A recap on Bloons tower defense games.
Andre Feature/Q+A
Bloons is a franchise thats been around for roughly 19 years now. With that time the Bloons franchise (made by the company NinjaKiwi) has become a beloved and well received franchise of games. The entire franchise encompasses 6 games with many other deluxe and addons to the main 6 games as well. Not only have these games brought innovative and unique gameplay designs but they also somehow keep on improving with each new iteration.
Bloons TD 1 was the first ever Bloons game. In fact Bloons 1 was the first ever track tower defense game. Admittedly the game is pretty bare bones. Even by 2007 standard this was only a simple flash game with really the only purpose being to show how this “track type” of tower defense game could be run. Despite that though even with all of the flashy and quality of life changes stripped away Bloons TD 1 was still pretty addicting which is what really made this game popular in the 2007 era.
Bloons TD 2 was pretty much the same as Bloons TD 1 but better in every way. The new Bloons they added and the new monkeys they added really spiced up the game and made the gameplay loop even more enjoyable. They also added a staple to the Bloons franchise which was the different difficulties that the player could pick from along with very minor bug fixes. Since this game was a flash game many different websites at the time picked it up and started running it on their platform. This boosted the player count by a lot and helped them garner players for the next edition.
After Bloons TD 2 came out many fans wanted a new Bloons game. They pressured the devs so much to the point where on the Ninja Kiwi site it says “After 319 days, 32 million plays and countless requests for a sequel to Bloons Tower Defense 2, Ninja Kiwi is proud to present Bloons Tower Defense 3”. Bloons TD 3 brought minor changes like the difficulty of the game being decreased due to player request. The main draw of Bloons TD 3 however was the upgrade to towers, maps and game modes. New upgrades to towers allowed them to be used with more combinations and each upgrade path was special. There was also a new variety of maps. Now players weren’t just forced to -play on one map over and over again but had options on each. Finally and probably the least impactful change out of these 3 where the game modes. New Bloons and more waves where added to each difficulty.
Bloons TD 4 is the 4th entry into the Bloons Tower defense series. Releasing on October 26th 2009 it had a couple of new modes and improved graphics from the other games. Also many of the Towers where rebalanced/tweaked. Something that really makes this entry notable is the release of Bloons TD 4 on mobile. This was the first time that a Bloons game had been released on mobile and it set a precedent for all of the other games that came with it. Another thing that really was special about this game is its expansion pack. Sometime after the game released an expansion pack was released too. It included new specialties, the cost of certain towers were changed and new maps where added. By that time the Bloons games where pretty lacking in quality but players could see the massive improvements made between the games.
Bloons TD 5 was just like the previous game a massive step forward in the Bloons tower defense franchise. Releasing on November 15th 2012 this may have been the biggest addition to the Bloons franchise. First off the quality of life improvements in this game where added. One of them was allowing players to save previous game sessions they where playing even after they closed the game. They also changed their art style a bit to make it more visually pleasing. Another massive quality of life change is the port to the Nintendo switch. New maps and game modes could also be unlocked by playing the game which boosted the replay ability of Bloons TD 5 greatly. Also high tier more health Bloons where added to shake up the gameplay. Probably the best change overall though is the addition of many new towers. Players really anticipated this and where disappointed with new towers they could try out to shake up the “meta”.
Bloon TD 6 is the final(so far) and the only paid entry in this list of games. Honestly though its well worth the $5 you pay for it. The most apparent change that was made to this game is the art style going from 2D to 3D. A nice visual touch which boosts emersion a bit. Alongside that many new towers where introduced and a 3rd path of upgrades was introduced to all of the towers giving them much needed variety. New upgrades and final upgrades where given to the towers as well. Probably the biggest change that was made to this game was the fact that its now on steam. This makes it easier to play with friends and buy the game. Alongside that though Bloons TD 6 is the only Bloons game in the franchise with a working custom map feature. Basically users who aren’t part of the devs can make their own map. This adds probably the most replayability to a game out of anything else because the users basically create content for themselves to consume. Now granted the content isn’t better than the devs content but content to play with is content to play with.
Ninja Kiwi has seemingly focused most of their attention on updating Bloons TD 6, so a new Bloons game seems unlikely anytime soon.