Many people are familiar with video game genres such as role-playing games and first-person shooters. A lesser known genre is called tower defense. In TD games, players must strategically place towers on a map. Then, enemies enter the map and cross through it in a pre-determined pattern and are destroyed by the towers. Square Enix, makers of the popular Final Fantasy games, have come out with a great TD game called Crystal Defenders.
Crystal Defenders was originally released in 3 separate games. All three of them, called W1, W2, W3 (where W stands for world) are combined for the XBox arcade game. Each world has some different towers, some different enemies, and W2 and W3 even have special power crystals.
In each of the worlds, there are 4 maps. Each map has 30 waves of enemies. Players get a total of 20 crystals for each map. When an enemy makes it through the map alive, and exits the other side, they steal a crystal. The goal is to complete the map while keeping as many crystals as possible. For each enemy who is killed, the player gets some coins. The player also gets bonus coins at the end of each wave, based on how many crystals and coins the player has.
Purpose of Money in Tower Defense
In most tower defense games, money or currency is extremely important. It can be used to buy new towers or upgrade existing ones. Since players get more bonus cash based on how many coins they already have, it is worthwhile to upgrade and buy new towers discriminately. Upgraded attack towers can do more damage. The increase in stats happens exponentially, so the cost to upgrade increases this way as well.
Types of Towers in Crystal Defense
Although the names of the towers change in the different worlds, all three worlds have 6 types in common. There are the three aerial types, the archer, the black mage, and the time mage, as well as two ground types, the soldier and the white monk. The sixth type of tower is unique in that it does no damage. The thief, when in range of an enemy that is killed, simply doubles the money received. When not in range, the thief does nothing. Careful placement of thieves can greatly impact the amount of money a player has for upgrades and new troops.
The time mage slows down the target, and can damage both aerial and ground targets. The black mage also uses magick, has a large range including air and ground, but is slow. Archers can hit air and ground targets with physical damage. Soldiers and white monks both deal physical damage to ground targets only, but soldiers are faster than white monks. White monks, however, can deal damage to multiple targets at once.
In the later worlds, some of these 6 towers change names, such as soldier becoming fencer, but their general type and purpose remains the same. However, some new towers appear. The dragoon is extremely slow, but causes a great amount of physical damage to aerial and ground enemies. The flintlock uses a magical gun and is very slow. The tinker can stop enemies for several seconds, but they can also backfire and stop towers as well.
Types of Enemies
All enemies in each map come in the same order every time, so playing the map several times allows a player to get used to the order and prepare. There are flying enemies and ground enemies. Flying enemies can only be attacked by aerial towers, including archers and mages (both time mages and black mages). Ground enemies can be attacked by both aerial and ground towers, making them seemingly easier to kill.
To keep things challenging, some enemies have resistances or immunities. The enemy description will say something like "resistant to physical attacks," meaning the enemy takes reduced damage from a physical tower, such as a soldier. Enemies with immunities mean they take NO damage from whatever type of attack is specified. Players must be aware of this and have lots of powerful towers place of the type of damage the enemy is not immune to. For example, an aerial target might be immune to magickal attacks, which means only archers and dragoons can damage that enemy. The player must have sufficient, well leveled archers and dragoons to beat such a wave.
For someone new to this genre of game, this can seem like a lot to take in. However, while it may take a while to master the game, it is easy to pick up the basics quickly. For more information about strategies and hints, please read about Strategies to Win at XBox Game Crystal Defenders
Allison Russo - Allison Russo holds a B.S. in Psychology with a minor in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Most recently she ...
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