Adding story to Tower Defence games seems to be missing the point really. The focus and reason you're playing the game is to try out your hand at defensive construction. You don't need a long winded and emo tale of rogueish apprentice saving town and lost children. As is the case with Locks Quest. You just need a manageable interface for your contruction. Interesting things to be done to help fortify your position. And satisfying peaks of intensity when your whole setup may crumble against the onslaught and that one combination of double turret and impeding wall saved you.

I do applaud what Immortal Defense attempted with its trippy sci fi theme, and making the defensive entities have their own personality was a stroke of genius and imagination. Couple that with the Minter-inspired vector graphics and the actively offensive powers you're given with your constructing cursor, and you have a truly vibrant Tower Defense game that stands head and shoulders above the average competition. Even those who are marvellously 3d modelled and lit with the best technology.

Tower Defence games can be very rewarding, especially for quick bursts of play. But because their remit is often very straughtforward they tend to attract a lot of mediocre offerings, and only the truly novel ones stand out and are worth your defensive time.

Immortal Defense and I had a great time last night.

Desktop Tower Defense remains the best entry simply because it's so clear cut. Everything is laid out for you: the map, the spacing, and the exact stats.

Compare this to Defense Grid. Super polished, but too much so for its own good. You get bars instead of numbers. Are the bars exact proportions? How can I tell if it's worth upgrading a tower to level 3? And finally you have an isometric view of a multi-level map that you cannot see all at once, which really kills your chance to sit back and plan things out.

Immortal Defense: interesting plot, great music, trippy colors, absolutely horrid game. Again, feedback comes into it. There may be some super deep strategy to it, but hell if I could figure it out with the complete lack of visual feedback. They were more concerned with making flashy disco lights than they were with letting you see what was going on. You can only see the enemies and path about 1/3rd of the time. As far as I could tell, the only real strategy was to put all your money into one of those ultimate towers and just keep firing charged up cursor shots (then just turn on the cheats for the bonus levels because they are mathematically impossible).