As an avid player of tower defense games, I’m pretty selective when it comes to the TD games I return to over and over again. Desktop Tower Defense 1.5 is one of those–the whole series is awesome, but the first version I played was 1.5, so it has a special place in my heart.
Basic Gameplay
You receive a fixed amount of money to start the game off–80 gold–which allows you to buy as few as 2 towers (a Frost and a Dart tower) or as many as 16 Pellet Towers. It all depends on what you want to defend yourself with.
 The little green box, made by your cursor, shows where you will place your tower if you click. The range of the tower is the orange outline. |
 If the little box is red, it means it’s overlapping another tower, or you don’t have enough money to build it. |
When you’re all set up, hit the “Start” button, and the first group of enemies will appear!
I’m on ur desktop, killin som doodz.
With every group of enemies (collectively called a “creep”), you will receive gold for defeating each enemy within the group. (In the screenshot above, you can see a red “+2” in front of the towers. That’s where an enemy has just fallen, and the game has given me +2 gold.) Then, you use this money to build/upgrade your towers so that they can take down progressively stronger creeps.
Select a tower by clicking it. Its information will appear in the tower selection pane to the right. In this screenshot, I can click the green “Upgrade” button to upgrade my Pellet Tower to a Pellet Tower 2.
This is what it looks like when you’ve chosen to upgrade one of your towers, with the orange progress bar showing you how far along it is. When you’re upgrading a tower, it cannot fire, so it’s best to upgrade between creeps.
Your objective, as noted in the first labeled screenshot, is to keep your enemies from going all the way across the desktop. You can do this by placing towers so that they divert enemies. (A tried-and-true way is to place towers in undulating lines within the desktop space, so that the max number of towers can fire on enemies as long as possible, and the only way enemies can get by is to run along these predetermined paths.)
Also, as the game goes along, the dropped gold from each creep enemy gets slowly bigger (not with every creep, but every few).
Types of Towers
Pellet 
| Squirt  |
Dart  |
Swarm  |
Frost  |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Fire Rate: Slow
Damage: Good Range: Fair Upgrade Costs: Special Effects: None Final Form: Sniper Tower (-fire rate, +damage, +range) |
Fire Rate: Fast
Damage: Fair Range: Fair Upgrade Costs: Special Effects: None Final Form: Typhoon Tower (+range, +damage, +fire rate) |
Fire Rate: Very Slow
Damage: Great Range: Great Upgrade Costs: Special Effects: Splashes damage on a group (ground only) Final Form: ICBM Tower (+range, +damage +splash) |
Fire Rate: Slow
Damage: Great Range: Fair Upgrade Costs: Special Effects: Only shoots at fliers, fires 4 missiles at a time Final Form: Storm Tower (+range, +damage, +splash) |
Fire Rate: Slow
Damage: Good Range: Fair Upgrade Costs: Special Effects: Slows enemies way down, splashes damage on a group Final Form: Blizzard Tower (+range, +damage) |
Enemy Group Types
| Normal | Group | Immune | Fast | Flying | Bosses |
Vulnerable to all damage Move at normal speed |
Vulnerable to all damage Clump together for movement |
Invulnerable to frost damage Move at normal speed |
Vulnerable to all damage Move at fast speed |
Invulnerable to dart damage Fly over towers Move at normal speed |
Each boss takes on one of the five other forms Moves at slightly slower speed |
|---|
Strategies
I generally buy two or three different types of towers at the start of the game. A Frost Tower is almost indispensable for slowing ground and air enemies, and is wonderful for fighting big clumped-up groups. Also, using a Squirt and Pellet Tower in conjunction with each other is a good tactic to start off with–the faster firing rate of the Squirt tower compensates for the slower Pellet Tower, and the Pellet’s higher damage compensates for the Squirt’s lower damage.
You’ll need at least one Swarm tower to fight air enemies, but you shouldn’t need a line of them. Just make sure your Swarm tower is lined up straight with where the enemies come in, and your Pellets and Squirts should make up the difference.
Dart towers are wonderful for splashing damage–they work well alongside Frost towers, which slow enemies enough for the Dart tower to shoot at them multiple times.
Don’t build too many towers early on; focus on upgrading the towers you have at first, and then start building a couple here and there when you need them to direct creep flow or need the extra damage.
Use all the desktop space given you for undulating lines of towers–don’t make it easy to get to the other side.
Last-ditch effort: Install a few towers on the other side of the map, close to the exit, to catch stragglers. Make sure these towers stay upgraded along with your front line, otherwise they won’t be much help.
Play the game: Desktop Tower Defense 1.5
