Goal: The goal is to place your towers inside
the mountain area in a way that will prevent the enemies from making it to
the lower right corner of the mountain pass, where they escape to maraud
unchecked across our planet.
Tower Placement: You can place towers inside
the rectangular area bounded by the mountainous terrain; however, you cannot
place towers within the openings in the mountain pass at the top and left of the
screen, where the enemies pour out from, nor can you place them close to the exit
area in the lower right corner of the screen.
Place towers by clicking on one of the five tower buttons on
the right side of the game screen, then moving your mouse back over to the game
area and clicking again to drop the tower where you want it. It is not
necessary to click the tower button and drag (by holding the mouse button down)
over to the game area--just click to select the tower and click again to place
it. You can place multiple towers of the same selected type by simply
placing one and then moving the mouse to another open square and placing another
one. You can exit from the tower placement tool mode by hitting the 0
(zero) key or clicking somewhere away from the mountain pass game area.
Finally, you are not allowed to block the enemies
completely--they must have at least one route from their two entrance areas to
the exit area.
Tower Behavior: Towers shoot automatically at
the enemies when they come within their range halo. You can determine how
far the range is on a tower by clicking on it after you have placed it in the
game area and seeing the white circle around the tower.
You have been given 5 types of towers, each with its own
advantages and special abilities:
1. The Gun Tower: A staple of our human armies for centuries;
cheap to build and packs a punch. Upgrade it to the highest level and the
Death Blossom ability will be unlocked (watch the button on the lower right of
the playing field controls area when you do the final upgrade).
2. The Cannon Tower: A powerful tower that unleashes
increasingly heavier cannon balls of cast iron. When fully upgraded, this
tower is the most powerful of them all.
3. The Poison Tower: This tower shoots poisons of varying
potencies which drain the enemy of life over time. The attack damage
number seems small, but in actuality this tower deals the amount of damage shown
15 times per second, so even at the first level the Poison tower, when it
poisons an enemy, hits it for 15 damage/second for a certain number of seconds
(the enemy turns green when poisoned and when the green disappears it is no
longer poisoned). As you upgrade this tower, not only does the range, rate
of fire, and damage per second increase, but so does the amount of time the
enemy stays poisoned.
The poison tower will prefer to shoot enemies that are not
poisoned in order to poison as many as possible. If an enemy is
already poisoned and gets shot by another poison tower, it will remain poisoned
by the greater of the two poison attacks and will stay poisoned for the longer
of the two poison attacks. For example, if it poisoned an enemy with 30
damage per second for 10 seconds and 8 seconds of that poisoning had elapsed,
then another poison tower hit the same enemy for 15 damage per second for 5
seconds, the enemy would remain poisoned at 30 damage per second for 5 more
seconds (since 30 > 15 damage/second and 5 > 2 seconds (calculated from 10 - 8 =
2 seconds remaining of the original poison)), so it works well to have multiple
poison towers, even of weaker strengths!
4. The Bomb Tower: This tower damages all units within its
blast radius, making it the premier choice for "crowd control", especially
amongst enemy scum. As you upgrade this tower, the blast radius increases,
hitting more enemies with more damage at a faster rate.
5. The Stun Tower: This tower was developed by neuroscientists
at our secret headquarters; its sonic explosions interfere with the nerve
impulse firings of any sentient life form. Deemed inhumane by the standards of
the World Tribunal, this weapon has been approved for eradication on belligerent
enemies. As you upgrade this tower, in addition to the amount of damage,
range, and rate of fire increasing, the percent chance that any given shot will
stun the enemy increases as does the amount of time the enemy is stunned for.
The stun tower prefers to shoot enemies that are not already
stunned.
6+. Secret Towers
Rumor has it that our engineers have developed a new tower (or it multiple
towers?) that are only unlocked in the hour of direst need and after your tower
army has successfully achieved certain goals. It is up to you to discover
how to unlock them and bring their power to bear on the enemies.
Upgrading Towers: You can upgrade towers by
clicking on the Upgrade button on the right side of the screen after having
selected a placed tower. You can also hit the 'U' key to do this.
Upgrading costs money, and the number on the Upgrade button tells you how much
it costs. Each tower can be upgraded several times.
Selling Towers: Sell a tower by selecting it
then clicking on the Sell button on the right side of the screen, or hitting the
'S' key. The Sell button tells you how much money you will get back (not
quite what you put into it, of course--the law of diminishing returns!
Enemies: There are many types of enemies;
some are fast; some are slow; some have immunities to certain types of towers'
attacks (see above). Make
sure you have a well-rounded selection of towers to avoid being overrun by one
enemy type.
1. Gun Ship Enemy: This enemy moves at an
average speed and has no resistances to towers; however, coupled with its
comrades it can sneak through even the toughest defenses.
2. Speedy Enemy: This enemy moves quickly and
thus stays in range of your towers for a shorter amount of time; stun towers
might be employed to slow them down though...
3. Spiky Enemy: This enemy hails from the swamps of its homeland. It glows green and blue.
4. Armored Enemy: This enemy has a thick
outer shell made of black steel. The ghost-like eyes were created by scientists on the foreign home-world to
strike fear into the hearts of its enemies.
5. Tie Enemy: The tie enemy is made of
titanium forged in the deep mountains of its homeland.
It is an implacable opponent that will need lots of firepower to overcome.
6. Boss Enemy: The boss enemy's gyros
constantly spin and give it the creature its power, though when poisoned they
turn green; it has a tremendous amount of toughness, so all of your towers will
need to concentrate on it to take it down. It leads the other enemies and
acts as their central command.
Every time you kill an enemy, you get money which you can use
to place new towers or upgrade existing ones. The amount of money you get
per enemy increases every wave.
The enemies come in waves and get stronger with each wave.
There are three difficulty levels that are rated on how much stronger the
enemies get after every wave.
Life: You have 20 life points; every time an
enemy makes it to the mountain pass' exit, you lose one life point. If you
lost all your life points, the game is over and the enemies successfully invade
our hapless planet. If you repel the enemies for all 50 waves, you win and
are given a score.
