Tower Defence Games
Tower defense games in the browser: place towers along a path, hold the line against waves of enemies and spend what you earn on upgrades — plus castle and base defense games where you aim and shoot back yourself.
560 gamesShooting (112), Arcade (82), Adventure (61), Puzzle (61), Hyper Casual (58), and Action (39)
Categories
Strategy
Arcade
Action
Puzzle
Adventure
Casual
Idle
ShootingAll Tags
Tower defense games
Build beside the path, upgrade between waves, never let one through.
Castle defense games
One wall, one bow or cannon, and a horde walking straight at you.
Zombie defense games
Barricades, turrets and an undead wave that only gets bigger.
Newest
Towers, paths and waves
The loop is the same in every tower defense game: enemies walk a route toward something you must protect, you build towers beside the route, each tower shoots on its own, and every enemy that falls pays for the next tower or the next upgrade. Waves come in order and get harder; a wave that reaches the end costs you a life. Some maps fix the path and make the game about placement and upgrade timing; others let you build the maze yourself, so the path is your design and the puzzle is making enemies walk as far as possible under fire.
The shelf also carries two neighbors. Castle defense puts you on a single wall with a bow or a cannon and asks you to aim, which turns planning into a shooting gallery; base defense mixes a little of each. The pure planning end belongs with strategy games, the military skins with war games, and the undead waves — the most common theme of all — with zombie games.
Mouse or finger, and how fast it goes
Because nothing is aimed by hand in a true tower defense game, it is one of the genres that loses nothing on a touchscreen: tap a spot, pick a tower, tap again to upgrade. The trouble on a phone is size — tower menus and tiny sell buttons crowd a small screen, and a fat finger builds the wrong thing. A mouse is calmer for that reason, not because of speed. Castle defense is the exception: it is an aiming game, and a mouse or a steady thumb-drag beats a stylus-free tap.
Most games offer a fast-forward button and a pause, so the pace is yours. Sessions are long: a map with many waves can take a quarter of an hour, and a campaign spans evenings. Progress is normally saved in the browser you used, not in an account, so clearing site data or switching devices starts you over. The idle-flavored defense games are close to idle games, idle tycoon games and clicker games, where the towers keep working while you are away.
Choosing a defense game
Theme is mostly cosmetic but it does set the tone. Fantasy maps send orcs and goblins against knights and mages, science-fiction maps send drones against laser turrets, plant-and-garden maps send bugs, and the zombie maps send the undead at a barricade. Underneath, what changes the play is the tower set — slow, splash, single-target, buff — and whether the map fixes the path. A browser tower defense game is shorter and steeper than a boxed one: fewer maps, faster ramps, and a difficulty that turns sharp a few waves in.
Planners will be happiest here; players who want to aim should look at the castle defense subtype. Children are fine with almost all of it — the violence is small cartoon sprites falling over. The medieval fantasy side shares its knights and castles with knight games, the orbital turret maps with space games, and the creature waves with monster games.
What is the difference between tower defense and castle defense?
Read moreShow less
In tower defense the towers shoot by themselves and your job is where to build and what to upgrade; you never aim. In castle defense you hold one position and aim the shots yourself, with towers or allies as a bonus. The first is a planning game, the second is a shooting game with a wall.
Do tower defense games save my progress?
Read moreShow less
Usually, but in the browser rather than in an account. A map cleared on one device stays cleared on that device as long as its site data is not wiped; switching to another phone or clearing the browser normally starts the campaign over. A few games offer a code or cloud save, and their own pages say so.
Is it defense or defense?
Read moreShow less
Both, and they mean the same games. Defense is the British spelling and defense the American one; the games themselves use either, and this page collects both so you do not have to guess which a title picked.
What are the most popular tower defense games right now?
Read moreShow less
By the live quality signal, the tower defense games players return to most at the moment are Empire Tower Defense - Zombie Fortress, Tower Defense, Epic Defense Clash, King Rugni Tower Defense, Space Tower Defense, Line of Defense, Stick Hero Tower Defense, Shape Defense, Zombie Idle Defense, Castle Defense. The list comes from live play data and changes as new titles arrive and older ones fall away.