The Game The Showed Me That Variants Could Work (January 12, 2007)
Speaking of getting a head start, on December 22 I linked to Tower Defence by Roman Sanine, a great Flash implementation of Warcraft Tower Defence from Warcraft III. This week, David Scott released his own implementation of the same game, Flash Element TD. I was three weeks too early to include them both!

It's amazing to see how the same concept, with the same inspiration, can be implemented in two very different ways. This new game has better graphics, better sound, and is more complex overall, but lacks the time pressure of the previous game. It certainly is more polished, and yet I think there will be people who prefer the first game for its simplicity.

There is sound — great sound — but there's also a mute button in the upper-left.

The Game That Addicted The Internet (March 9, 2007)
I've featured flash implementations of Warcraft III's "Tower Defense" mini-game twice before, but now here is Desktop Tower Defense, a version which fits in at the office. No need to drift off to a fantasy world and fight orcs and goblins when you can just protect your Sharpie marker!

The idea is the same: set up your defenses by placing however many towers you can afford, upgraded as you can afford it, and then wait until the bad guys march onto the screen and see if you've done enough.

There are sound effects, but also a Mute button in the lower right. If you hit Mute before picking your difficulty level, the game is silent.

And that's that! The original three games, in rerun form, plus a new batch of six interesting variants, at least one of which is sure to please. Go ahead, spend the next week, or month, trying to beat all the creeps. Good luck!