Where are the towers in a Tower Defense game?

I won’t lie. I was super confused when I first played Bloons Tower Defense 6. I need to buy monkeys? And shoot down balloons with magic or military weapons? Oh, not balloons, but bloons? What are bloons?

And where are these towers I keep hearing about?

The 3 Elements of Bloons TD 6

The Monkeys

Your soldiers are divided into Primary, Military, Magic (my personal favorite), and Support. They all start with basic powers, but the more you play and the more you use certain monkeys, the more upgrades you unlock. This is through a combination of earning in-game money and XP points. I honestly don’t remember all those details, but it becomes obvious once you play.

You place your monkeys at different points along a map’s path. The more that you play, the more maps you unlock, which gets pretty fun.

You also earn or buy Heroes, who have very special powers and you get one to use per game.

Here’s the part I didn’t know for a while: The monkeys are the towers.

The Gameplay

• You start with around $650 to place your initial monkeys around your map (I tend to bunch them at the beginning of the path).
• You can choose a Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced game to start. The difference is in the number of rounds and severity of bloons, that you’re fighting.
• Each round, a number of bloons (balloons) start along the path and travel until the end, if they get that far. The monkeys shoot their various weapons at them, which include fire, spikes, snipers, and so on.
• For every round that you pass, you earn money and upgrades. The bloons also increase in their power.
• You can also buy banana trees, which spout bananas that are essentially money.
• The more money you have, the more monkeys you can place, and it gets pretty strategic. And yes, of course we use it to help the kids practice saving versus spending and learning how to manage their instant gratification when purchasing.
• Quick shout out to ninjakiwi, the game’s developers, for making it possible to have fun and prosper without spending money. You have opportunities to buy more Monkey Monkey, and we occasionally do, but it isn’t necessary to have fun and win at this game.
• If you make it to the end of the rounds (40, 60, and 80), then you win!
• You can keep playing in freeplay mode, where it gets more intense. If you cross the 100 rounds line, you also earn an “Insta-Monkey”!
• There’s a lot more, but that’s the basic idea.

The Bloons

These are the balloons and large helium balloons who follow your map’s pathway and your Monkeys have to shoot them down. Bloons range from lackadaisical red and blues to camouflaged to lead to massive Hindenberg-types that threaten to steal your thunder. You really have to play it to understand, but I suggest you let someone walk you through it and have fun losing until you get the hang of it.

It’s honestly become my chill activity after a long day: much better than just scrolling and easy to set limits on how long I will play.

Photo/Image Credit: Bloons Tower Defense 6

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