Free tower defense game in your browser — read the path, pick your turrets, upgrade at the right moment

Step by step

1. Press START to open stage 1, S-Bend Canyon. You begin with 260 gold and 20 lives, and the Machine Gun card is already selected.
2. Pick a turret card in the console below (hotkeys Q, W, E, R, T) and click an empty cell on the map to build. Hovering shows the range circle in advance; cells on the path, cells that already hold a turret, and anything you cannot afford show up red and refuse to build. Cards you cannot afford are greyed out.
3. When the layout is ready, press Start (F). From then on a new wave arrives every 22 seconds, and pressing Call wave before the timer runs out pays a bonus of 1.5 gold per second skipped. The NEXT counter shows seconds until the next wave; during a wave it switches to LEFT, the number of enemies remaining.
4. Click a placed turret to see its portrait, damage, fire interval, range and kill count, and to enable Upgrade (U) and Sell (S). Deselect with ESC or a right-click, and cycle game speed with G: x1, x2, x3.
5. Hold all ten waves of a stage and your turrets are refunded in full while the next map loads. Rebuild without a timer, then press Start again. When your lives hit zero the result screen shows the wave reached, kills and turret count; enter a nickname (12 characters max) to submit, share or play again.

How to play

• Enemies spawn at the red entrance and follow the yellow arrows to the blue exit. Each one that gets through costs 1 life (bosses cost 5); at 0 lives the game ends.
• At the start and whenever you enter a new stage there is no timer — build freely, then press Start wave. After that a wave arrives every 22 seconds, and calling the next wave early pays a gold bonus for the time you skipped. Every 10th wave is a boss.
• 3 stages = 3 maps: S-Bend Canyon → Spiral Base → Stair Crossing. When a stage ends your turrets are fully refunded, so the gold carries over and you rebuild on the new map. Past wave 30 the final map switches to endless mode.

The five turrets

• Machine Gun Turret (50 gold) — Cheap and fast-firing. Your early-game backbone. Damage 3 · 0.3s · range 95
• Cannon Turret (90 gold) — Slow but hits an area. Great against packs. Damage 22 · 1.6s · range 105 · splash 40
• Frost Turret (80 gold) — Slows enemies by 45%. Place next to other turrets. Damage 4 · 0.7s · range 100 · slow 45%
• Laser Turret (140 gold) — Long-range single-target firepower. Boss killer. Damage 40 · 1.1s · range 150
• Missile Turret (200 gold) — Huge splash explosions. Late-game core. Damage 60 · 2.2s · range 135 · splash 70

Each turret upgrades twice: level 2 (damage ×1.7) and level 3 (×2.9), with range and splash growing a little each time. Selling refunds 60% of what you invested.

Upgrade cost table

Level 2 costs 80% of the build price and level 3 costs 130%; damage figures are rounded as shown in the game. Selling returns 60% of everything spent on that turret.

Enemy types and wave scaling

Wave w sends 8 + 2w enemies (10 on wave 1, 48 on wave 20), and base health is 14 × 1.18^w−1, growing 18% per wave — about 14 on wave 1, 62 on wave 10, 325 on wave 20 and 1,700 on wave 30. Every kill also pays a bonus of wave ÷ 4 gold, rounded down.

Clearing a wave pays 25 + 6 × wave gold on top of any early-call bonus. Turrets always target the enemy furthest along the path within range; splash hits deal 100% to the primary target and 60% to everything else in the radius. Frost's slow wears off over time, so overlap it with the range of your damage turrets.

Tips for this TD game

The best spots sit beside cells where the path bends or passes twice — one turret gets two shots at every enemy. Open with two or three machine guns, then slot in a frost turret before wave 7 so tanks crawl through your kill zone. Bosses (waves 10, 20, 30) fall to a level-3 laser; bunched-up late waves are missile food. Upgrading an existing turret is often better value than placing a new one, so compare the numbers before you spend.

Score and leaderboard

Your record reads "waves completed.kills" — 23.417 means 23 waves held and 417 kills. Waves rank first, kills break ties (up to 999). When your lives run out the result screen shows the score, and a nickname puts it on the global top ten. A friend who opens your share link sees your score on the title screen as a target to beat. Past wave 30 the result reads "Endless mode — reached wave N", and the closing message reflects how far you got: all 30 waves held, reached the final map (20), or reached the second map (10).

Frequently asked questions

When does endless mode end?

Only when you run out of lives. After wave 30 you see "Wave 30 held! Endless mode continues" and waves keep coming on the final map, Stair Crossing, with health growing on the same curve. Eventually you will be overrun — that is expected, and the wave you reached is your score.

What happens to my turrets between stages?

You get back everything you spent — build cost and upgrades — and the map changes. Unlike selling (60%), there is no loss, so spend freely on the last wave of a stage. On the new map there is no timer until you press Start.

Upgrade or build another turret?

Level 2 costs 80% of the build price for 1.7× damage; level 3 costs 130% for 2.9×. A second turret for the same gold gives 2× damage but covers a second spot, so upgrade turrets that sit on prime cells and build new ones where coverage is missing. Each level also adds 10% range, 15% splash radius and 10 points of slow for Frost.

Are there keyboard shortcuts?

Turrets Q, W, E, R, T; upgrade U; sell S; start or call a wave F; speed G; deselect ESC. On touch screens, tap a card and then a cell to build, and tap a turret to inspect it.

Is the mobile version the same game?

Same maps, same numbers. On narrow screens the minimap is hidden and the console wraps onto two rows. A game in progress is not saved, so plan to finish a run in one sitting.

More free browser games

Like random-draw strategy? Try Lucky Defense, a gacha-style defense where every unit is a roll of the dice. No download, no sign-up — your score goes straight to the global leaderboard with just a nickname.

Related tools

• Brick Breaker — the arcade classic with nine power-ups and endless stages.
• Snake — eat, grow, survive; a quick one between defense runs.
• Block Puzzle — line-clearing strategy with no timer at all.