Friday Fun: GemCraft is a Totally Addictive Tower Defense Game

One of the more popular features around here is our Friday Fun series, where we feature time-wasting online games designed to keep you from getting anything useful done. But at least you’re enjoying yourself!

I’ve found an extremely addictive game called GemCraft, which is similar to Desktop Tower Defense but also has some very slight role playing elements to it.

For more fun games and office time killers check out Mysticgeek’s archive of fun stuff, or try playing the geekiest game ever.

Show Me the Game!

Once you start playing a game, you’ll be presented a map with a path and a couple of towers. In each tower you can place a Gem, which will fire bolts of energy (or something) at the little creatures trying to get past. The goal, naturally, is to keep them from reaching the end.

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Each one of the gems has a “grade” associated with it, and different gems have different powers, for instance the cyan gems will shock the enemies and make them pause in their tracks.

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You can create new towers and new gems based on the Mana that you have available, but where this game gets really interesting is that you can combine the gems together to make new gems.

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For instance, here I’ve combined together red and purple gems to make a new, more powerful gem with a higher grade.

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It doesn’t stop there, however… once you beat a level, you can go back to the map to pick another battle…

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As you advance further, you’ll unlock more levels, some of which are quite difficult.

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And here’s the greatest part: You can level up with the points that you get by winning levels. The higher the score for beating a level, the more points you’ll get to upgrade.

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I’ve wasted at least 6 hours this week playing this game… and now I pass the productivity killer on to you =)

Play GemCraft at the How-To Geek Arcade (Flash required)

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