The 15 Best Tower Defense Games

Never in a million years would we have imagined a tower defense game where our main source of defense ended up being a garden full of courageous plant life! Plants vs. Zombies is a certified OG of the tower defense genre and one of the more colorful & easily approachable genres releases for gamers of all skill levels. This game's huge selection of zombie-zapping plants resulted in a highly engaging tower defense classic that's still hard to put down.

One of the most celebrated 2.5D releases in the tower defense genre is a game all about using monkey troops to take down those bothersome "bloons." In its current state, Bloons TD 6 is packed to the brim with so much content that's incredibly rewarding to players that dedicate themselves to it - there are a nice variety of "Monkey Towers," "Paragons," and "Heroes" to take advantage of across a huge selection of battle maps that offer the option of solo play and four-player co-op.

Being the bag guy every now and then makes your usual tower defense game a bit better than expected. Kingdom Rush Vengeance gives players that option as they get to step into the shoes of the dark wizard Vez’nan and lead his evil army on a path of pure ruination. Building towers near each map's path and using a combination of heroes & their reinforcements to keep those towers intact makes us feel like the destructive force in all the land. We also have to shout out this game for having some of the best boss fights the tower defense genre has ever seen.

The Orcs Must Die! series has done a great job of presenting the classic struggle between mages and orcs in a unique manner that combines third-person combat and tower defense gameplay. Orcs Must Die! 3 wraps up the series with a neat bow thanks to a mode that pits players against the largest and fiercest orc armies they've probably ever seen. Protecting magical rifts on your own with a fellow heroic mage while using large-scale traps to keep those unrelenting orcs at bay always results in a fun time.

Dungeon Defenders feels like those old Gauntlet arcade games went ahead and injected some solid tower defense mechanics to freshen up the usual action RPG formula. This game's enticing four-player madness ensues during furious crusades against incoming hordes of enemies while protecting those treasured "Eternia Crystals." The cutesy art style attracted us to this game in the first place, but we ended up staying to experience its entertaining amalgamation of character class mastering, loot collecting, and epic boss encounters.

If you still have a working Nintendo DS with this game still present on it, then consider yourself a gamer with a piece of gaming treasure in your collection. This digital-only SteamWorld spinoff game is proof that development studio Image & Form can adapt their signature IP into any genre possible. SteamWorld Tower Defense is a handheld triumph for the tower defense genre that's all about beating back human thieves with a flood of robots that fight to keep their gold & mining facilities out of their grubby hands.

A series built on constructing the biggest boulders and using them to crush your enemy's castle ended up being a clever oddity over the course of their releases. The second game is the one that feels the most refined and a clear favorite among most fans of the Rock of Ages franchise. The addition of 2v2 boulder battles makes this sequel so much more of a chaotic good time, plus the upgraded physics system and larger gathering of things to destroy present a tower defense game that's just pure dumb fun.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth embraces its moniker of being a "reverse tower defense" experience as players command their powerful squad to wear down the defensive towers surrounding downed alien spacecraft. Going on the offensive to take down the main element of a genre that players usually defend is a nice change of pace in this sci-fi-themed experience. Being able to directly control the "Commander" and amass the power-ups needed to strengthen your convoys for battle also adds a more active player element to this game as a whole.

Back on the Xbox 360, we always got a kick out of checking out all the smaller indie games that littered the Xbox Live Marketplace. When we came upon Iron Brigade we didn't know what to expect. We're so glad we took a gamble on it because it's such a great mix of giant mech-based combat and a tower defense focus that's all about protecting the "USS McKinley" from the invading "Monovisions." We'll always look back fondly on moving our intimidating "trench" to go to war across various battlefields while setting up "Emplacements" to strengthen our defenses.

Gems are all-powerful items that go a long way toward making our defense towers and traps that much more formidable. GemCraft - Chasing Shadows fully dives into that cool concept for one of the best tower defense games that stick to a medieval fantasy theme. It feels so good to tap into the magical powers of our mystical gems and use them to wipe out floods of "The Forgotten's" encroaching army. The archdemon must die!

We're so enamored with Sanctum 2 since it's another one of those tower defense games that's a hybrid experience thanks to its first-person shooter mechanics. It feels so gratifying when you build up the best combinations of towers, weapons, and perks and then proceed to make a grand stand against a planet full of rampaging aliens. Doing so with four other allies feels even better in one of the best tower defense games that allows you to get into the fray from a first-person viewpoint.

Defending the last remaining colonies of Earth is a tall task, especially when you're forced to keep them safe from inter-dimensional flesh spawn. That challenging endeavor is at the center of this retro-stylized tower defense game that lifts the best parts of real-time strategy games from the 90s. 2112TD: Tower Defense Survival steadily gives us Command & Conquer vibes while implementing the best parts of top-down tower defense classics.

Over The Top Tower Defence (which we prefer to call OTTTD, of course) is a strong mixture of tower defense, real-time strategy, and RPG games. Clashing with multidimensional creatures in this game gives players the opportunity to build their defenses from an extensive pool of seven hero classes, 30+ weapons, 12 tower types, and so much more. The amount of options available to you in this game is dizzying. But once you wrap your head around everything, OTTTD quickly gets its claws into you. ALL HAIL HEROCORP!

Instead of being forced to fight for your life against walking or crawling enemies, Creeper World 4 pits you against a purple ooze that can overwhelm you if you aren't too careful. The level of tension during each of this game's battles is always high as you try everything in your power to keep the "Creeper" fluid from ending your latest mission on a somber note. We never knew fighting a liquid menace could be so entertaining in a tower defense game until we took Creeper World 4 for a spin.

Last but certainly not least is another tower defense game that separates itself from the pack by throwing in real-time strategy elements. On top of all that, Mindustry also throws in a healthy serving of factory-building mechanics to really spruce up its winning formula. There's plenty of fun to be had from constructing complex supply chains and using the ammo, materials, and units derived from them to defend your core from invaders. Mindustry will get your brain gears turning on a constant basis as you figure out the most crucial methods toward keeping your "Core" intact.