“Bloons TD 6” is a popular tower defense game developed and published by Ninja Kiwi. It is the most recent game in the “Bloons TD” series, which was released on June 13, 2018. “Bloons TD 6,” which will now be referred to as “BTD6,” was the first in the series to introduce 3D graphics and many new features.
Before I talk about the new features “BTD6” added, I must first talk about the main gameplay of the “Bloons TD” series as a whole. Before a player starts playing the game, they must first choose the map and game difficulty. Earlier games in the series tied each map to a specific game difficulty, making it easier for the rookie developers to code the game. Later games allow for each map to be played and replayed on a variety of difficulties. Each difficulty changes how the game is played in its own unique way. In “BTD6,” there are three categories of difficulty: Easy, Medium, and Hard.
First up is Easy. Easy difficulty usually starts on round one and ends on round forty, has the cheapest upgrade prices, the most starting health of all the difficulties, and has the slowest and weakest bloons of all the difficulties. Because of the booming simplicity of the mode, it gives the lowest amount of Monkey Money as a reward and gives the least amount of experience points to towers. It introduces most of the bloon types to players, including normal bloons, immunity bloons, and the first MOAB-class bloon, which is the standard MOAB, or Massive Ornary Air Blimp. This acts as a kind of “final boss” for the game mode.
The next difficulty of game modes is Medium. Medium difficulty is pretty much the same game as Easy except for a few
key differences: every game mode goes to round sixty, players start with one hundred and fifty health rather than two hundred, towers and tower upgrades are more expensive and bloons are faster and have more health.
The next difficulty is Hard, with its differences being even more expensive towers and upgrades, even faster and stronger bloons, only having one hundred health to begin with, ending on round eighty, and starting on round three instead of round one. Round eighty holds the Zeppelin of Mass Gargantuan, or ZOMG, as its final boss for most of its game modes.
Most game modes have their own special rules, but Standard keeps the same main ruleset throughout every difficulty except for the rules that are influenced by its respective difficulty. Every difficulty also has its own special game modes, but I will only be touching on the important ones.
The Sandbox game mode is supported in every difficulty and does not really have anything interesting about it. In Sandbox, players can have any amount of cash and health they so choose. They may also spawn in any bloon they want or start a certain round to test a strategy quite easily.
Impoppable is a fairly simple game mode to understand. It has three key differences from Standard mode. The differences are more expensive towers and upgrades, going to round one hundred instead of round eighty, and limiting players to one health. This means that players may not allow any bloons to exit the track or else they will immediately lose. This game mode also introduces two new MOAB-class bloons: the Dark Dirigible Titan, or DDT, and the Big Airship of Doom, or BAD. DDTs start appearing in round ninety, and the BAD acts as the final boss for this game mode and the next one. This game mode is limited to Hard difficulty.
CHIMPS is the final game mode in “BTD6,” and it’s quite a doozy. CHIMPS stands for No Continues, No Hearts Lost, No Bonus Income, No Monkey Knowledge, No Powers, and No Selling, making it possibly the hardest game mode in all of the “Bloons Tower Defense” series. Beating this game mode on any map is quite hard, but it does reward players quite well. It has the largest Monkey Money reward and gives players either a red or a black medal for the map depending on if they beat it all in one go or not, with black meaning they did. Getting all of the medals for every game mode and getting the black CHIMPS medal awards players with a shiny black border around the map in the map selection screen. Having every black border in the game is quite a feat that should be bragged about in “BTD6” related forums. This game mode is also limited to Hard difficulty.
In the “Bloons Tower Defense” universe, the monkeys have been at war with the bloons for as long as they can remember. Nobody exactly knows what started the war, but they do know that bloons should be stopped at all costs. Bloons are possibly the definition of evil; they are literally just rubber beings that come to life through the power of pure hatred. These are obviously different from balloons, which are rubbery toys that the monkeys use for parties of all kinds.
Luckily, the monkeys have fighters of all types ready to fight against the evil bloons. These special fighters are the
normal monkeys from the four categories of Primary, Military, Magic, Support, and the special heroes. All of these categories except Support have their own game modes that limit players to only using towers from that specific category.
The hero category of towers has so many different and unique monkeys that it would take me forever and a year to explain the intricacies of every single one, so I will just go over some of my favorites.
First up is Benjamin, the hero I use in most of my runs. He is very useful in getting cash, which is super useful to build up a huge offense and defense against the bloons, especially late in the game. The day his end-of-round cash bonus was buffed tremendously was one of the happiest days of my life.
Another hero I enjoy using in runs is Corvus. Corvus has a unique mechanic of dealing most of his damage through the use of his spellbook. Every spell does something unique to buff either his ghost buddy or the monkeys around him. Corvus does take a lot of focus to use to his greatest ability, though.
The final hero I will talk about here is none other than Obyn Greenfoot. As an enjoyer of the Magic category of towers, Obyn’s buffs for that category get me really excited to use him from time to time.
Next up on the chopping block is the community creations in “BTD6.” Ninja Kiwi has allowed the player base to express themselves in many different ways, from creating special challenges to creating entirely new maps. One of my favorite community-influenced events is the weekly Odyssey. Odysseys are a collection of challenges that limit players to using certain monkeys and sometimes even limit players to a certain amount of each monkey throughout the entire Odyssey.
Bosses are another weekly event, but they are not as influenced by the community. There are six different bosses in “BTD6,” each with their own unique mechanic. There is Bloonarius, the bloon-spawning behemoth; Lych, the buff-stealing vampire; Vortex, the tower stunning storm; Dreadbloon, the immunity-abusing rock; Spectre, the track-skipping ghost; and the soon-to-be-added Blastapopoulos, the tower-debuffing demon. Boss events are one of the most fun things to do in “BTD6” when it seems like there is not anything else to do. Each weekly boss event will also have special modifiers to make it a bit easier or way harder.
The final thing I must talk about is Monkey Knowledge. Every time a player levels up, they gain one monkey knowledge
point. They may also gain them from achievements or through microtransactions because even Ninja Kiwi has to eat. Monkey Knowledge is basically a long-term leveling system that allows players to choose what unique upgrades they want to add to their towers forever.
All in all, “Bloons TD 6” is a great game for all ages to enjoy. It has been eating up a good portion of my life for the past four years, and I have enjoyed every second of it. My rating of this game is 12/12 Hidden Achievements and its prize is my purchase of Double Cash.
