one of the most key defensive structures
in the game because they're an AOI attack and there's
certain levels where the waves they send to you are
just nothing but a massive horde of the weakest zombie type,
where it's just so many that no amount of walls

(58:27):
is going to hold them back. You have to kill
them to stop them, and Tesla Tower is pretty much
the only way you're going to survive that because it's
the only thing that's going to do enough AOI to
clear them by that point in the game. So if
you didn't grab Tesla Towers and you do that level,
you're gonna have to go back a level and hope
that you can grab the tech because otherwise you're stuck.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
And you kind of mentioned now, but that is the
second part of the game. Besides the city building, there's
the actual tower defense. And this is a game which
relies heavily on units, so you can think of one
year tower as your units. And for that I have
to say it does involve, or it can evolve. If
you want to be like really perfect about it, you
have to micro your units pretty efficiently.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
Well big time.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
Yeah, so it does have a pause button, so there's
not like it doesn't need to be played in a
click fast, split second reaction. As long as you can
hit space bar, then you can make you you can
plan out what you want to do and all that.
But it does require pretty intense micro to be played
at the harder difficulty levels, and if you're having if
you want to try to micro through a wave, that

(59:31):
you might just lose. Otherwise it might be possible to
do if you're willing to commit to that kind of experience,
you know, pause, move unit, fire one arrow, move back,
you know you can do You can actually play it
that way and play it much more efficient, but I
don't play it that way.

Speaker 4 (59:46):
So yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
The tower defense aspect is also based on units, so
it's a little This is the again the muddling of
the genre back to real time strategy, where you have
units that you can put in towers, but then you
also have towers themselves. The Tesla tower. That's pretty much
you can't play the game without that one. I would say, ah, yeah,
for sure, yeah there's one. They have Blista.

Speaker 3 (01:00:07):
What's I forget what you call it, but it has
like a gatling gun in it.

Speaker 1 (01:00:10):
Yeah, the executor or something like that. Executioner, Yeah, that's it. Yeah,
so it's mostly about walls. I think it's mostly about
wall placement and efficiently putting either units or towers behind it.
And there's traps as well. Bloody fun game though, I
just love it. It's brutal and it's one of the
very few games I will actually play in the mode

(01:00:31):
where you just yeah, you just survive, like eighty days.
It's not endless mode, but you just you get a
random custom map and it's no longer the campaign. I
love the campaign. I would recommend that first, but then
if you want to play more afterwards, you can go
to these one off scenario like basically scenarios and skirmishes,
I guess, and just play it that way, which is

(01:00:51):
still a lot of fun to me. Does anybody else
want to talk about more on the air billions? Sorry
that I talked so much about it, but it's.

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
Just I think it's an important game to discuss a
lot of because it is, as has been mentioned, a
lot of games have come since and I.

Speaker 4 (01:01:07):
Think practically defined a subgenre.

Speaker 1 (01:01:09):
Yeah, well, is that what maybe you have bring you
back in Where does it go from there? The air
Billions picks up, and I mean where does the genre
or subgenre go from there?

Speaker 4 (01:01:18):
The actual sub genre itself doesn't really I don't think
there's been a huge amount of innovation in that they
are Billions esque. Section. You've got Diplomacies non Option, yes,
two or three years up, maybe twenty twenty two, so
three years after they are Billions initially released. It's a
similar sort of a concept. It's different in some ways,
but graphically almost a skin of they are Billions in

(01:01:39):
some ways. I haven't played much of Diplomacy's non options,
so I really don't want to comment too much on
that one, but visually I found them to be a
superficial improvement. I think the real innovation is when people
change genres and whether it's changing back. So I go
back to a CATACLYSMO in twenty twenty four, which is
the newest one, the hot one and sort of talking

(01:02:00):
about at the moment is just like a reskinned castle story.
But I think it's the new innovations. You don't done
that they are Billions. You're now jumping over something a
bit different. You're building your walls again more carefully. It's
beauty building in a.

Speaker 1 (01:02:12):
Sense, we really should say that this is Lego style
wall construction. It's not place a wall, it's place a
brick in the wall and then build up the wall
brick by brick. Now, the bricks are like two meters
by one meters, so it's not like you're building tiny bricks,
but it is brick by brick. How you get to
customize how you want your wall, how tall it is,

(01:02:34):
where you want your whatever those things are that you
hide behind as the archers, wherever you want those things
to go.

Speaker 3 (01:02:40):
Ranulations Merilines, thank you.

Speaker 4 (01:02:42):
The issue the issue I find with CATACLYSMO, and I
haven't played either. I've only watched YouTube videos of this one,
so correct me if I'm wrong, feel free to jump in.
But I think there's a fundamental mismatch between the kind
of people who are going to spend an hour ainally
building up these beautiful defense segments and then have them
destroyed and stuff like that. The main issues is I
think the perfect sim city. The people who play build

(01:03:07):
the perfect SimCity and then drop a big meteor on
top of it are only going to be a subset
of your general city building genre people building these nice, beautiful, defensive,
perfect walls, only to have them come in and just
be destroyed. I think it is one issue. The second
main issue. I think you could spend forty minutes plus
obsessing over your perfect wall or a great oxygen harvesting

(01:03:27):
sets up, or some kind of thing that you do,
and the whole mission might only be that long, so
you're just continuously repeating the same thing over and over
again with a lot of detail put in. I really
think CATACLYSMO is going to suffer from burnout very quickly.
Have you guys played it?

Speaker 3 (01:03:43):
Can you correct that that the ones you will first
in this and then I'll you and I have played
a similar amount. I think I might be only one
mission ahead of you based on achievements, so I think
we're we both played pretty far into the campaign of it.
The thing about the walls. When I first picked it up,
I thought, I is going to spend a lot of
time making my walls look nice in that game. But no,

(01:04:04):
my walls always look about the same and they're always
quite ugly because the way you build your walls is
way less about the aesthetics of it and more about
the actual structural integrity of the wall, because when an
enemy attacks the wall and say Stronghold one, they just
start wheeling on the wall, and then the wall chips
its way down from the top to the bottom, and

(01:04:24):
eventually the wall hits the bottom and the guy who's
standing on that wall segment is now just on the
ground getting hit. Cataclismo, those little individual blocks all have
health bar. So let's say you took a bunch of
your lego blocks and you just stack them up straight,
just a straight wall, no interlacing between them, just straight wall.

(01:04:45):
You break the bottom block, what happens. The entire thing collapses.
That's what happens in Kataclismo. If you just build a
column of bricks and the enemies attack it, that wall
is just going to You might as well not even
have built it because it's just going to collapse. You
actually have to stagger your bricks. You need to have
layers of it. Later on, there's things like rain which

(01:05:09):
will impact your troops, so you have to have roofs
to shelter your troops. You need to give them renilations
or windows. Windows later become the only thing you build
to give your troops some more range, and you're trying
to do that while also expanding your economy, and you're
on a very tight timer for the mission. I never
feel like I have enough time to get all the

(01:05:30):
defenses up that I need, especially because the enemies will
come from one direction. Wave one, Wave two they're coming
from at least two directions, and then wave three they're
coming from three or more. Sometimes there's even a boss
in it, and you're just in a panic to get
your defenses up. Also, you have a very limited number
of troops. The game really restricts your for size for

(01:05:52):
your defenders, so you have to focus on the walls
because the walls are there to buy you as much
time as possible for your very small number of troops
to kill as much as you can, and almost always
your initial defense, even if you build it perfectly, especially
on the later missions, so many enemies attack and you
don't have enough troops for everything. You're probably gonna lose

(01:06:13):
a wall somewhere, so you can't just have the one
wall you actually need fallback positions, and you'll have to
do like running retreats where half your guys are pulling
off the wall while you've still got a few guys
up there. Defending it so that you can get ready
for the second line of defense. And I really enjoy
that because I like meticulously designing a defense where again

(01:06:36):
it's not about looks, it's just about planning out exactly
how I'm going to defend against something because the game
tells you basically what's gonna attack and from where. It'll
give you a rough amount of numbers, but it won't
be exact. It'll say like, there'll be hundreds of this enemy.
That's the kind of waves you're dealing with every time.
And it gets to the point because you're so resource

(01:06:58):
starved that your walls you're not gonna have credilations along
the entire wall. Are you getting meat, that's a waste
of stone. No, you're gonna have a credilation in like
one spot than a flag to give damage boost to
your archer, and then a little ways later you're gonna
have another creditlation. You're gonna space it out, and it's
gonna look hideous because the type of person that's gonna

(01:07:19):
play this game where you're spending forty minutes designing wall
is also probably gonna be the kind of person who's
gonna be like, that's a waste of resources. Why would
I do that? That's inefficient.

Speaker 1 (01:07:31):
Yeah, I think they even know that, since they just
added this is only what like a month after their
early access release. They've added now like a sandbox mode
where you can just build up and then have a
wave launched against you mm hmm, and then that at
least you can make it a little bit more beautiful.
But yeah, I can't say that there's much I would
disagree with about what you've said. It's a strange game.
I'm really enjoying it, but I keep thinking, I keep

(01:07:53):
wondering why I'm enjoying it, because it does have a
lot of things which can, theory should be frustrating, and
I think that you've talked about a lot of them.
You build up your walls, but you can't make them beautiful,
and it doesn't feel like, actually, you have too much
despite this system which is supposed to I mean, the
whole point of building up brick by brick should be
that you can make whatever your mind can envision, you know,

(01:08:15):
But in the end it almost might as well be
a standard template because you just copy and paste the
same thing, which is a little disappointing. I mean, you
got to work around corners and stuff, and the terrain
can impact the rise and fall of the terrain will
impact your decisions slightly, or it'll just mean that you
put in bricks, you fill it all in and then
you start with your basic template. Part of the mechanic

(01:08:37):
is the higher the wall is, the taller it is.
Is a completely counter to real logic, but anyway, the
higher the wall is, the more hit points the bottom
stones have, So you're building up really tall towers even
if you don't need them. You just keep building them
up and up and up so that the bottom stones,
which are the ones that will be attacked, have higher
hit points. And that's also some of the reasons why

(01:08:58):
I mean I put windows at the top of my
tower which cannot be accessed. Yeah, just because I mean,
this is actually true with crimulations. Crimulations will act as
one tier upgrade on the wall they're sitting on top of.
So you can just throw criminations just to upgrade the wall,
and it just doesn't look good. It's just for a
game which has so much potential for that customizable wall building,

(01:09:22):
it really doesn't allow you to utilize it.

Speaker 3 (01:09:24):
Left.

Speaker 1 (01:09:24):
Have you played the skirmish mode.

Speaker 3 (01:09:26):
So no, actually I have not done Skirmish mode yet.

Speaker 1 (01:09:29):
Yeah, so it gives you four days. I've found that
you have a little bit more liberty to design your walls.
I mean, you can have a little more fun with it.
But it's only one more day. It's not we're not
talking about like a whole lot of work. Another fault
that I have with the game. Again, I want to
say that this game is probably like an eight or
an eight point five out of ten for me. I
really like it. Yeah, but I will say that the
game doesn't seem to know exactly what it is yet,

(01:09:51):
that's my opinion. So it has this wall building structure,
and sometimes in the missions they'll restrict the number of parts,
which like, you have a brick which is two by one,
so it's two wide, one tall. Then you have one
which is one by two, you have one by three.
You have all these different parts, and in some missions,
the normal economy based mode is each one of those

(01:10:12):
will just have a different wood or stone cost mostly stone.
But in some missions they just give you a fixed
number of those, and I loathe those missions. I really
don't like that they constrain you to this. I don't know,
I just feel like overly constrained that our creativity. Maybe
they had an idea about what we're supposed to build,
they gave us the parts for that, and then they

(01:10:32):
just want us to duplicate it. That's not as satisfying
for me as like a tower defense. With this customization
allow me to build whatever solution I come up with,
which maybe has balancing challenges for the developers, but it's
more it feels better from a player standpoint. That's another thing.
So there's also something to mention about. The game is
pretty creative. So again going back to this defense grid
where they had really good voice acting, I think that

(01:10:54):
the voice acting in this and the story development is
pretty cool. They invested a ton of time into it.
I think you can tell that a lot of the
creative aspects of this game were really it's a work
of passion rather than just boilerplate on your what are
you going to do in this mission?

Speaker 4 (01:11:10):
You know?

Speaker 1 (01:11:11):
So those are my comments about it.

Speaker 3 (01:11:13):
The only thing I'm trying to figure out. So game
has both what we would call in our an RTS game.
All of you should be familiar with these no build
missions where game goes instead of building up your base
like normal here's a couple units, just use them. Yeah
they are Billions has a really bad version of that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:32):
Yeah, yeah, true, But almost.

Speaker 3 (01:11:34):
Every RTS game has this. And I have a friend
who pretty much every time he plays an RTS game,
he'll go, why is there no build mission? Because? Oh,
he hates them? So there's no build style missions in
kinda closmo. But there's also the tower defense missions, and
both of those restrict your parts. Is it both of
them that you dislike or is one more acceptable than

(01:11:57):
the other for you?

Speaker 1 (01:11:58):
What the tower defense ones are like? Kind of okay,
I don't like them as much. I just I feel
resistant to them when I'm playing them. I'm still having
an okay time, But if the game was only based
on that, it would probably be only like a six
out of ten. So I know that my enjoyment is
less when they give me a fixed number of parts,
even if I end up not using all of them.
I just I don't like the idea of it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:18):
I kind of get it. I've found those tower defense
ones I didn't mind as much, just because I mean,
to be honest, they give you way more parts than
you need for those, so I don't feel bad about it.
But there's like not to spoil things, but there's a
sort of boss fight you have to do on one
of the campaign missions and they give you limited parts
for that one.

Speaker 1 (01:12:37):
Wait is that the Syena one?

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
Yes? I did not like that mission.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Yeah, okay, that was like zero economy, right.

Speaker 3 (01:12:44):
Yeah, no economy at all. You had a limited number
of troops and a limited number of parts. And also
they give you like pre built spots around the map,
which the game often does to like encourage you to
build your defenses there. Those pre built spots are actually
a trap because they're within a perfect AoE for the
boss enemy to destroy them, whereas if you just build
your tower like five feet backwards, it would be infinitely safer.

Speaker 4 (01:13:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
I know what you're saying, now, Okay, Yeah, the game's
not nice. I think that that's also another play where
the game it really feels like it's a little it's
confused about what it's trying to do, because that mission
really highlights the way they want you to use your parts,
your puzzle pieces for interacting with the map, to build
bridges to get to new places on the map where

(01:13:29):
you haven't got to before, which is just it's like
I don't really enjoy building stairs and all that it
takes a little to such time. I wish our was
rotate instead of right click, and right click could be
like go away.

Speaker 3 (01:13:42):
Oh yeah, I agreed.

Speaker 1 (01:13:44):
Yeah, there's some UI stuff that makes the building like
a you remember, on that same mission you have to
build to get the second journal entry or whatever. You
have to build this winding wooden path over and under
and around and it's probably like fifty pieces to get
to this other thing, and that's all you're doing is

(01:14:04):
just puzzle building that to me, is not what the
game excels at. And I don't like that part of it.
So that's just maybe another grievance something you don't have
to do it too much. But like any of the
bridge building stuff that they really liked to lean into,
it's not something that I'm a fan of.

Speaker 3 (01:14:18):
I want to make it clear for people who are
listening to this, you know, to Trigger and I both
have negative feelings about the game. But again I would
think we both would say we both enjoy it. It
just feels like it's got some issues as a new release.

Speaker 1 (01:14:33):
Right It's crazy how much I really keep playing it,
which must mean it's a good game. I mean, I
wouldn't spend time playing it if I didn't really enjoy it.
Can we switch gears just maybe a little? We're probably
about to wrap up, but I just want to say
diplomacy is not an option. I really thought that that
game was the next They Are Billions. I really liked it,
and I think I do like the kind of simpler environment.

(01:14:56):
It's like a sequel to They Are Billions. So I
think that any nobody who plays The Air Billions and
doesn't know where to go from there, there's also another game,
what was Age of Darkness? I think, which was I
think just a ripoff of the Air Billions.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
But I wouldn't go that far. I would say it
takes inspiration roum. But and I want to hear you
talk about diplomacy is not an option? About this, because
I've heard mixed things about that as well. But Age
of Darkness it's got pretty mixed reviews since it came out.
I don't think it's really gotten its legs. I don't
know if it ever will. That game has been kind

(01:15:29):
of troubled.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
Well. My thoughts on diplomacy are not an option? Or
is not an option?

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
Is?

Speaker 1 (01:15:35):
I enjoy the campaign. It's kind of interesting the way
they've done it. They've made it so it's very branching,
but not very deep. I think I haven't played through
the final campaign yet, but just based on the release notes,
I played a lot of the game, like in the
only thing they offered was two missions, which was actually
four missions, because even the first two missions are branching path.

(01:15:57):
Everything you do in that game is branching pad. So
you got to choose whether or not you want to
defend the rebels or the king. You know, it's a
sole thing and you can and then that even that
splits into it like another faction choice later.

Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
He is diplomacy and option I any point, it is not.

Speaker 1 (01:16:10):
In fact, there's a this is to The game has
kind of a clever they think, at least I think
so too, but hopefully it's forever. I'm not sure if
it's not for everyone. They have a pretty subtle humor
where even one of the settings, one of the game
options that you can choose is diplomacy, and then your
options are like no, not possible, or is not an option.

(01:16:32):
It's pretty clever you can toggle between those three. The
story itself is not very good. I think The one
problem with the campaign is the intro. The intro to
the missions are probably like ten minutes long. It's insane,
and it's not that it needs to be. It's probably
like twenty seconds of writing. But the way they the
three D engine or whatever that they use to make

(01:16:52):
it is just it takes so long for a person
to say one line. It's awful. But the actual campaign
store are really good because I like the structure. I'm
just not a big fan of like the endless mode
in these kind of games, even though that's a lot
of tower defans. I like tower defense games where you
survive to waive number and that's when you win, where

(01:17:14):
the endless is like it's all about losing. I don't
like to lose, so I don't like playing it that way.

Speaker 4 (01:17:18):
Did you like The Billions?

Speaker 1 (01:17:21):
You can win? You can win with the woman is
not an option I think most I've played a lot
of the scenarios and they had a lot of challenge
mode stuff, and I enjoy the game enough because I
think that they've honed down the The Air Billions model
into needing a lot less of the city building and
being able to focus more on the resource collection and
the wall building, So to me, that was a positive. Yeah,

(01:17:44):
I think that that's it's mostly probably because it's not
as stressful. I think that's why I liked it. Homost
He is not an option just because of that. It's
a good game, I guess. I really don't know how
to explain why. And we'll see what the version one
point Overlease, which has just happened, what it brings, what
the campaign looks like. Anybody who enjoys their Billions, I
really think it's worth picking up. It'll be like an

(01:18:05):
extension of that game in kind of a different environment
and maybe slightly less stressful.

Speaker 3 (01:18:10):
Yeah, I mean really, my only exposure to it was
actually from your own coverage of it. I don't know
anyone that's played it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
Really.

Speaker 4 (01:18:16):
That's crazy, terrible name for game, Like I think they
dropped bolder it is.

Speaker 1 (01:18:21):
Yeah, I mean I don't even know what to call it.
Even in chat conversations with us, I'm like, do I
call it diplo? Do I call it dinoah or whatever?

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
You've mentioned on a lot of podcasts though, uh tortwoa.
It's come up multiple times.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
That's because I played so much of their billions. Rightfully,
so right it's a great game, but at some point
you like, that's a very depressing environment, and yeah, I
guess I don't want. I like the fact that diplomacy
is a lot less. It's like, you know, it's green
and colorful. I've covered everything that I wanted to talk about.
I'm very happy with all the coverage with the games

(01:18:57):
I've given. Oh, by the way, is this another one
that came up for me? Ai War? Would you consider
ai War?

Speaker 4 (01:19:02):
Oh?

Speaker 1 (01:19:03):
Geez, well, it really I mean most of the game
mode there is you trigger, you know, you probe a
little bit further, and then you trigger a response, and
then you just huddle e turtle.

Speaker 3 (01:19:13):
My sole experience with that game is the time that
you dragging me in with our friend Lightning Dragon and
I think someone else. Oh yeah, and the entire session
was you just trying to teach me how to play,
because that is an extremely difficult game to get into,
especially because you don't have a lot of time to
learn how to play before you're in trouble.

Speaker 1 (01:19:36):
It's any concept, but let's just call it not a
tower defense and not cover it. But yeah, okay, let's
then that's probably every game that I thought about covering here.
Oh ax on TV, which recently came up, is another.

Speaker 3 (01:19:47):
Yeah, I wanted to hear about that because you you
were talking about that earlier.

Speaker 1 (01:19:50):
Earlier to me, it's the it's the next It's got
an interesting thing where you can make your own maze,
which is not not uncommon that's been done. But there's
also the option to part of the map which starts disconnected,
and you're given tiles that you can add, and you
can add them to connect new segments and then block
the original paths to create new map. Essentially. I though

(01:20:12):
thought that was pretty neat. I haven't seen that before.
It's probably been done, but again, if it's the first
time I've seen it, and even some of those had
like rotators, so you can choose which ninety degree permutation
you wanted, it's neat. Otherwise I would say it's It
just strikes me a lot like one of those. I
can't even remember Defense Grid the Awakening, were you building
your towers on the travel.

Speaker 4 (01:20:33):
Path you were later on you built your own maize
on the second half of the game.

Speaker 1 (01:20:39):
Yeah, so it's like that. You can build on the map.
In fact, it's the way you're supposed to do it
is by using your towers to I.

Speaker 4 (01:20:44):
Think they were one of the first to actually create
that sort of build your own maze. I think so
twenty two thousand and eight that were pretty early all
the scene.

Speaker 3 (01:20:53):
Well as far as released games. Is the custom like
maps and stuff amazing is is all? But oh yeah true,
not many like full products had it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:04):
Well, let me just say, I said, any other tower
defense stuff you'd like to talk about, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:21:09):
We've covered pretty much all of it. You can talk
about you know, your Rift Breakers, your Throne Fall, your
all the sort of different little games out there. You
can talk about the sequels and how they've evolved.

Speaker 1 (01:21:18):
But ultimately, I think, why don't you just give like
a quick thumbs up thumbs down for those games? Maybe
if you recommend it or not so people who are
listening they might if it's worth for them to check
it out.

Speaker 4 (01:21:28):
Don't actually have enough experience in them all to really
give a like I want to know a game. I'm
the kind of person like I watch YouTube channels like
review after one hundred hours kind of thing, rather than
someone reviewing after twenty minutes in the game. So I
can't I can't give a thumb up or thumbs down
because my reputation will rest on that so.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Such that it is reputation.

Speaker 3 (01:21:50):
What reputation, Yeah, what reputation?

Speaker 4 (01:21:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:21:52):
Yeah, of abandoning a YouTube channel.

Speaker 4 (01:21:55):
Yeah, infamous, not not famous. But I'll pass on on
giving a thumbs up or thumbs down. But they are
out there. There. There's a whole host of incredible games.
We've touched on ten fifteen percent of the of the genre.
And if anyone's into tower defense or they they're curious,
branch out explore a bit. There are a huge number

(01:22:16):
of games out there to offer anything you might want.

Speaker 1 (01:22:19):
TV curious.

Speaker 4 (01:22:20):
Yeah, look, if you are TD curious, then then now
is your time. But future is bright. I reckon with
the tower defense.

Speaker 3 (01:22:28):
I do have two games. I'll just very briefly mention
them because I can give one thumbs up and one
of thumbs down despite them. They're like oposite sides of
a coin. There are two modern power defense games. There
are still many more coming out. One we have is
Rope Tower. It's very simple graphically game. It was supposed
to be a roguelike power defense game in the sense

(01:22:50):
that your towers you get come from a deck. You
can build your deck, though sometimes you're going to get
the tower you need, sometimes you're not. But the premise,
oh I've seen. However, I do not recommend it to
most people. And here's why. It's the case of a
game that came out it was perfectly serviceable. Launch developer
was very active, though, and they overtweaked it. They constantly

(01:23:13):
were nerving things, buffing things, adding new units, buffing, nerfing
those units, and if players were doing a certain strategy
a lot, I gotta nerve that to the ground. Constantly
do that. And it's the games at a point right
now where I think most of the most active players
have more or less given up on it, and he

(01:23:33):
even stopped updating it sometime last year. But it's just
it's in a much worse place now than I feel
it was when it first came out. On the other hand,
there's another game, Tower Tactics Liberation, fairly simple game where
you're gonna get random towers and you're gonna build decks.
So it's another roguelike type tower defense game. It's the

(01:23:54):
kind where there's a preset maze on the map, so
you have to place towers along the outside of the
maze route. That's still an active development. But my experience
with that one has been that it's the opposite where
I think everything he's added has been great, and I
think every new update game is actually better than it
was before. And that's when I can safely recommend to
most people if you're interested in that kind of rogue

(01:24:17):
light tower defense merger. I think it's one of the
better ones. There's a similar one. It's called Ember something.
I can't remember what it is, but it's a similar
style one. But I haven't played that one, so I
can't comment on that one. But a roguelike tower defenses,
that's another sub genre that's really taken off these last
couple of years.

Speaker 1 (01:24:37):
Yeah, I don't think I've played any of those. I
did see the rogue tower one, but sad to hear
about the way that one's gone.

Speaker 3 (01:24:43):
Yeah, I put a lot of hours into it too.
I'm not happy.

Speaker 1 (01:24:46):
Okay. I think we're probably at the verge of rapping here,
So talk about a little games and everything, a lot
of tower defense stuff. For people who are new to this,
what would be maybe your one game that you'd recommend
them to start with. As I mean, for some reason,
they're living under a rock and they just what tower
defense is a genre. I have my own thoughts on it,

(01:25:07):
maybe one or two or whatever. Just any kind of
recommendations for how people get started, and then crost punk too, Yeah,
let's do that that.

Speaker 4 (01:25:16):
What do you think? Look, I think if you are
starting on tower defence, you need to start in the
go purity, start from the basics, go your defense grid
one defense grid Awakening. I think it's called maybe Hawks
Must Die if you like that sort of older three
D style, but something like balloons I think five and
six are pretty good, and plants versus zombies if you

(01:25:37):
haven't played that, you know from fifteen years ago.

Speaker 3 (01:25:40):
My joke answer is to play arc Nates, which is
the gotcha game tower Defense.

Speaker 1 (01:25:46):
I'm not familiar with that one.

Speaker 3 (01:25:47):
Get all of our listeners to spend all their money
on their towers because they're all girls. Of course, actually
a very good tower defense game, but unfortunately it is
a gotcha game, so be careful with that, especially if
you have gambling problems. The other thing the game i'd
really recommend though for people, it would be probably one
of the jem Craft games, which there's a couple of

(01:26:08):
them I think now, but you can get them on Steam.
They're very straightforward and old power defense games. They have
amazing elements, and they're very easy to get into and
they're simple, so they're a safe recommendation for me.

Speaker 1 (01:26:22):
I guess I'll just echo b Alex said two of
his I would say Bloom's TD six. I have that,
and I even play it with for my kids. Sometimes.
It's a simple enough game that even those numbskulls can
understand it and they enjoy it. So if they can
get started in it, maybe anybody else could. And then
I would definitely say plans for Zombies. Man, that's just

(01:26:42):
so iconic to me, and I think I've gone back
and played it. I don't feel like the gameplay for
that can it ages as well as what I would say,
So I don't think the years have heard it at all.

Speaker 3 (01:26:53):
One of your favorite games to use for footage when
you're doing an announcement for the channel.

Speaker 1 (01:26:57):
Yeah, because I love playing it, tissue do you? I
don't know, you haven't played much of it, but just
in case you have something.

Speaker 2 (01:27:03):
A yeah, I mean, I know this is maybe a
little a little tired because it's it's older, but maybe
the remasters of Stronghold, I still think they hold up.
Well that's a good Yeah. They're an enjoyable time. They're
very approachable. It's not something that's you know, overwhelming. They're
just good fun. You know. The campaign's super lighthearted. If

(01:27:24):
you want to play that, just it's a good time.

Speaker 4 (01:27:26):
I was expecting you to suggest frost Punk.

Speaker 1 (01:27:30):
Yeah you said frost Punk too. You didn't hear them. No,
that was pretty clever. Okay.

Speaker 2 (01:27:34):
Last thing, Call of Duty Zombies. That's a that's a
tower defense game. Right, you got to build, you know,
different things to take out the zombies and masses, right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:43):
You know, in a way it is And I hate
that that's true.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):
But wait what game?

Speaker 3 (01:27:47):
Was it? All of dutey zombies?

Speaker 1 (01:27:48):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
Yeah? I almost mentioned it when you guys were talking
earlier about like wave defense.

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
And I was kind of like, well, it is the
last thing I wanted to at least say myself, and
I wanted to give you guys a chance to say,
is your favorite tower defense like game of all time?
If you dare even say it for me, I'm gonna
go ahead and say, there are billions is probably, in
my opinion, the best tower defense game, most innovative and everything.

(01:28:16):
I think it's reinspired, so to me, that's gonna be
my answer for me.

Speaker 3 (01:28:19):
It's a Warcraft three custom game which is still my
favorite one of all time, which is what we call
Winter mall ze.

Speaker 1 (01:28:25):
I hear you typing.

Speaker 4 (01:28:26):
Look, I have to run right now, but I will
say best best how defense game out there. Defense could
have won the Awakening. It is the true classic. It's perfection.
Everything else is trying to be perfect.

Speaker 1 (01:28:38):
Well, I think that's also the rap for our episode.
So that thanks a lot for joining LEFT and TG.
Thanks for stand up late enough to basically coordinate with
us and talk with us and interject your TD thoughts before.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
We let everybody go left. Do you have anything you
want to plug?

Speaker 3 (01:28:51):
Anything? I want to plug? No, I've got nothing. I
am a ghost.

Speaker 2 (01:28:55):
Ooh scary, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Do you want to plug your friends channel? Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:29:01):
The guy who plays a lot of these kind of
games as well, goes by commisar Merrick on Twitch. He
also has a small YouTube channel that he uploads his
videos to covers a lot of games similar to the
ones we discussed tonight.

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
That was close. I thought you were gonna like my
friend Tortuga Power.

Speaker 3 (01:29:16):
He everyone knows that, and.

Speaker 1 (01:29:18):
Everyone knows the old top Come on well again, thanks
for coming on with happy to be here t she thanks,
thanks for staying up this slave for for all this.

Speaker 2 (01:29:28):
Yeah, I had a good time. Even though I'm not
the biggest tower defense officionado, I enjoyed the discussion.

Speaker 1 (01:29:34):
And then that is going to be a rap for us.
That's enough tower defense talk for now. Thanks for everyone
for listening and until the next episode, We're out.

Speaker 3 (01:29:44):
A podcast tonight, sing the most Strategy, will wit it Flight, what.

Speaker 1 (01:29:50):
To j the Pond sprinkled damer to Bavy Pavorite Traite,
Sweet Up you.

Speaker 4 (01:30:16):
Build the line tire spending it all Night Ways album
coming from my tactics.

Speaker 2 (01:30:23):
Our Steel Walls, Arch Tower so Feddy for the Fike.
Hear the battle tower defense with sand.

Speaker 4 (01:30:35):
Soar fence, all the long sour fence with strgy sour fence.

Speaker 3 (01:30:45):
Complaint with me,

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Single Malt Strategy: Tower Defense Games | Ft BLXZ & Lethrington | Episode 86

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Single Malt Strategy: Tower Defense Games | Ft BLXZ & Lethrington | Episode 86