Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

What Tower Defense and RPGs Have In Common

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 6, 2013

What? Another tower defense game? Seriously? That genre isn’t dead yet?

Yes, of course, I bought it.  Stupid bundles.

Seriously, I need another tower defense (TD) game like I need another hole in my head.  And yet…

Gah. Maybe I should admit that I have a problem.

I suspect there’s some kind of emotional correlation between whatever psychological rewards I get from playing RPGs as I get from TDs. In both cases, you are building something that must stand against a variety of opposition and emerge victorious. As in RPGs (at least the ones I prefer), there’s a layer of indirection in facing enemies. It is not (usually) your direct efforts that lead to victory, but preparation, well-chosen tactics, resource management, and a few well-timed actions.

Tower defense is a bit more unforgiving of mistakes, often requiring you to start over from scratch with a level to fix mistakes you made early on. I’m not super-keen on this aspect of the genre, but I do enjoy trying different strategies and approaches to problems. Just like RPGs.

This is probably why Defender’s Quest was a little like digital crack for me.

It also makes me muse. We’re seeing a lot of variations on TD these days, as it’s become a pretty crowded genre (or subgenre, if you consider it a subset of real-time strategy). But if my guesses about the psychological similarities of the gameplay – the stuff deep beneath the surface – there could be a ton of possibilities for other game styles that don’t resemble either TDs or RPGs. In fact, if you look at the “life sim” games (made most famous by The Sims), it has quite a few similarities with those same aspects. You build something up to see how it fares against the environment. Life-sims tend to be even more forgiving of “builds” than RPGs, to the extent of The Sims where it is more of a toy to play with than a game to win.

And yeah. Life sims can be just as addictive for me.


Filed Under: Design, Geek Life - Comments: 8 Comments to Read



  • Pete said,

    I really love Tower Defense games,I think that tower defense games are the best kind of games ever

  • Anon said,

    I hate tower defense games. They are annoying & pointless like pong & breakout clones.

  • Maklak said,

    I like both gernes, but Tower Defence are obviously better for short, casual sessions. The problem is that they can get old once you learn how to play. Well, unless they have some kind of storyline, like Gemcraft or Defender’s Quest.

  • Cuthalion said,

    Hey, someone’s gotta defend them towers!

    …wait.

  • Cuthalion said,

    I actually enjoy tower defence, though whenever I figure out a perfect formula, the clock starts ticking on how long I can keep playing before the game needs to throw a wrench in my works to keep me from getting bored. Haven’t played a lot of the genre overall though. But I really enjoyed Revenge of the Titans. (It needed to tell me the buildings’ stats though and what armour piercing actually did!)

  • Xenovore said,

    Tower defense == pointless and ultimately boring. Actually, anything like that is pointless these days. E.g. I love Left 4 Dead, but its Survival mode where stuff just comes at you until you die — it was fun for about 4 minutes.

  • Cuthalion said,

    Isn’t all gameplay semi-pointless, anyway? Or really, I think arbitrary is the word I’m looking for, not pointless. But I suppose if it _feels_ pointless, there’s a problem. I don’t think tower defence is typically “stuff comes at you until you die”, though. Revenge of the Titans, for example, has a win state.

  • Anon said,

    Depends – gameplay for the sake of it is pointless, even if you enjoy it (like soccer if you don’t bet ;-)) but if it is used to transport a story then gameplay becomes a means.
    Of course the next question is how good the gameplay works as a means…

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