There’s no denying that Tower Defense have become a stablemate in the Flash gaming world, but what are the best ones?

Well Casualty Gamer originally did a list at the launch, although since then the line up has noticeably changed, and changed for the better.

6. Bloons Tower Defense 3

Too get things started we have Bloon Tower Defense, again narrowly making it onto the list. It is the most light hearted game on this list and the one most simplistic. Being the third in the series it is definitely improving with each iteration and adding new functionality (…monkey strikes ftw) to the gameplay. Although in each version having Super Monkeys seems to easiest way to win the game.

Bloons doesn’t have the depth of the others in the list but it makes up for it with a lot of charm.

Play it here.

5. Onslaught

Use the towers to build massive, creep annihilating combos. This is the tower defense I have personally pumped the most amount of hours into. The game has been through a few upgrades since its first release and is definitely better for it.

If you haven’t played it before you’ll no doubt have fun testing out the different turret combos to see which is the most devastating.

Play it here.

4. Deskop Tower Defense

Desktop Tower Defense is now feeling somewhat dated by web syandards. Like other tower defense games premise is simple; stop the creeps from getting to the end point using turrets. The difference is this game is played on an open map with no paths. You can create your own labyrinth of turrets to guide(and kill) the creeps with.

The game has now been cloned by Whiteboard Tower Defense but the original is still by far the best.

Play it here.

3. Protector: Reclaiming the Throne

Protector is similar to the other games here, except that ituses RPG elements (including leveling & skills) and has artwork reminiscent of (maybe taken from?) the Ultima RPG series. Since our first tower defense article was published ‘Protector: Reclaiming the Throne’ has been released which adds more skills / classes / map and various tweaks.

Play it here.

2. Dungeon Defender

Dungeon Defender is composed 9 pre-created levels, each with anywhere from 12 – 30 or more waves of enemies in it. When you first enter a level, it will look like a typical tower defense game. You’ll see a path with enemies spawning at one end and your lair at the other. You can place towers along the sides of the path as well as traps in the path. However, it’s at this point that the game starts to branch off from typical TDs.

The game bills itself as a TD/RTS/RPG , and this is a fairly accurate description. First off, as a TD, the game offers depth closer to the heralded Desktop Tower Defense by allowing you to order your imps to dig out the dirt in the level. So, while there is already a path for the enemies to follow, you can modify it, add more areas to place towers, and even dig up gold and treasure. Plus, the game will throw loops at you like providing multiple spawn points or even enemy towers to deal with!

Additionally, you can directly control your hero, meaning that you can rush into battle and kick around some baddies (errr…goodies) on your own. But you won’t be alone on the dungeon floor since about half of your towers are actually spawn points for your own minions. You can set a defense radius for each tower, and any enemies that step foot in the radius will be greeted by a big hulking monster of yours. The ability to have units of your own walking around the map gives the game the promised Real Time Strategy feel and is actually a lot of fun.

Finally, on the Role Playing Game side, your avatar gains experience when enemies are chopped down. As you gain levels, you get access to higher level traps, monster lairs, and stats for your avatar. Combine this with weapons and armor that you can pick up and equip and you get some pretty decent RPG elements thrown in.

Read the full review here

1. Gem Craft

Currently the most awesome Tower Defense game, why? It has by far the most polish and has combined lots of concepts from other TD games with finesse.

The main premise of the game is to build towers to protect your castle/keep from the marauding waves of bugs. Each wave consists of a number of numbers of bugs of a particular type, with sizes varying from 1 (”boss bugs”) to about 24 (zergling rush). To defeat these nasties you have to use existing towers, as well as build new ones. These towers are powered by gems, from which the game gets its name.

There are 5 types of gems. There are the basic, heart-shaped ones to the all powerful circles. In between there are diamonds, squares, pentagons and hexagons – all doing varying degrees of damage. The gems come in different colors as well, giving them different stats such as splash damage, poison, slow etc, which are useful in different levels where you’ll face different waves of bugs.

Check out the full review here.