Bloons Tower Defense

Bloons Tower Defense transplants Ninja Kiwi's balloon series into the tower defense genre: crowds of colorful balloons roll along a winding path, and the player builds monkey towers alongside it that shoot, pop, or otherwise destroy them before they reach the end. Control remains simple - towers are placed and upgraded with the mouse between waves - but the depth lies in the fact that different balloon types resist different weapons, so the player must combine range, fire rate, and area effects to keep the defense effective even in later, increasingly fast waves.

The 2007 game appeared shortly after the boom kicked off by Desktop Tower Defense, and found its own identity through cheerful, cartoonish graphics and recognizable monkey towers instead of the usual fantasy guard towers. The combination of an approachable visual style and fairly deep strategy made it one of the most popular web titles of its time and the foundation for a long line of sequels, which are still being released today, including on mobile platforms.

The original web version remains mainly a memory of the era of Flash portals; running it today requires an archival player, since browsers no longer support native Flash. Anyone wanting to play the series today would rather reach for its newer, technically up-to-date sequels.

Why play it: For tower defense fans who want to experience the game that founded the whole long-running Bloons series, and who will appreciate the cheerful graphics and the clever combinations of towers against different balloon types.