Game review: Bloons TD 6 for Steam

Tower defense is a genre I don’t have any strong opinions on. I’ve played a few and liked them well enough, but not so much that I go out of my way to find new entries. I saw Bloons TD 6 was on sale on Steam stupidly cheap, and I vaguely recalled it had been released on Netflix. So I figured it would be good for a Versus series post.

I mostly focused on the PC version, for reasons that I’ll get into later, but let me start of by saying this is a mobile game, complete with microtransactions, paid for currency, and painful grinding baked in to encourage spending. As usual, I was able to ignore all of that to just focus on the game itself, but if you have trouble with spending too much in mobile games, this probably isn’t for you.

The story is easy enough to cover. Bloons (balloons) have invaded the land of monkeys! Gather your forces to repel the invasion!

Yep. You don’t get much simpler than that.

The first few levels are a tutorial to cover “tower” (monkey) placement and investing funds to improve their abilities. Each popped bloon will offer an instant reward, and another reward is added at the end of each round. Failing to stop the bloons from exiting the level will cause a health meter to lower to zero, at which point it’s time to restart or walk away for a little meditation about troop placement. Oh, and because many bloons are carrying other bloons inside, letting one escape can often take a lot more than just one health point. The higher level MOABs (Mother Of All Bloons) can take all the health points in one hit, so it’s fairly important not to let them escape.

Next is summoning heroes. Only one of these units can be deployed in each encounter, and once they are on the field, they level themselves up without money. Heroes are…interesting, in that they all have something that makes them useful, but they also all have huge disadvantages. For instance, Quincy, the first hero available in the game, can level up to see “camo bloons.” This is important because many rounds in the medium and hard difficulties will throw out enough camo bloons to end the encounter. On the other hand, Quincy’s bow is useless against armored lead bloons, and again, several rounds will just chuck a bunch of these out to see if there’s a hole in your defense.

There’s another hero, Striker Jones, who is armed with a bazooka, and he can take out the lead bloons, but he can’t see camo bloons. My current favorite hero, Sauda, has fast sword attacks, and she can see camo bloons right from the start. But as might be expected, she can’t break lead bloons. Like I said, every hero brings with them extra consideration for where to use them and how.

As for how to best deal with lead bloons, go with sniper monkeys over cannons. Cannons require a separate tower with radar scanning to see camo bloons, and they are more expensive to deploy than snipers. Plus, a line of five or six snipers can wipe MOABs from across a map while cannons have much poorer range and less stopping power. I know, that doesn’t make sense, but that’s video game logic for you.

Every easy version of a map is accurately labeled. With few troops deployed, and even with bad unit placement, it’s simple to reach the end of 40 rounds without losing a single health point. Medium isn’t too stressful, either, but it does start to throw in little tests to see if you’re paying attention to which round you’re in. Fail to get the right units on the field and upgraded properly by a certain round (usually 30 of 60), and whoops, it’s game over.

But hard mode is where most levels really begin to test your ability to know which units to put out and upgrade, where to drop them, and when to do it. Certain levels have less available space for deployment, so every deployment has to be the right choice.

Then you get into challenges for each difficulty, and at the medium and hard difficulties, these are tough. But this is also where I start to chafe at the mobile game tactics.

Completing all levels can award loot boxes with insta-monkeys, or units that can be added to the field without paying money. Sounds great, right? Weeeelllll, here’s the thing. You don’t get many of them, and to buy more you need to use the same in-game currency that you use to buy new heroes and to invest points in the research skill trees. Sooner rather than later, you’re out of cash, and your choices are to grind levels for more cash (fed at a painful trickle) or go on over to the shop and buy a bundle with real world cash.

The challenges seem geared toward making players use up their few insta-moneys so they have to pay to play. It is true that if you just keep restarting on losses, eventually you can sort out a way through. At least, that’s been the cases with me for the beginner maps. I am way too nervous about trying the challenges on intermediate and advanced maps because the beginner maps are already testing my strategic chops on medium and hard difficulties. Seriously, trying to win Impoppable, Half Cash, and Apocalypse challenges on beginner levels is already stressful enough for me, thanks.

The combination of constantly needing to grind for cash with having to repeat challenge levels between six to nine times for one win has got me to the point of wanting to move on and play something else. This is not to say I’m ready to delete the game. I can see coming back to do a few new maps, followed by grinding some older maps for more cash. I just can’t see turning this into a daily habit. No matter how different the layout of the maps are, at a certain point, the gameplay is just placing units and watching the cash level rise. It’s good for brief visits, but it’s never going to get my attention for more than a few hours at a time.

Before I close out, I should mention the Netflix version, which eliminates the store and cash grabbing. Unfortunately, I can’t call it the superior version, because using a mouse makes controlling certain units so much easier. Playing on a Samsung with a six inch screen still can’t prevent unit deployment from being fiddly. On a twenty-three inch monitor, where my finger isn’t blocking my view of the unit, I can drop surgically precise ranks to use the real estate more efficiently. Oh, and the music coming out of tinny speakers versus proper headphones can’t be ignored. Every level has its own music, so for once, it’s a mobile game that I don’t mind wearing my headphones for instead of just playing it muted.

In conclusion, I’d give Bloons TD 6 a surprising 4 star score, but with the caveat that it is a mobile game that will try to exploit you and your wallet. If you can ignore the store and just focus on the core loop, it’s actually a pretty good time for fans of tower defense and strategy games.