Cursed Treasure

Cursed Treasure flipped the established tower defense formula on its head, because instead of defending an innocent village from a horde of monsters, the player defends stolen gems as the villain himself, while heroes try to take the treasure back. Studio IriySoft built a game on this idea in 2010, where the player builds towers with three types of magic, poison, fire and dark, and must combine their effects to stop waves of attackers before they reach the treasure.

This inverted perspective, where the player roots for the side that's always the villain in a classic fairy tale, gave an otherwise fairly traditional genre a refreshing perspective and dark humor, the player is rewarded for brutality against the heroes, and the game doesn't hold back in poking fun at established fantasy clichés. Mechanically it's a solid, well-tuned tower defense with gradually increasing enemy types and the ability to upgrade towers and special abilities, so the difficulty rises smoothly and the game rewards thoughtful defense placement rather than quick reflexes. The graphic style remains simple, hand-drawn and colorful, which matches the light-hearted tone of the whole game.

The game's success led to several sequels, including mobile versions that carried the concept beyond the browser and added more tower types, spells and rival factions. The original Flash Cursed Treasure now requires emulation, because Flash Player was discontinued in 2020 and web browsers removed its support entirely.

Why play: For tower defense fans who want to see a refreshing variation on the genre from the villain's perspective, with well-balanced difficulty and exaggeration instead of pathos.