The Mess: Swarm Tower Defense

A free roguelike tower defense about holding back a flood. Portals open at the edge of the map and do not send a column of enemies. They send thousands at once, pouring down the veins toward the Absorber in the middle. You do not build a maze. You place towers, and the towers decide who arrives.

How a run goes

• Twenty waves, then endless. Every map is grown from a seed, so no two boards share their veins.
• Four tower classes. Gatling for the crowd, Tesla for chains, Mortar for the splash, Cordyceps to slow what gets through. Each class has a hard limit, so every placement is a choice.
• Nine kinds of monster, and elites that arrive with affixes you read before the wave starts.
• A three-card draft after each wave: firepower, control or defence. Rerolls are few.
• Mutagen is what a cleared wave pays. It survives the run, and the Armoury spends it on new classes and permanent upgrades.

Play

In the browser, on a phone or on a desktop, in either orientation. Tap a tower in the dock, tap the board. Pinch or scroll to zoom all the way out and watch the whole flood at once. The run saves itself, so closing the tab costs nothing.

English and Русский.

This is a demo, and the numbers are still moving. Tell me which wave ended you, and what you were holding when it did.