Currently Playing

Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems
Flash
Play on Kongregate

Cursed Treasure: Don't Touch My Gems (CT) is a tower defense style flash game. I spotted it on Kongregate when it first came out, clicked on it, read Tower Defense, and clicked away before it even loaded up.

Then of course, I log in one day and see this:

Still, I was able to ignore it, but later, after a few hours of Portal, I couldn't help it.  I wanted the card...

For the record, I absolutely abhor TD type games, especially the million clones that aren't original in anyway.  ArmorGames put out an interesting TD game built around elevators, that also had a Hero element to it, and I admit I checked that one out.  But generally the tutorial levels are enough for me, then I am pretty much done.

But CT had a card, and the challenge took some effort.  You needed to get a perfect on 5 of the 15 levels.  Sure, there are two tutorial levels, but I didn't get a perfect on either the first time through.  Nonetheless, I set out to get it.

After about 30 minutes I surprised myself, as I was still enjoying playing.  I know, odd, right?  I was really actually sort of having fun (maybe).  I actually earned one perfect rating, and was really hooked on earning more.

I thought about it, and here is a brief, although somewhat unorganized, run down of why I enjoy this game so much.

1. The progression system of towers.  They level up both through experience, and money.  An interesting combo, where there is some benefit to having one tower do the work and level up, some benefit in having a ton of towers, and some benefit in saving your money, some benefit in spending it all.
2. The tower progression is both simple and elegant.  There are three basic types of towers, all of which are fairly similar.  Each type then splits into two variations at about the fourth level.  At the split, each tower specializes in a very different way.  So a total of 6 towers, each with a specialization.  Complicated enough for some depth, simple enough to understand without hours of trial and error.
3. The levels are short, and the speed up button is well implemented.  TD games tend to bore me after one hour of play time, but no real accomplishments.  Each map is small, the number of waves are fairly low, and the speed up button works perfectly.  You don't mind playing maps twice.

Overall character progression: A pinnacle of design so many other games should strive to achieve.  This gets its own category.  Regular readers will discover that I play games specifically due to character progression systems.  In CT, you gain EXP from every completed map, based on your performance.  Every map or two, you gain a level, and three skill points.  These skill points get split into the three categories of towers (basically earth/orcs, fire/demons, ice/undead).  Each of these has a skill tree, with some (but not much) branching.  They have different specialties, such as magic, money, and leveling up, as well as improving each type of tower and granting them added effects.  On top of that, every time you put a skill point in each category, it improves your range, fire rate, and damage.

Here is why this is so great.  On one hand, you are always getting inherently better, overall.  The damage, range, and fire rate are latently applied to all towers, every map, etc.  On top of that, it makes since to do some specializing in one category, because the higher up the tree, the better the skills.  The more you go up one, however, the more you are tied to that one type of tower.  The problem with this, however, is that each time you buy a tower, its price increases, so you cannot just spam one version.  Furthermore, you are allowed to pick and choose different categories here and there, as needed.

The major thinking comes in when you start down one tree.  You get three skill points per level, which is not really enough to make any major improvements.  But, you often find that once you are two levels down one tree, those three points can give you a nice bump, provided you stay within that tree.  But you already have nice magic, you now want more gold per kill.  Well, that takes 9 points in another three just to unlock, so not only do you know you have to wait a few levels, those 9 points invested in that tree are not going to help you much.  So do you just sock away one per level, and use the other two?  Or sacrifice all three to make it go faster? Or just ignore it until later?

I still have a few more levels to go, but this is a rare TD that I am really enjoying.  Worth a check.