Is tower defense still worth your time in 2024?

Tower defense feels like a genre from another era, but every so often something reminds me why it caught on in the first place. Tide and Tower did exactly that.

The twist is the water. Instead of just fending off enemies, you're fighting the rising sea, which forces you to think vertically about where you build. It turns each level into a spatial puzzle rather than a wall-building exercise.

What I appreciate is the honesty of its difficulty. When I lost, I could usually point to the exact bad decision I made. That's the difference between a puzzle and a slot machine of enemies.

For newcomers, resist the urge to spread out. Concentrating your defenses and reading the enemy path is almost always stronger than a thin line everywhere.

The genre isn't dead. It just needed someone to stop copying the same tutorial and start asking new questions.