..................................Moderator comment.....................................

My first impressions are that it is worth downloading, especially if you are familiar with tower defense games. Graphically its quite basic, but all the usual elements you get with TD games are there, and for novice TD gamers, its quite challenging. If you are looking for prettier looking TD games, there are loads available via MyPlayCity and other free game sites, though the best TD games will cost you some cash, for example my favorite TD games such as Defense Grid: The Awakening, Towers of Altrac and The two Sanctum games. I'll list some worthwhile commercial and free TD games 'with links' later today.

Ballistic Protection

In Brief

A fast paced and not so easy top down tower defense game with all the usual tower defence systems .

The Game

Although this game looks very basic and retro, its actually quite challenging. My first three attempts at level 1 on easy ended in failure. you really need to keep on top of positioning tower defenses and upgrading before the final wave of level one is complete otherwise you’re attempts will end in failure. Even with the game set to the default speed, its quite a fast paced game. If you feel confident you can speed up the oncoming forces using the speed up button.

Those of you who are unfamiliar with tower Defense games (probably very few of you) the best positions to place your towers are where the route turns 90 degrees. This allows the tower defense to be active for longer during an attack. placing on long straights the towers are not active for the same period, so are less effective at destroying the invading forces. So place your towers in all the bend areas first, on the inside of the bend i.e. imagine you are a runner on a field track, the innermost lane is usually the best place to run as you are running a shorter distance than if you ran in the outer lane of the track.

As you progress through the levels new towers are unlocked, for example, you start with a single and a twin gun, the twin gun shoots twice as many bullets as the single gun in the same amount of time. Each gun has a specific radius that it can cover. These are up-gradable and increase the radius as you upgrade, for example the default radius is 120, as you upgrade, this increases in increments to (to add). Once you’ve survived the first level more towers are unlocked. These are the Energy gun that costs 600 credits that is equivalent to 2.5 single guns with respect to damage. You also get Napalm which is twice as effective as the energy gun and five times as effective as the single shot gun and has an increased radius at its default setting of 160 units as opposed to the guns and energy weapons 120 units. It also cost another 200 credits more than the energy weapon at 800 credits. Finally you also get access to a sniper tower in level 2 that costs a thousand credits has a radius of 250 units and a damage of 7 i.e 7 times as effective as the single shot gun. Other towers that are unlocked as you progress through the levels include anti aircraft guns that costs 1500 credits and has an initial radius of 160 units, a damage factor of 9 single shot guns, however load times are 25% slower than all the previous towers. Next comes the rocket gun that costs 2000 credits with a damage factor of 12 and a reload speed that's 33% faster than most of the previous towers apart from the antiaircraft tower which it is 50% faster. Next comes the fire gun that costs 3000 credits and is similar to the single shot gun with respect to damage except it is 10 times faster at reloading. There are two other towers the plasma gun and the turret, both of which are expensive to build, but very effective against the enemy onslaught. I’ll let you find out their specs for yourselves. :)

Today is your last chance to pick up for free the award winning Torchlight a beautiful isometric 3D action RPG that was released a decade ago; which you can find via Epic Games HERE until 6pm this evening (UK time). The next free game from Epic games is Limbo an atmospheric and surreal 2D side scrolling puzzle platformer which you'll find HERE later today. It has mainly positive reviews via Steam.

All of the following (in this paragraph) Tower Defense games are freely available via MyPlayCity, Gametop or FreeGamePick: Fort Defense, Garden Defense, Goblin Defenders: Battles of Steel 'n' Wood, Iron Heart 2: Underground Army, Iron Heart: Steam Tower, Iron Sea Defenders, Iron Sea Frontier Defenders, Royal Defense, Royal Defense: Ancient Menace, Royal Defense: Invisible Threat, Toy Defense, Toy Defense 2, Toy Defense 3: Fantasy, Beefense, Garden Rescue: Christmas Edition, Garden Rescue, Defense of Egypt: Cleopatra Mission, Defense of Greece, Medieval Defenders, Steam Defense (side scrolling TD game), Alien Hallway (side scrolling TD game)Anti Zombie Defense, Miami Zombies, Bath Salts Zombies, , Day D: Time Mayhem, Gnomes Garden 2. All of the above games are still sold at various game distributors because they are still commercial games, however, they have come to an agreement with the original developers that allows them to give the games away because they include adware that earns the distributor money, some of which goes to the developers. In fact they can earn much more from their older games by allowing this that via direct sales once the initial release has passed .

My all-time favorite Tower Defense games are all commercial and include Defense Grid: The Awakening (the first game I ever purchased via Steam), DG2: Defense Grid 2 and the First Person Tower Defense games Sanctum and Sanctum 2, as well as other TD games such as Towers of Altrac and Plants vs. Zombies. The second version called Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare is a lot more challenging and is in third/first person view. You can pick that up via Origin HERE (there's a shed load of dlcs for this game, which i wasn't aware of as its been dormant in my Origin account for almost 5 years; that said, its still a reasonable TD game without all the extra's but not as good as the original.