The Kongregate Mob will possibly be a weekly post. Right now, this is more of a proof of concept to test the waters. Essentially, every week I -- or possibly Andrew Hiscock if he wants to continue these things since he did start them -- will feature a handful of games on Kongregate based around a certain theme.
Each of these games will most likely have achievements, though I won't make any guarantees that non-achievement games won't also be featured. After each of the featured games, with links and brief write-ups, there will be The Kongregate Mob Leaderboard. This will be a running total of every known Bitmob community member who is signed up with Kongregate, and where they place amongst their fellow contributors.
On this test run, the theme is Tower Defense games. Feel free to throw out any of your favorites I didn't include in the comments, as well as let me -- and possibly Andrew -- know what you think about this format for a weekly post. Any tips on how you think it could be improved would be helpful.
The Games
A great tower defense game to get your feet wet. While a lot of games in this genre offer hundreds of hours of play that ramps up difficulty exponentially, Defend Your Honor is easily beaten in about two hours. And even if you find it difficult, it is possible to grind for awhile to build up your army so that you can better defeat the later stages. It attempts to be cute and funny, which I mostly found lame, but otherwise it's a fun little game.
This one changes things up a bit. Most tower defense games have levels with many waves each. In Whiteboard Tower Defense, each wave of monsters is one level, and then you move onto the next level with your towers still intact. This way you have a bit of time to breath, as well as the ability to really build up a huge defense. I've often found it annoying in TD games that all of the towers I spent time building up just go to waste when I beat the level, so I'm all for this game.
Now we're getting into the games for the advanced players. Not that Whiteboard TD doesn't require some advanced strategies for the Hard Levels, but Bubbles Tanks TD gets really extreme. There's a level in this game that only starts you with enough money for one tower. For the first several waves you just have to keep quickly selling and buying it at new locations to kill the monsters. Plus almost every non-easy level requires the "juggling" -- selling and buying towers to create new paths to the end so that the enemies have to turn around and walk back through your gauntlet -- technique to beat. It can be frustrating, but there's some fun for inexperienced players here as well.
Welcome to my addiction. Gemcraft doesn't require advanced but ultimately boring techniques like juggling in the later levels. The monsters go along a set path and you place towers along that path. Still, despite playing this game obsessively before finally breaking free, I was challenged to beat every single level. It is pure and fast. You've got to know what you're aiming for and get it done before you lose horribly. My biggest complaint is that you could be play this for a good day straight, no sleep, and still not get the Medium and Hard achievements. Maybe that's just because, despite loving tower defense games, I'm pretty bad at them.
The Kongregate Mob Leaderboard
1. Spencer Gregory - eski514 - Level 28 - Point: 5165
2. Andrew Hiscock - thecoffeemug - Level 27 - Points: 4705 (+63)
3. Jon Shults - sm4k - Level 26 - Points: 4534
4. Daniel Feit - feitclub - Level 16 - Points: 1995 (+52)
5. Alex Cronk-Young - magitek85 - Level 15 - Points: 1832 (+182)
6. James DeRosa - Mazrim - Level 11 - Points: 1000 (+1)
(+2) 7. Kevin Zhang-xing - kevinxing - Level 10 - Points: 856 (+111)
(+1) 8. Mark Whitney - TellahSage - Level 10 - Points : 855 (+85)
(-1) 9. Aaron Rivers - TheSophist - Level 9 - Points: 808 (+5)
10. Travis McReynolds - Cojirro - Level 9 - Points: 703
11. Pete Davison - angryjedi - Level 7 - Points: 533
12. Jasmine Maleficent Rea - vitiosuslepos - Level 7 - Points: 507 (+157)
13. Zack DeRego - w0ot - Level 6 - Points: 366 (+40)
14. Jeff Grubb - NeoJobe - Level 4 - Points: 257
15. Seth Coultas - Suetekh - Level 4 - Points: 255
16. Joshua Henderson - SwiftTheRedFox - Level 4 - Points: 249 (+5)
17. Derek Lavigne - eternalbeta - Level 4 - Points: 244 (+15)
18. Lance Darnell - TheLancer - Level 4 - Points: 231 (+17)
19. Cameron Pershall - cambot3000 - Level 4 - Points: 190
20. Dan Hsu - BitmobShoe - Level 3 - Points: 166 (+30)
(+1) 21. Demian Linn - Dlinn - Level 3 - Points: 159 (+42)
(-1) 22. Matt Giguere - Giggysan - Level 3 - Points: 120
23. Alex Martin - AlexDM - Level 2 - Points: 97
24. Chris "Cosmo" Ross - jcosmocohen - Level 2 - Points: 60
25. Nick Gates - Ververdan - Level 2 - Points: 56
26. Nick Nordstrom - Nick810 - Level 2 - Points: 50
26. Omar Ather - AdmiralAkthar - Level 2 - Points: 50
26. Cody Winn - NintendoTheory - Level 2 - Points: 50
27. Ultan O'Connell - Mangoverboard - Level 1 - Points: 40
28. Taro Russel - Splutterbug - Level 1 - Points: 32
29. Jeremy Watson - HandsomeRansom - Level 1 - Points: 25
30. Jonathan Sutyak - Psydswipe - Level 1 - Points: 20
30. Suriel Vazquez - SoNautical - Level 1 - Points: 20
30. Brett Bates - bbretterson - Level 1 - Points: 20
30. Chris Reeves - djcoolc - Level 1 - Points: 20
31. Brian Shirk - KoSGolbez - Level 1 - Points: 15
Not on the leader board? Post your Kongregate username in the comments to get added to the daily updates!
This new blog editor loves adding spaces where they shouldn't be. It bothers me as much as it bothers you, but I can't fix it.
... damn... I haven't been on Kongregate since last week... I'll have to make a push.
Allll righht you guys finally got me. My Kongregate ID is
TheRealCampbell
....hey wheres DeskTop TD?
I need to get on one of these days, but I don't think I'll have time until I'm done with FF13. Still, it's nice to see that you're still organizing these community competitions.
@Evan C - I purposely left out oDesktop TD because the achievements are unbelievably broken on Kongregate. Nothing unlocks when you get it.