WebGames
5049 games

Defend the Castle

Strategy Added 2025-07-07

Waves here do not arrive on a timer. You press the button, and until you press it nothing on the board moves at all. What that quietly does is promote the castle health bar into the real clock of the run, because that bar only ever goes down.

Because nothing stirs until you call the wave, the build phase is untimed and completely free. That strips out the usual tower defence panic and leaves a budgeting problem in its place. Two of the five things you can put down, a woodcutter at seventy-five gold and a mine at one hundred, do not shoot at anything.

The bar that only goes one way

Enemies file along a winding blue road and attack the castle sitting on it. Each one that arrives bites a chunk out of a single thousand-point bar that has to last the entire run. Clearing a wave is therefore never clean, only cheaper or dearer: mine cost 110, 130, 110, 150, 270 and 220 points in turn, and the seventh finished the job. The end card says “The King has fallen” and “You survived 7 waves”, which is an honest description of the whole exercise.

What the Gambit is for

Since that bar never refills, every deal the Gambit card offers is the same question wearing different clothes. Iron Horde gives every enemy 25 percent more health and hands you a hundred spare wood for the next build phase. Berserker’s Rage makes them faster and makes them richer. You are being asked, each time, whether this is the wave you can afford to make worse, and the answer depends entirely on a number in the corner of the screen that you can never put back.

About this game

Controls
Mouse or tap to place and upgrade buildings; space calls in the next wave, W, A and C are shortcuts for wall, archer and cannon, and U upgrades whatever is selected. On a phone the same actions sit on the bottom bar.
Category
Strategy
Orientation
portrait

FAQ

Can you repair the castle between waves?
I could not find any way to. The build menu holds a wall, an archer tower, a cannon tower, a woodcutter and a mine, and nothing else. Over seven waves my bar read 1000, 890, 760, 650, 500, 230, 10, and then it was gone.
What is the King's Gambit?
An optional handicap offered before some waves, not before every one. Mine offered Sudden Death, where the first enemy to reach the castle deals five times damage but the wave bonus doubles, and Berserker's Rage, where enemies attack 30 percent faster but each kill pays half again as much gold. Turning it down costs nothing.
Do the medals carry between runs?
They do, into a Royal Armory selling permanent unlocks. Seven waves earned me four medals. A Tar Pit costs fifteen, a Frost Spire ninety, and the Rallying Cry ability one hundred and sixty-five.

More strategy games