Five tower defence mistakes we made so you don't have to

Tower defence looks simple until wave fifteen collapses your whole map. Over dozens of games we keep repeating the same mistakes, so we wrote them down.

The first is over-building splash damage too early. Area towers feel powerful, but single-target towers usually give better value against the first few waves. Save the splash for when enemies actually swarm.

The second is ignoring upgrade paths. Two fully upgraded towers almost always beat four cheap ones, because most games scale upgrade power faster than raw tower count. Plan a couple of key positions and pour money into them.

Third, people forget to leave money in the bank before a boss wave. A good general habit is to end each wave with a small reserve so you can react. And finally, do not tunnel on the front lane. The lane that kills you is usually the one you stopped watching.