Anomaly Warzone Earth

Anomaly Warzone Earth turns the tower defense genre upside down: instead of building towers and waiting to see what comes at you, you command a convoy of vehicles advancing through the streets of a city occupied by an alien invasion. You don't control units directly but set the convoy's route by tapping the map and activate special abilities in real time – a smoke screen, repairing damaged vehicles, or a targeted strike – while the convoy makes its own way past enemy towers positioned along the route. This reversed take on defense was a breath of fresh air amid a flood of classic tower defense titles at the time of release, and touch controls suited it naturally: a finger across the map, a quick tap on an ability icon, no complicated menus or dozens of units to micromanage.

The game was released in 2011 and marked the debut of the Polish studio 11 bit studios, which later became famous for darker titles like This War of Mine and Frostpunk. Anomaly Warzone Earth was created first for mobile platforms and only afterward made its way to PC and consoles, an unusual direction at the time – most successful strategy games went the other way, from computer to phone. The sci-fi plot about an alien occupation of Baltimore gave the game a clear visual style: a top-down view of destroyed streets, robotic towers of various types, and a convoy of tanks, transports, and artillery gradually fighting its way out of the besieged city.

Success on iOS helped the studio get on its feet and showed that the strategy genre can work on a touchscreen without simplifying the rules at the expense of depth. Anomaly also kicked off a small series of sequels and spin-offs, including the defensive variant Anomaly Korea, which further developed the reversed-defense concept and experimented with its rules.

Why play it: For players who have had enough of classic tower defense and want to try the same genre from the other side of the barricade, with well-thought-out one-finger controls to boot.