Marrying the relentless allure of idle incremental games with the time-honored TD genre, tower defense idle games have secured a steadfast spot in the heart of mobile gamers. However, when it comes to the Android app stores, the sheer variety of these games can leave you confounded as to which ones truly excel. This article aims to refine that extensive list down to the absolute gems, presenting you with the top 10 exemplary tower defense idle games available on Android.
Grow Castle
One of the original tower defense idle titles, Grow Castle remains relevant to this day and continues to receives updates every now and then.
Grow Castle is a game about defending your castle from wave-after-wave of enemies. The gameplay loop is fairly simple, you fight wave, you earn gold, and you upgrade your castle. However, things quickly become more complicated since new mechanics are unlocked as you make progress through the game.
These mechanics include a town behind your castle, a world map for you to conquer, an entire skill tree that we ourselves have not been able to fully explore yet, and countless other means of upgrading and min-maxing your setup.
While Grow Castle is super simple, the potential to optimize is absolutely there. Different heroes complement each other, the game incentivizes AFK gameplay, there is a way to watch an ad for somewhat automated progression for 20 minutes, making Grow Castle a great game to pomodoro your way through work.
- The graphics are aged but we see it as a positive thing, modern phones run it without a sweat.
- We plan on covering some of the game’s mechanics in-depth in a more thorough guide in the future.
Idle Monster TD: Monster Games
If you are looking for a genuine tower defense experience then look no further, Idle Monster TD provides you with exactly that. This game pulls an uno-reverse card by letting you play as cute monsters in order to defeat the evil invading humans. There is an incredible level of depth in this game, it has multiple tower types including aura supports, the ability to farm up the monster summoning currency, and some of the most in-depth idle TD gameplay that we have seen so far.
The game feels incredibly polished and rightfully so, the developers have done an incredible job. There are multiple layers of progression that work with each other, the prestige system is generous and losing does not force you back to wave 1, you simply play from the last boss you defeated and get to farm up gold to upgrade your towers until you can break past the wall.
Overall, we would highly recommend that you try out Idle Monster TD if you have not done so already.
- This game could desperately use some early-game automation, or a way for players to bulk level-up their towers after they prestige.
- Prestige screens should always have confirmation, we accidentally pressed it a couple of times because the arrow design around the prestige button made it look like there were more options.
The Tower – Idle Tower Defense
The Tower gives you with a single lone tower in the middle of the screen that you have to defend from enemies that spawn from all directions. The game is paced a lot slower than most other incremental titles, but it is under active development with a future roadmap available from the developers.
However, The Tower does fall behind other titles in the genre when you take its monetization practices into account. Its Cards System and the recently introduced Tower Modules System both use gems to give you randomized bonuses. Gems are not difficult to come by and any decently active player will be earning more than enough from tournaments and events to make these pulls, but doing so with any degree of success can take a couple of months if not longer.
The in game tournaments are also rather imbalanced, as players are incentivized to lower their tournament leagues in order to get easier matches, but this ultimately hurts players in said lower leagues as someone who just unlocked tournaments will be facing off against someone who can reach several times their max wave.
- Monetization practices are pay-to-win unless you are willing to farm up the required premium currency.
- Tournaments require a better incentive for players to continue climbing / stay in a league.
- Incredibly slow paced unless you’re into that…
- There is no offline progression.
Seems like Tap Titans 2 is the only game that really figured out how to balance tournament brackets, and they do so by calculating a player’s maximum theoretical stage, regardless of their past tournament performance.
North Tower – Merge TD Defense
Defend your tower as you control a mighty dragon in this beautiful combination of merger, clicker, and idle gameplay elements. Progress through the early game is quick and you will easily unlock new skills and gameplay features, but do not expect things to remain so calm.
You unlock auto-battle at Windland Stage 2-4, this will let you take your eyes off the screen entirely once a battle starts, and this is also around the time you will start unlocking other menus and features throughout the game. North Tower also features dungeon-style raids, where you can choose the difficulty yourself in exchange for pre-set rewards. And if that wasn’t enough, the game also has expeditions that you can set out on sailing boats (check the third screenshot).
Who knows what else is there to unlock? There is offline progression so you can put the game down and come back to get stronger defenders if you feel like your progress has slowed down.
- Some QoL features are locked behind VIP Tiers, which is acceptable as developers do have to pay the bills.
- The game is relatively heavy on the graphics side of things, older phones will heat up and drain the battery quickly. Luckily, graphic controls are available in the settings menu and the game is also available on Google Play for Windows Desktops.
Summoner’s Greed: Idle TD Hero
You may recognize the little hooded magician in this game from ads on various social media sites.
Summoner’s Greed is an incremental tower defense game that presents players a beautiful blend of idle gaming sprinkled on top of the traditional tower defense genre. The game features a prestige system which automatically triggers upon losing, letting you gather up all that you’ve collected and start anew, stronger this time.
Beware though, just like other idle games, Summoner’s Greed provides you with an incredibly addicting experience where you can easily end up spending a lot of time, money, or both. The game features multiple maps and months worth of content, so long as you’re willing to grind for it!
- There is a lack of information in the game, and this creates a feeling of being stuck even though your damage may have increased significantly behind the scenes. You know how TD games let you know how much a tower’s damage, range, or attack rate will increase with each upgrade? Summoner’s Greed doesn’t really do that.
- There are moments when the game is artificially slowed down:
- The Merchants / Optional ads which appear during gameplay pause the game temporarily
- The Wave Complete announcements do not speed up if you watch an ad for 2x game speed.
- The 15 minute timer for 2x speed continues to clock down even when the game is not being sped up, and even when the game is paused due to the above two reasons.
- Progression is slow and often confusing – unlike other idle games, there isn’t a simple “buy this to increase damage” button
