Bubble Tanks TD - a Soothing Tower Defense Experience

Bubble Tanks TD is a flash animation tower defense strategy game created by renowned Newgrounds.com user HeroInteractive, or, more specifically, Eric Ottati, with Jared Riley and Jim Lester. Audio for the game was created by Polyphone Music (Brian Hall). This Bubble Tanks-themed tower defense game was submitted to Newgrounds.com on January 5, 2010, and won a daily feature award on January 6, 2010.

Gameplay

Like any other tower defense game, the objective of Bubble Tanks TD is to fend off invading enemies. Once you complete a stage, you can move on to the next stage. Position and upgrade your towers strategically to achieve the best possible defense against oncoming hordes of enemies.

At the top-left of the screen, you have your typical Quit and Pause buttons that do exactly what they say they do. To the right of this, you have a few game statistics, including the number of bubbles you have, your score, and the number of lives you have left. In Bubble Tanks TD, bubbles are used as currency. Buy new towers or upgrade towers currently on the field by using your bubbles. More bubbles can be earned by successfully shooting down enemies. Thus, as you play, you will gain bubbles.

To the right of the number of lives at the top of the screen, you have the Place Tower button. When you want to buy a new tower, simply click this button, then move your cursor over the gameboard to place the tower. You can also sell towers using the button to the right of the Place Tower button. You can sell towers for a fraction of the cost of the tower. Different towers will sell for different prices. To sell a tower, or to view its value, simply click on the tower on the gameboard.

At the bottom of the screen, you can view the different types of enemy waves that will come at you as well as the order of the waves that will be approaching. As soon as you start the waves, they will continue coming. To make a wave appear earlier, click on the name of the wave. Forcing waves to appear earlier will earn you bonus points.

At the end of each stage, you will get a report on how well you performed. The report will indicate how many enemies you killed out of the total number of enemies. You will also be told how many lives you have left, as well as the score you received for that level.

Bubble Tanks TD features the ability to morph together multiple towers to create bigger and better towers. Experiment with different combinations to find your tower of choice.

Playing Bubble Tanks TD on the Armor Games website allows players to play what has been labeled Extra Content, which includes a few more stages unplayable on Newgrounds.com.

There are hotkeys that can be configured in the game settings.

Game Review

Bubble Tanks TD is probably one of the most relaxing tower defense games ever created. Based off of the Bubble Tanks series, also created by HeroInteractive, Bubble Tanks TD offers players a relatively more peaceful tower defense experience compared to other TD games. The music also helps to create a rather soothing atmosphere. A useful feature of this game is that it can sense when you have clicked outside of the game's screen. Doing so will pause the game until you click the game screen again. This is helpful for people who tend to accidentally click outside of the game's screen and thus lose control of their game.

Bubble Tanks TD scores a 10/10 for its unique TD experience, along with multiple upgrade schemes and multiple levels for extensive gameplay. Bubble Tanks TD also has high replay value due to its performance record of whether or not you achieved a perfect game in each stage.