Bloons TD 6+ (2022) [+]
Mar 10 2025
Bloons TD 6+ is a cutesy tower defense game where the towers are monkeys and the bad guys are balloons.
As usual for the genre there are set maps and the balloons follow set paths on each map. You place your initial monkey(s) and earn money by popping balloons which allows you to upgrade monkeys or place new monkeys (and there are a couple of structures like a banana farm for money generation and a house that buffs nearby monkeys).
Each monkey type can be upgraded with XP and monkeys get XP for usage so if you concentrate on a few monkeys they'll upgrade to max and the other monkeys will be at base level. Each monkey type has three improvement chains and when you upgrade a specific monkey you can have one chain at max upgrade, a second chain at two upgrades, and the third chain cannot be upgraded so there is room to specialize monkeys of the same type.
Balloons can have more color layers so they take more damage to kill. There are specialized balloons: camo which monkeys don't target unless they have specific upgrades, lead which shrugs off most damage unless a monkey has a different upgrade, blimps which can take a lot of damage and when they explode release lots of balloons.
Each map has some variant goals so you'll play them multiple times each game being different: restricted to certain monkeys, balloons move in different paths, you can't gain money, etc. There are also other game types like Odyssey where you have to complete a series of levels with the same group of monkeys.
It's a very polished game as you'd expect for the 6th in the series and in general an entertaining version of tower defense. I do think there is maybe way too much going on: too many monkey types and upgrades and balloon types and challenges. But I've spent a couple dozen hours playing and it's good.
As usual for the genre there are set maps and the balloons follow set paths on each map. You place your initial monkey(s) and earn money by popping balloons which allows you to upgrade monkeys or place new monkeys (and there are a couple of structures like a banana farm for money generation and a house that buffs nearby monkeys).
Each monkey type can be upgraded with XP and monkeys get XP for usage so if you concentrate on a few monkeys they'll upgrade to max and the other monkeys will be at base level. Each monkey type has three improvement chains and when you upgrade a specific monkey you can have one chain at max upgrade, a second chain at two upgrades, and the third chain cannot be upgraded so there is room to specialize monkeys of the same type.
Balloons can have more color layers so they take more damage to kill. There are specialized balloons: camo which monkeys don't target unless they have specific upgrades, lead which shrugs off most damage unless a monkey has a different upgrade, blimps which can take a lot of damage and when they explode release lots of balloons.
Each map has some variant goals so you'll play them multiple times each game being different: restricted to certain monkeys, balloons move in different paths, you can't gain money, etc. There are also other game types like Odyssey where you have to complete a series of levels with the same group of monkeys.
It's a very polished game as you'd expect for the 6th in the series and in general an entertaining version of tower defense. I do think there is maybe way too much going on: too many monkey types and upgrades and balloon types and challenges. But I've spent a couple dozen hours playing and it's good.